Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 100

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I went back to that old version

It was 8 to 5/4. Seems like the 8 had more policy based arguments. So I'd call that a consensus. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 02:36, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Boy, just reading it now, I gotta say it reads a lot better. None of that disjointedness that keeps getting done to the lead lately. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 02:37, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

What's happening now is very similar to what happened in December. On this page and at the RS noticeboard, the major changes and the justification for them were opposed by consensus, but they kept being repeatedly restored by editors who refused to engage with the discussion in either place. That's why the changes stayed in the article for the past month.

I haven't yet figured out how one is supposed to deal with this situation whenever it happens. If the article is being edited in a way that completely disregards the discussion on the talk page, how can it be possible to resolve anything, aside from by edit warring? 2600:1004:B16D:D752:2520:4B9D:9617:9E7E (talk) 02:59, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

The way YOU deal with this is you create an account, and you revert. 3 reverts are allowed per person per day. I can already see that it's just me, so me reverting a second time isn't going to fix anything. If it is really 8 to 5, then 24 reverts beats 15 reverts. If only 1 of the 8 cares enough to revert, and 5/5 are willing to revert on the other side, then 5 wins. WP has many pages saying this isn't how WP works, but it is. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 03:26, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

If I decide to make an account, it isn't going to be for the intentional purpose of participating in an edit war. Also, if the article gets reverted 15+ times in the space of 24 hours, that seems like it would just result in the article being locked again.

I really hope you aren't right that that's the only way to resolve this type of situation. Can any of the other experienced editors who've been commenting here (such as Oldstone James) confirm whether this is accurate? 2600:1004:B16D:D752:2520:4B9D:9617:9E7E (talk) 04:22, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Totally. We absolutely should not edit-war, as the most it will do is get the page locked again and some editors (likely Peregrine, with that approach) blocked. However, if some edits continue to be pushed without consensus by one or two editors, it is fine to revert them once or twice, but if they don't stop, we should simply file a complaint at ANI. The chances are, they will probably stop or get blocked, and then we can resolve the issue peacefully without edit-warring. ^{O̲L̲D̲S̲T̲O̲N̲E̲}_{J̅A̅M̅E̅S̅} 16:45, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Redent. Wikipedia breaks eggs to make omelets. Just imagine trying to work on Israel/Palestine articles. It's not a bunch of non partisans trying to summarize scholarly papers! In my opinion, you should follow the rules, and also enforce them on any article your watching

For instance, I fixed up the prose on a book article American Dirt. Someone reverted it for non policy based reasons. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=American_Dirt&diff=937303904&oldid=937303270 I then reverted that. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=American_Dirt&diff=937447720&oldid=937447263 If I hadn't edit warred, that copy edit would be lost to time. It seems to be sticking for now. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 05:45, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

And in my head, I was like "they're going to revert". Then I was like "fuck, am I going to revert a second time?". It was stressful because I don't like to revert multiply times. That is the wiki life on certain articles though. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 05:50, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

3 reverts are not allowed per person per day

That's a misunderstanding of WP:3RR which says "Even without a 3RR violation, an administrator may still act if they believe a user's behavior constitutes edit warring, and any user may report edit warring with or without 3RR being breached. The rule is not an entitlement to revert a page a specific number of times." When editors try that they frequently are blocked. Just as they can get blocked if they do a 4th revert 25 hours after the 1st. Doug Weller talk 09:04, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

I forget exactly the rules. I believe it's that if the editors who don't like WP policies revert more than me, then I lose. Correct? Peregrine Fisher (talk) 10:15, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

I think you know that's not true. And shows a lack of good faith. Doug Weller talk 16:45, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Doug Weller, as an admin, can you acknowledge there's a problem with what Volunteer Marek is doing here? We all just spent a week discussing whether to restore the earlier version, and while not everyone supports that proposal, it clearly has more support than keeping the current version. The discussion had participation from 13 people, and 8 of them supported restoring the earlier version. After an extensive discussion has reached that conclusion, I don't think a single user should have the right to overrule that outcome because he personally doesn't think the old version satisfies NPOV policy. He's done this twice. The other time was two weeks ago, after the previous discussion about the major changes that were made in December reached the same conclusion as the current discussion, but the outcome of that discussion also was undone by Volunteer Marek. [1]

When the article is edited in a way that completely disregards the discussion on the talk page, that seems to create a situation where the only way to resolve disputes over the article is by edit warring. If you want to prevent edit warring over this article, surely you must disapprove of people acting this way. 2600:1004:B119:8942:B5F2:D894:CC3:9BAE (talk) 12:21, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

When you accuse other editors of acting improperly, you also invite scrutiny of your own conduct, in particular, whether your notification of selected editors from an earlier discussion at RSN constitutes canvassing. Canvassing by an IP editor is not permitted, just as canvassing by an editor with an account is not permitted. NightHeron (talk) 13:06, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm not acting as monitor here, WP:AE is the appropriate venue if anyone thinks an editor has violated the sanctions. Doug Weller talk 16:45, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

No shit! I didn't know this page had arbitration rules! That's awesome. Let's try that. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 17:11, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

He was notified of the discretionary sanctions here: [2] However, thus far he's only reverted against consensus twice. Oldstone James suggested above that we should try making the edit one or two more times, and then file a report if he keeps doing the same thing, and I agree that's the best course of action. 2600:1004:B12F:E70A:C94B:DD7B:2911:E62E (talk) 17:33, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Race_and_intelligence Peregrine Fisher (talk) 17:16, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Race_and_intelligence Last one was in wrong place. We'll see if this correct. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 20:23, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Why in the world didn't you delete your mistaken edit? Your second one had the same problem - you need to read the headers of pages first, the reason you were reverted there was "AE is not a general noticeboard. If requesting enforcement, please see instructions above for how to file a request." You need to bring specifics including diffs. Doug Weller talk 10:01, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Compromise

Honestly, I just had a read over the past version and compared it to the current version; on the whole, the current version reads perfectly fine to me. The only issue that I have with the current version is a small number of edits which were forced in by means of edit-warring and failed to gain consensus.

In light of this, I propose that we keep the current version but add in bits and pieces which were previously removed without consensus. If our edit gets reverted, then we leave it be or discuss it on the talk page. If it sticks - great, we are one step closer to resolving the issues that led to the proposal of reverting back to a stable version in the first place.

How does this sound? ^{O̲L̲D̲S̲T̲O̲N̲E̲}_{J̅A̅M̅E̅S̅} 18:23, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Your revisions were problematic and not "uncontroversial":

1. The sentence However, attempts to replicate studies evincing significant effects of stereotype threat have not yielded the same results gives an interpretation in wikivoice of the status of research on stereotype threat. Any such interpretation must be attributed to a source and must be balanced by the viewpoints of other researchers. For editors to interpret the research is OR.

2. Putting in that there's a debate over whether and to what extent there are genetic causes contradicts the following sentence, which says that there is no evidence of genetic causes.

3. As I noted earlier, the terms circumstantial evidence and non-circumstantial evidence are unclear, because, as far as I'm aware, they have no meaning in the sciences (although circumstantial evidence is a well-known term in criminal investigations). If by "circumstantial evidence" you just mean a correlation, then that's no evidence at all. Is the fact that test scores on average are higher in Connecticut than in Mississippi "circumstantial evidence" of a genetic difference between residents of the two states? NightHeron (talk) 21:59, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

@Oldstone James: You were in such a hurry to revert that you wouldn't even wait a few minutes to read my detailed explanation of why your edits are problematic. Your previous edit summary asked for an explanation of why they're problematic, and I responded to that. Judging from the tone of your latest edit summary, you seem to think that edit-warring is a game. It's not. It's a serious violation of Wikipedia policy. NightHeron (talk) 22:07, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Why are we having this discussion?

We've had to listen to a few very dedicated discussion participants say that the talk page has decided to revert to a particular old version of the article. Can anybody provide any reasons for this? For example, I don't understand why anybody would want to change "black people" and "white people" into "blacks" and "whites" respectively. I would really like to know what is so good about this previous version that we have editors threatening to edit war for it. Onetwothreeip (talk) 19:58, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Let's go back and then talk about changing white people to whites. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 20:50, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

We've already had this discussion multiple times, but since a few people weren't around when it was explained before, I guess I'll explain it again.

Until December, the article was mostly structured as a debate between two controversial sources: A 2005 paper by Rushton and Jensen published in Psychology, Public Policy and Law, and Nisbett's 2009 book Intelligence and How to Get It. (Some people don't believe that Nisbett's book is controversial, but see the reviews listed in the Intelligence and How to Get It article, as well as Hunt's comments on Nisbett in his textbook Human Intelligence, "Nisbett's extreme statement has virtually no chance of being true"). This was a slightly strange way for the article to be structured, but it still gave a decent overview of the debate. Rushton and Jensen are controversial for being excessively certain that group differences have a genetic component, while Nisbett is controversial for his tendency to ignore studies that contradict his belief that psychological traits are extremely malleable, so by being biased in opposite directions, these two sources sort of balanced each other out.

What Onetwothreeip did in December is remove most of the citations to Rushton and Jensen, while keeping those to Nisbett. He also removed citations to a large number of secondary sources, such as textbooks by Hunt and Mackintosh, that discussed the Rushton and Jensen paper. His justification for this change was that any source that discusses Rushton and Jensen's ideas is by definition unreliable, even if it's a textbook from Oxford or Cambridge University Press. No one else agreed with him about this, either on this talk page or at the RS noticeboard, but he refused to accept this consensus.

Aside from how the justification for this change was decisively rejected, there are other problems with the change. The way the article is now, it includes Nisbett's replies to Rushton and Jensen without including the arguments that he's replying to. The removal of the textbook sources that are attempting to provide a neutral overview of the debate is especially egregious, because those are exactly the types of sources that the article ought to be citing as much as possible. Most of the material that he removed had been in the article for 5+ years, and had been stable until last month.

I'll also reiterate something else I've said before, which is that if someone wants to replace most of the citations to Rushton/Jensen and Nisbett with citations to newer sources (such as those that I mentioned here), and turn the article into less of a back-and-forth between opposing sources, I'm all for it. But such a change should be made with consensus one section at a time, and thus far nobody has yet volunteered to do that. A blanket removal of the sources on one side (as well as the textbooks that discuss those sources), while keeping those on the other side, is the wrong approach to take for updating the article, especially when this change has been opposed by consensus every time it's been discussed.

We've had two conversations about these changes, first a month ago when they were first made, and more recently over the past week, and both of them reached the conclusion that Onetwothreeip's changes should be undone. I've summarized the outcome of the earlier discussion, but I really would like to avoid having to repeat this argument a third time. @Oldstone James: you initially supported restoring the earlier version, but more recently said that you don't see any problem with the newer version, so I'd like you in particular to understand what I've explained here. 2600:1004:B14B:9556:5827:15ED:F8D3:D26A (talk) 22:50, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

The most pernicious lie written above is that I have ever said that Cambridge University Press is unreliable. I have never said this. What I have said is that Philippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen were themselves unreliable, for reasons I have discussed at length and am more than willing to discuss further, and have not seen anybody attempt to refute. What they had to say about race and intelligence is not reliable information and should not be presented to readers as though that was potentially correct information. I rightly removed much of the information that suggested their views were potentially valid, as they are not considered so among mainstream researchers.

If editors want to write about the criticisms of Richard Nisbett and his works, they are more than able to do so on the articles about them. If they have particular objections to those works being used in this article, they should make those objections clear and propose changes. The fact that someone wrote a book that some people have criticised is a bizarre argument to keep the highly inappropriate content by Philippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen, and of course not at all sufficient. Neither is that a sufficient argument to insert speculation into the article about an inherent racial hierarchy of intelligence. Onetwothreeip (talk) 23:28, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

I linked to your thread at the reliable sources noticeboard in my post above, so anyone else can see for themselves what arguments you were making there, as well as how those argument were received by other editors. 2600:1004:B14C:C919:E950:81A9:B8D8:510 (talk) 23:50, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

As well they should. I agree with the participants that Cambridge University Press is a reliable source, and that works by Philippe Rushton are sources that are reliable to describe what his views were. The RSN discussion that you have referred to several times now has never stated that Philippe Rushton was a reliable source on psychology, and have not contradicted me on that. Onetwothreeip (talk) 00:05, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Should the article use the terms "white people" and "black people", instead of "whites" and "blacks"?

In the discussion above, Onetwothreeip argued that this article ought to use the terms "white people" and "black people", instead of "whites" and "blacks". Onetwothreeip's changes have been broadly opposed by consensus (I summarized the outcome of the discussion in my comment here), but we haven't had a discussion about this particular issue of terminology, so I'll start one.

In everyday usage the terms "white people" and "black people" probably are the most common terms, but in sources that discuss this article's topic, the terms "whites" and "blacks" are more common. This is true regardless of what perspective or viewpoint the sources are taking. I've recently looked through several major secondary sources that discuss this article's topic, written from a variety of viewpoints, and here's my analysis of the terms used:

• Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns, the report published by the American Psychological Association in response to the controversy surrounding The Bell Curve, uses the terms "whites" and "blacks".
• Roth et al's paper "Ethnic group differences in cognitive ability in employment and educational settings: A meta-analysis" uses the terms "whites" and "blacks".
• Rushton and Jensen's paper "Thirty years of research on race differences in cognitive ability" uses the terms "whites" and "blacks".
• Richard Nisbett's book Intelligence and How to Get It uses the terms "whites" and "blacks".
• Earl Hunt's textbook Human Intelligence uses the terms "whites" and "African Americans" or "blacks".
• Nicholas Mackintosh's textbook IQ and Human Intelligence uses the terms "whites" and "blacks". The book includes a note on page 332 about why it uses these terms; Mackintosh explains that he uses the term "blacks" instead of "African Americans" because he is not only discussing people in the United States.
• Nisbett et al's paper Intelligence: New Findings and Theoretical Developments uses the terms "whites" and "blacks".
• James Flynn's book Are We Getting Smarter? uses the terms "whites" and "blacks".

I'll emphasize again that I deliberately chose sources representing a variety of viewpoints. The only one of these sources that argues that group differences in average IQ have a large genetic portion is the Rushton and Jensen paper, while Hunt's textbook argues that some genetic contribution is likely, but that there is not enough data to know its size. The other six sources all either think the cause is environmental, or are agnostic about the cause.

I think this article ought to reflect the terminology used in the source literature that it is citing, rather than the terms that are most common in everyday usage. I'd like to know whether others agree or disagree. For the past few days this talk page has been dominated by the relatively small group of editors who supported Onetwothreeip's changes, but I'd especially like to hear from the larger group of editors who have been opposed to those changes, and whether or not they feel differently about this question of terminology. 2600:1004:B168:DFFA:5CEA:D916:2237:DCFC (talk) 22:25, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

but we haven't had a discussion about this particular issue of terminology, so I'll start one. There has not been any consensus around particular changes. The only majority has been around "stable version" or "previous version", without discussing the particular changes. Onetwothreeip (talk) 23:21, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

• Black people and white people - Wikipedia is written in its own house style, not the style of the sources. We should use the commonly-used terms. –dlthewave ☎ 04:42, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
• I prefer ‘black people’ (or possibly ‘African-Americans’, where applicable, which is the case for most of the studies we mention) and ‘white people’; ‘blacks’ and ‘whites’ is jarring to the ears of most readers, and my own. That said, if a consensus begins to form in the other direction (to reflect the sources), my sentiments shouldn’t be cited against it. Hölderlin2019 (talk) 02:17, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

I vote for keeping whatever is most common in the academic literature. This seems to be the shorter terms. AndewNguyen (talk) 21:26, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Revert crypto-white supremacism.

I suggest reverting the crypto-white supremacism contained in this edit after protection ends: [3].

That is all.

jps (talk) 17:37, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

So I suppose it makes no difference to you that we just discussed this change for a week, and 8 of the 12 other participants in that discussion disagreed with you about it? I'm honestly starting to find it a little amusing how reluctant certain people are to accept that consensus opposes them. 2600:1004:B14C:C919:E950:81A9:B8D8:510 (talk) 18:30, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia should not be promoting white supremacism. Full stop. It doesn't matter how many editors think that it should. It shouldn't. jps (talk) 18:47, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Let me put it another way. These particular changes have been discussed twice, first in December and again more recently, and in both discussions the consensus was that the stable version of the article (the version that's in the article currently) should be restored. If you think the article should be edited in a way that disregards the consensus on the talk page, that will eliminate the ability to resolve disputes the way they're supposed to be resolved, so that the only remaining way to resolve them is by edit warring. You know perfectly well that there are more editors who support the current version than who oppose it, so if you try to restore your preferred version against consensus, it will inevitably cause another edit war. Is that really what you want? 2600:1004:B14C:C919:E950:81A9:B8D8:510 (talk) 19:30, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

I must say that if I thought this article was crypto white supremacy, I'd ignore our policies and edit war to destroy this article till I was blue in the face. I don't agree, but I do understand. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 20:22, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Bingo. So editors like yourself who disagree with this evaluation should either deal with the objection head-on or ignore it at their own peril. jps (talk) 22:30, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

There has simply not been a consensus to make those particular changes. Where has the argument been made to change "black people" to "blacks", for example? The argument has simply not been made, let alone any consensus to support that. More still, there haven't been arguments made to support the validity of work by Philippe Rushton and others associated with the Pioneer Fund and the International Society for Intelligence Research. Yet we are constantly being told that 9 out of 10 or 8 out of 12 or 7 out of 9 or 10 out of 13 talk page participants support these changes. Repeating that there is a consensus doesn't make it a consensus. If there was a consensus on some particular change, those who are attempting to make edits on that basis would be showing that consensus rather than talking about it, but they won't even justify the edits. Onetwothreeip (talk) 00:00, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

I am referring to this discussion. The earlier version of the article we were thinking of restoring was linked at the beginning of that discussion, so everyone knew exactly what was being proposed there.

The editors who supported restoring that version were: myself, Peregrine Fisher, Oldstone James, Toomim, AndewNguyen, Holderin2019, MaximumIdeas, and Ferahgo the Assassin. The editors who were opposed to restoring it were: you, Nightheron, jps, K.e.coffman, and (possibly) Johnuniq. That's 13 editors in total, and 8 who supported undoing your changes.

Seriously, what are you playing at here? You were one of the participants in that discussion, so you know exactly what its result was, but now when others discuss its outcome you're acting like you have no idea what we're talking about. 2600:1004:B14C:C919:E950:81A9:B8D8:510 (talk) 00:21, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Which changes are you saying they support? Onetwothreeip (talk) 01:04, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Please stop asking me the same questions over and over. Several other editors (Corker1, BullRangifer, MrX, etc.) have complained about your tendency to waste other editors' time with a WP:IDHT attitude, so I know I'm not the only person who thinks this behavior from you is disruptive. The only reason I've been replying to you is that when you forget or misrepresent the outcomes of earlier discussions, as you did in this case, I don't want editors who haven't read those earlier discussions to be confused by your posts. 2600:1004:B14C:C919:E950:81A9:B8D8:510 (talk) 05:29, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Then at least show us where you have answered that question. Onetwothreeip (talk) 05:53, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

There is no room for doubt that Jensenism is a form of white supremacy. In his 1969 article, Jensen opposed compensatory education programs for African American children because he thought that those children are genetically inferior. At the time and ever since then, mainstream scholars have known that there is no evidence that supports Jensen's disparagement of black children. The main argument Jensen, Herrnstein, and others made was to extrapolate from genetic differences between individuals to genetic differences between groups -- a logical fallacy that any undergraduate psych student should be able to poke holes in. Like other white supremacist views, it is fringe.

Wikipedia has a clear policy on how to handle fringe views: WP:FRINGE. It is important to follow that policy, because so many people rely on Wikipedia, and spreading fringe views does real damage. Climate change denialism, which is especially influential in the centers of power in the US and Brazil, results in policies that accelerate the climate crisis. Quack cures and fringe medical theories cause people not to get proper treatment. Herrnstein's 1974 article in the Atlantic Monthly (which at the time was read by many school teachers) essentially told teachers that their African American students were uneducable. Wikipedia policy on fringe theories is that they should be covered in a way that makes it clear that they are fringe theories, and that there is no legitimate question about whether they might be valid. NightHeron (talk) 00:36, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

I agree. I took a look at the article, and I found it depressingly bad. It's full of tit-for-tat back-and-forth, without properly highlighting what is mainstream and what is fringe. It's entirely unclear if this is supposed to be a history of the idea of "racial" difference of IQ, or a discussion of the substance of the debate. The article is also incredibly US-centric. From a global perspective, neither "white" nor "black" are well-defined or even coherent groups. Melanesians are as as dark as most Africans - heck, after a summer on the beach I'm darker than Obama, and I probably have more Neanderthal than recent African DNA. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 01:02, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Would it make sense to take this article to AfD, along with notifying the widest possible number of editors on all relevant talk pages and WikiProjects? This article has been locked down twice in the last two weeks. Trying to keep the article from pushing fringe views has been a time sink for editors, and the discussion has been dominated by a small number of editors who seem determined to have Wikipedia give credence to white supremacist views. An article cited at the top of this talk page from the Southern Poverty Law Center mentions this article as an example of the influence of the alt-right on Wikipedia. The article is also an example of the effects of systemic bias, that is, the under-representation among active editors of women, people of color, and people from the Global South. Is there any real need for an article titled Race and intelligence? NightHeron (talk) 10:57, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

AfD? Probably not as I doubt the community would agree to deletion in spite of WP:TNT being a pretty reasonable argument. WP:AE might be reasonable. If we can't solve things that way, and arbitration case might be in order. There are certainly alt-right accounts active at this page and we should deal with that. jps (talk) 17:04, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Sure, you know the community much better than I do; I've been editing less than 2 years. Two arguments in support of AfD might also be (1) there's already a much better article that covers the topic, namely Scientific racism, and (2) the title of this article can be read as suggesting that race is related to intelligence, which already prejudices the matter in favor of the fringe view. NightHeron (talk) 18:15, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Hmm, I think we should open a discussion about this page being a WP:POV Fork of scientific racism. If it is, you are indeed correct that is a reason to delete. jps (talk) 21:17, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't think it's exactly a POV fork (it was created in January 2002), but strange things show up in the history of this article. For example, 1152 edits (9.1% of all the edits to this page over 18 years) were made between 2003 and 2006 by User:Quizkajer, which seems to have been a single-purpose account; they stopped editing -- or stopped editing under that account -- in June 2007. It would be interesting to know whether a very small number of users were responsible for most of the content that gives credence to white supremacist theories. NightHeron (talk) 23:46, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

White supremacism is FRINGE, but the idea that race and intelligence (whatever those words might mean) might be related is not. Race-and-intelligence is a subject of speculation, research and often vicious dispute, a controversial subject that has been disfavored for many reasons, but as an idea it has never been "fringe" in the sense of being refuted and abandoned by the mainstream. The mainstream understanding is that race exists (just not in the simplistic ways frequently held up for ridicule); that there is a substantial genetic component to individuals' intelligence; that the distribution of genes for almost any trait can and does vary between populations; and that it is very much possible, but not currently proved or disproved, for the genetic components of intelligence to be among the genetic characteristics that are distributed differently in different groups, like the genes involved in height or hair. All that is common sense, and attempts to refute it have a bad track record of being discredited, including Gould's notorious book, the Lewontin fallacy, and a large fraction of the academic literature of anthropology and psychology that is now understood to suffer from Replication Crisis and extreme politicization.73.149.246.232 (talk) 21:56, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

The idea of a POV Fork is a functional one. It doesn't matter if the article was created a long time ago, if it is now functioning as a POV fork, it is a POV fork. There are a number of documented white supremacist editors who have dedicated much of their time towards skewing this and similar articles. Reading through Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and intelligence should probably be required reading, although the focus in that case was a bit overly-personal and there was a sidestepping of the fundamental issues of off-wiki coordination with certain useful idiots who happened to get caught up in the drahmaz. There are still accounts who remain banned from Wikipedia including at least one that is from roughly the same area where the currently active IP-hopper on this page. jps (talk) 20:00, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

If one of you guys would jump through the arbcom hoops, I think that would be great. They might say that your side is correct, and I can remove this page from my watchlist! Peregrine Fisher (talk) 20:15, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

The article is badly in need of a major update. If the edit warring to restore non-consensus changes eventually stops, I'd like to have an organized discussion about how to update the article one section at a time, and you're welcome to participate in that. 2600:1004:B14C:C919:E950:81A9:B8D8:510 (talk) 01:12, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protection

El C, it seems that semi-protection was removed from this article after you full-protected it here. This is not an article that should be without semi-protection.

No need to ping me if you reply. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 02:12, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

A change to the lede

The fact that differences in IQ scores between various population groups exist is clearly uncontroversial in the scholarly community, and I don't think I need to justify this, as most editors seem to agree with this valuation, anyway (besides, a comprehensive survey on the issue has been linked further up on the talk page which corroborates this). These differences are also the core pillar that the entire article rests on, and most of the article focuses on the possible causes of these differences. However, bizarrely, this fact is not even mentioned in the lede as it stands. Not only that, but it is actually implied by the sentence some debate as to whether and to what extent differences in intelligence test scores instead of clearly stated; if not a POV or summary issue, this is pretty clearly an error of style. For example, it would inappropriate to say that "Arsenal play in the Premier League" before specifying that Arsenal are a football team, as it would quite obviously be difficult for a reader previously unfamiliar with Arsenal to read.

Furthermore, if we take a look at the sister article History of the race and intelligence controversy, it is stated straight away that since the beginning of IQ testing around the time of World War I, there have been observed differences between average scores of different population groups..., and it is then explained that the causes of these differences are not well-understood. I propose that we implement a similar sentence in this article. My version would be something like: Since then, there have been observed differences between average IQ scores of different population groups, but whether and to what extent these differences reflect environmental factors as opposed to genetic ones, as well what the definitions of "race" and "intelligence" are, and whether they can be objectively defined, is subject of much debate. What do we think of this? ^{O̲L̲D̲S̲T̲O̲N̲E̲}_{J̅A̅M̅E̅S̅} 23:09, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

OK This change is fine with me, I don't feel strongly about it. AndewNguyen (talk) 06:52, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Looks pretty good. This lead needs work so that it summarizes the article. I think that would make it closer to a summary. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 23:20, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Absolutely agree. The entire article references differences in intelligence test scores, but the summary never establishes those differences. In the interest of clarity, I'd suggest something more direct and to the point, and using separate sentences for separate ideas:

Since the beginning of intelligence testing, some racial groups have consistently scored higher than others. The amount and cause of racial gaps in IQ scores are the subject of much debate, especially whether and to what degree the they're due to environmental and/or genetic factors. Also debated is whether "race" and "intelligence" have objective meaning, and if so, how to define them.

Elle Kpyros (talk) 23:28, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

I like that one better. Getting closer to an impartial summary of the article. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 01:47, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

I hadn't read much of this, so I read the first few paras of the body. It's extremely well written. I bet this article had an amazing lead at some time in the past. Maybe when It was trying to be a featured article. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 01:58, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Here's the FA candidate version. WP was a lot less censored back in the day! https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Race_and_intelligence&oldid=18607122 Peregrine Fisher (talk) 02:42, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

I've finally figured out when this information was removed from the lead. It was removed in this edit on 18 March 2018. Looking at the talk page archives around that time, there was no discussion of the change, so evidently there never was a consensus for it. The explanation given in the removal's edit summary also is based on an invalid reason: the assumption that the existence of group differences in average test scores is a "fringe" viewpoint. As Oldstone James explained, seeking to understand the causes of these differences is the entire foundation of the race and intelligence controversy.

The user who made that removal, Mpants at Work, is now banned from Wikipedia. If his change had been discussed and supported by many other users, the fact that the person who made it is banned wouldn't matter. But considering this is a controversial change that was supported by only one person, it might be significant that that one person is no longer part of the site.

I've argued before that the lead should include this information, and the wording I suggested was "While tests have broadly shown differences in average scores average scores between racial or ethnic groups". I would be fine with either that wording, or whichever of the other proposals here is best supported by consensus. 2600:1004:B14D:ADC1:584:563C:C19A:970F (talk) 15:33, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

We can certainly discuss the wording, however your procedural arguments don't hold much water. Unless the article was under a special restriction at the time (it wasn't), changes to the lead or any part of the article did not require prior discussion or consensus. WP:BOLD edits are encouraged and the lack of reversion or talk page discussion at the time shows that it stood unchallenged. Furthermore, MPants was an editor in good standing at the time, and the fact that they were later banned for unrelated reasons does not invalidate their previous work. Let's discuss this content on its own merits. –dlthewave ☎ 16:07, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Many large changes are made to articles that never get any discussion. This does not mean we can just show up some day and demand to revert to an arbitrary historical version. However, we can of course discuss to go back towards the prior version. 'MPants' seems a very biased editor from their history of editing. It is best to stick to academic sources for such charged topics. For this article, I think it should just be permanently locked so that these drive-by edits don't go unnoticed until months later. AndewNguyen (talk) 18:46, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

This discussion has gotten somewhat off-track. When I discovered that the editor who removed this information is now banned, and that it was removed without any discussion, I wanted to mention those things, but dlthewave and AndewNguyen are right that this has limited relevance to the present situation. What we should do in the present is discuss which of the wordings proposed here is best. Can we come to a decision about that? 2600:1004:B167:19E3:34AD:BD59:62C3:ED3C (talk) 05:39, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

@Oldstone James: I think your changes to the lead are generally an improvement, but there is an issue with this edit. The way that the lead was before, its last two paragraphs gave the history of the race and intelligence controversy from the early twentieth century up through the 1990s. Arthur Jensen's 1969 paper and The Bell Curve did not represent the scientific consensus, but they were major events in the history of this controversy. But now, the lead section gives the early history of the controversy without describing its modern history.

Perhaps the best solution is to rewrite the lead after the first paragraph. The lead section should be a concise summary of the rest of the article, but historical information only makes up a small portion of this article, so the lead appears to be giving that aspect of the topic undue weight. 2600:1004:B127:E072:E1FC:1B03:A596:DDEB (talk) 16:46, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

I agree; I think the lede section past the first paragraph should be rewritten, but at this point I am short on ideas. For now, I just removed the WP:FALSEBALANCE part so that the intermediate version isn't misleading. My final edit also addressed your concerns about the completeness of the described history: as of now, only the summary of how this area of research was inaugurated and the summary of the current stance of the topic are present in the article, which is the format that many lede sections take (i.e. how X started vs how X is now). ^{O̲L̲D̲S̲T̲O̲N̲E̲}_{J̅A̅M̅E̅S̅} 16:54, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Rename to Race and IQ scores

Or similar? Race and intelligence test scores? Race and IQ? Current title is probably most accurate, but it pisses off a lot of editors. Might be able to reduce drama with a clever rename. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 04:37, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Using the term IQ would only help if the article stopped saying there was any correlation between it and intelligence. HiLo48 (talk) 04:53, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

If we're going to consider renaming the article, I think someone should look through the talk page archives to see whether there's an existing consensus about the article title. Individual sources have been added and removed over the years, but the article's title has stayed the same for the 18 years that it's existed, so it's highly probable that this question has been discussed before. 2600:1004:B167:19E3:34AD:BD59:62C3:ED3C (talk) 05:15, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Using the word "race" at all is highly problematic, especially given that our own (relevant) article says "race is not intrinsic to human beings but rather an identity created, often by socially dominant groups..." It's an ill-defined term. Using it in an article title will attract the racists (we know this to be true) and not help anyone learn anything. HiLo48 (talk) 05:20, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Population groups and intelligence? Self identifed race and intelligence? Peregrine Fisher (talk) 05:56, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

@Peregrine Fisher: Before we devote a lot of time to discussing what the article should be titled, could you please look through the talk page archives and see whether there's an existing consensus about the title? I would expect that there probably is. If you don't want to look, I can do so myself, but you're the person who's expressed the greatest interest in making sure the conclusions of those earlier discussions aren't forgotten about. 2600:1004:B167:19E3:34AD:BD59:62C3:ED3C (talk) 06:48, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't think going to the old consensuses will help us that much. The people who want to nuke this article from orbit don't care. Let me say it differently. It's too much work going through the old talk pages for me, and how much I think they will help. I'd love to read greatest hits like "Top 5 discussions about article name" or "top 5 discussions about Jensen's reliability" or whatnot just for fun, though. I asked a question at help desk because of something you said Wikipedia:Help_desk#Is_editing_as_an_IP_more_anonymous_than_editing_from_an_account? Peregrine Fisher (talk) 16:00, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

The word "differences" and something more specific than "intelligence" alone are needed for better precision. I would replace Intelligence with "psychometry", "intelligence testing" or (if necessary) "IQ", and Race with "race differences" or possibly "group differences". The page will be more locatable in search engines if "psychometry" is avoided, and "group differences" is a weasel-phrase unless something other than race differences is discussed on the page, so for the page as currently constituted: "Race differences in intelligence testing" or maybe "Race differences in IQ". 73.149.246.232 (talk) 06:22, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Psychometry or psychometrics are broader concepts than intelligence testing. In older texts, the entire area of IQ research was called psychometrics, this term is now used to refer to the broader field that is concerned with psychometrics as in the study of measurement of psychological variation. So, it would be very misleading to adopt this older use of the term. --AndewNguyen (talk) 06:48, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

No more misleading than the current title. HiLo48 (talk) 07:18, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Oppose I don't think this is a good idea. Consider an analogue proposal to rename pages about religion and personality to religion and personality scores, or religion and scores on NEO PI-R test. These are not sensible. While some people criticize construct validity of personality tests, and thus would perhaps object to the current titles, these are a very small minority of researchers. The same is true for intelligence tests, which have broad acceptance among researchers in psychology, and especially those who study individual differences. The surveys on this topic are already given on the page, and every textbook covers the broad agreement among researchers about features of intelligence. This kind of renaming seems to bend over backwards to a fringe view who does not accept the consensus positions on construct validity (so, a few people like Ken Richardson). AndewNguyen (talk) 06:45, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Calling the views of those who disagree with you "fringe" is pretty much a personal attack. HiLo48 (talk) 07:20, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Oppose IQ scores measure intelligence and intelligence is the WP:COMMONNAME and intelligence is what the sources are ultimately and specifically referring to.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 07:29, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

"IQ scores measure intelligence..." I disagree. They measure the ability to do IQ tests. Given that our own article on the subject struggles to provide anything like a precise definition of intelligence, and doesn't even mention IQ tests, you have made a rather dramatic claim there. HiLo48 (talk) 07:47, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

You might disagree as much as you'd like, but that won't change the scientific consensus that IQ tests are valid and reliable estimates of intelligence. ^{O̲L̲D̲S̲T̲O̲N̲E̲}_{J̅A̅M̅E̅S̅} 16:18, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

The points you raise were understood and answered about 100 years ago at the start of psychometric research. As I wrote to you in the AfD thread (thanks for posting the link there that led me to this discussion of the title) these types of linguistic or philosophical objections aren't all that meaningful and make no difference to the scientific, political or other aspects of the discussion. The short story is that results of different types of IQ tests normalized on different populations have extremely high correlation with each other (typically about 90%), as correlated as the scores of the same person taking the same test on different days. So IQ measures something that exists independently of the test. Furthermore, this weird measurable thing happens to correlate better than any other thing we can (easily, noninvasively) measure to stuff we would expect to depend on intelligence, like academic performance and education level, as well as more biological measures like brain size and reaction time. Even more curiously, 100 years and many attempts have not succeeded in finding any other measurable quantities ("multiple intelligences", emotional intelligence, etc) that are not detected by IQ tests but have a similar IQ-like ability to quantify capacities that would be considered as part of intelligence. All of this means that IQ is good enough as an approximate quantification of the vague and multidimensional idea of intelligence, especially if we don't ask for strong conclusions about individuals but speak only of populations on average (e.g., chemistry PhD's on average have much higher IQ than the general population). 73.149.246.232 (talk) 07:15, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Oldstone James, how are you defining reliability and validity? I ask because, like this 2016 "Psychology: Themes and Variations" source, from Cengage Learning, page 281, states, "In the jargon of psychological testing, reliability refers to the measurement consistency of a test. A reliable test is one that yields similar scores upon repetition. Like other types of measuring devices, such as a stopwatch or a tire gauge, psychological tests need to be reasonably reliable (Geisinger, 2013). Estimates of reliability require the computation of correlation coefficients, which we introduced in Chapter 2. [...] Do IQ tests produce consistent results when people are retested? Yes. Most IQ tests report commendable reliability estimates. [...] In comparison with most other types of psychological tests, IQ tests are exceptionally reliable. However, like other tests, they sample behavior, and a specific testing may yield an unrepresentative score. Variations in examinees' motivation to take an IQ test or in their anxiety about the test can sometimes produce misleading scores (Duckworth et al., 2011; Hopko et al., 2005). The most common problem is that low motivation or high anxiety can drag a person's score down on a particular occasion. Although the reliability of IQ tests is excellent, caution is always in order in interpreting test scores."

The source goes on to speak of validity, noting that a test being quite reliable doesn't automatically equate to a test's validity. For example, it states, "Do intelligence tests measure what they're supposed to measure? Yes, but this answer has to be qualified very carefully. IQ tests are valid measures of the kind of intelligence necessary to do well in academic work. But if the purpose is to assess intelligence in a broader sense, the validity of IQ tests is questionable."

A number of reliable sources have characterized IQ tests as flawed. And issues with them are also noted in the "Validity of race and IQ" section. I'm someone who has consistently scored high on IQ tests, but I've also noted issues/flaws with the testing. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 22:21, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

@HiLo48: I don't think the word 'race' is too problematic in the title, albeit imprecise. Even when you use 'population', 'ethnic group' or some other word in its place, you are still talking about biological human subgroups. Although 'race' is imprecise, and comes with baggage, it alludes to a similar thing. The section about defining race itself could use editing for better explanation about its debated use ('race as subspecies', 'race as population', 'race as social construct'). Human sub-populations can be demarcated, especially in 2020 with modern genomics, and do have numerous important physiological differences on average (for example, group-specific adaptations to pathogens, diet, cold, heat, humidity, aridity, free-diving, UV radiation and high altitude). 'Intelligence' is far more poorly defined, even among individuals, and there's little accepted evidence yet about specific physiological or genetic causes for it in healthy persons. All measurements of it are from imprecise tests, like IQ, and these are highly skewed by so many environmental impacts like culture, location, illness and socioeconomics, to name but a few. 2605:8D80:668:39E9:DB8E:11E8:912F:2CD0 (talk) 07:59, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

"Human sub-populations can be demarcated, especially in 2020 with modern genomics..." They can, but they very rarely are. And IQ tests are also used very infrequently across the whole world. The chances of those who've had their genes tested also being IQ tested, in enough different places to make this testing meaningful, is negligible. HiLo48 (talk) 08:12, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

IQ and race already redirects here. Of course, you could change the word race to something less loaded too. Like Heritability. Heritability of IQ, yes - that would be an article worth writing. Hmm. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 08:09, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Oppose The article presents other methods than just IQ testing that estimate intelligence, including Nobel Prize attainment and educational achievement. Furthermore, it is the overwhelming scientific consensus that IQ tests are reliable and valid measurements of intelligence, so this specification is unwarranted. ^{O̲L̲D̲S̲T̲O̲N̲E̲}_{J̅A̅M̅E̅S̅} 15:59, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Could you point out where "Nobel Prize attainment" is mentioned in the article? –dlthewave ☎ 04:37, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Editing of article to support Delete outcome in current Afd thread

I've restored the section title, because the edit broke a link posted in the AfD page.

Completely off topic; this page is for discussing improvements to the article, not user behavior.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
This article has been the subject of an active AfD deletion proposal as of 3 Feb 2020. That discussion is ongoing and has not reached consensus, and there is very much the possibility that the article will be kept (e.g., previous attempts at deletion failed, votes for Keep outnumber those for Delete, and the argued reasons for deletion keep mutating as earlier versions are met with rebuttals). Two of the editors lobbying for deletion in that AfD discussion, Dlthewave and Onetwothreeip, have in the past few days begun a campaign of numerous edits, deleting massive amounts of material, apparently in order to fit the AfD arguments for deletion. (Some of the editors arguing in the opposite direction, to Keep, have also edited, but only to revert some of the large deletions, and the result of the edit-warring is still that massive deletions have been made). For instance, the main argument in the AfD is that the material in this article is subsumed in History of the race and intelligence controversy. This is arguably false; there is a clean split of the two articles, with Race and intelligence containing various data and arguments about the race differences in IQ, and the History article containing very little or none of that data and merely talking about the political controversy surrounding various publications and professors connected to the subject. However, after the recent destructive edits, there is now considerably less differentiation between the two articles. Likewise, one of the arguments for Keep was that a lot of material has been accumulated here in the 16 years the article has existed, but if there are wholesale deletions then of course that is less true. Several of these destructive edits have been made in bad faith by Dlthewave under the pretext of applying WP:MEDREV, a stricter standard that applies to medical articles to avoid issues of "bad medical advice", a standard he has demanded be imposed on the Race & Intelligence article so as to better censor it. R&I is obviously a non-medical topic, and the MEDREV standard does not apply, as people have pointed out to Dlthewave. This did not deter the edits. Clearly editors currently lobbying to delete an article have a conflict of interest WP:CoI and should not be editing the article while the AfD conversation is ongoing, let alone manipulating the article as a WP:TAGTEAM so as to make the article appear more deletion-worthy. More generally anyone active in the AfD discussion should temporarily avoid significant edits on the article. I do not know what sanctions or remedies are available for such behavior, but at a minimum any contributor to the AfD discussion should stop editing the article while the AfD is live. As there have been only minor edits other than the tag-team destruction, I propose to return the article to the version of 3 Feb 2020 at the moment of its AfD nomination and lock it in some fashion until AfD discussion is over: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Race_and_intelligence&oldid=938929865 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Race_and_intelligence&action=history 73.149.246.232 (talk) 07:05, 9 February 2020 (UTC) There is very much the possibility that the article will be kept. Unlikely, as many of the !votes to keep are a result of off-wiki canvassing. Dlthewave and Onetwothreeip, have in the past few days begun a campaign of numerous edits, deleting massive amounts of material, apparently in order to fit the AfD arguments for deletion. This theory is absurd. None of my edits make the article more likely to be deleted or for more editors to agree the article should be deleted. There is virtually no precedent for an article being deleted as a result of edits made during a deletion discussion. The article was proposed to be deleted by someone else entirely, not Dlthewave or myself. For instance, the main argument in the AfD is that the material in this article is subsumed in History of the race and intelligence controversy. That is not an argument to delete the article. The argument is that the content in that particular article (and other articles) is better than this article at doing what this article is supposed to be for. Editors currently lobbying to delete an article have a COI. You have not demonstrated what the conflict of interest concerns, but it seems you are using this term incorrectly. Let alone manipulating the article as a WP:TAGTEAM. I have never heard of Dlthewave until today. Any contributor to the AfD discussion should stop editing the article while the AfD is live. Editors are allowed to improve articles that are the subject of deletion discussions, and this is actually encouraged. Onetwothreeip (talk) 07:24, 9 February 2020 (UTC) When the votes did not go in favor of deletion, we got walls of text from the Delete proposer explaining that it's not actually a matter of votes, just the arguments. Now you want to count the votes after deleting the ones for Keep and any arguments made along with those votes, on the grounds they are "canvassed" (maybe Russia did it?). As others have just pointed out to you, your (and DltW) flurry of edits happen to erase the distinction between this article and the one you say subsumes it, and a lack of distinction is exactly the main reason currently given for deletion. Your edits removed the stuff that this article was doing better than the other one (since the other did not have it at all), thus supporting deletion. It is a COI (though not the more common kind such as a financial interest) to lobby for deletion while making the article better fit the proposed reasons for deletion. And whether or not you consider it COI it is a manipulation of the AfD decision process insofar as some people coming to look at the articles will see only the modified version. You don't need to have heard of anyone to effectively function as a tag team. The Keep and Delete sides of the AfD discussion are two sides of a tug of war on the AfD page, which is fine, but an edit war by the same people on the article during the AfD is neither "improving the article" nor OK as a procedure. Imposing your POV when that is the very topic of the AfD is not "improving" anything. If you want to fix spelling and grammar errors or the like, sure, go ahead. Not delete entire sections just based on IDONTLIKEIT that happens to coordinate with the deletion debate.73.149.246.232 (talk) 08:10, 9 February 2020 (UTC) The delete proposer you are referring to would be correct to say that. I am not an administrator and will not be counting votes. Whatever you are referring to as "the distinction" between this article and any other article, that has plainly not been erased. The removed content was not doing anything better than any other article. What you are describing is not a conflict of interest or a manipulation of any process. I have not made any POV edits or anything "to coordinate with the deletion debate". Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:19, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm happy to have the conversation moved into a hidden-archive, if anything it improves the appearance of the talk page. But I do dispute the description of the material as not about the article --- it described vandalism of the article, proposed reverting to earlier versions, and two other editors apparently agreed with this, leading to the current state of the article, reversing the destructive edits. The reversion is an "improvement of the article" which is what the talk page is for. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 10:27, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

I have to disagree on multiple counts. First the edits weren't "vandalism" that term is narrowly defined to include only edits intended to defeat Wikipedia's purpose, which those were not. You may dislike them but that does not make them vandalism. Second, the hatted content was clearly a violation of WP:FOC, there's sometimes a a bit of room given on talk pages in borderline cases, but the above was clearly beyond that, and should've been moved to either user talk pages or an appropriate location to discuss user conduct. Discussing which version of the article is appropriate is fine, but the hatted content went well beyond that. 74.73.230.72 (talk) 13:09, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Section headings must be neutral, so I've changed it per WP:TALKNEW. Doug Weller talk 13:46, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

RfC about lede of Race and intelligence

Should IQ be labeled "intelligence test scores" in wikivoice, and should the view that it is "at least plausible that hard evidence for a genetic component [in racial differences in test scores] will eventually be found" be included in the lede? NightHeron (talk) 01:45, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

That's two questions, so not sure and yes Peregrine Fisher (talk) 01:56, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

I'll say no and no if you guys are willing to keep the old version and move forwards based on discussion here. Otherwise yes and yes until we really start editing based on the discussion here. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 03:16, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Was this supposed to be a joke? RFCs are intended to gain consensus among the larger community based on specific issues. This is not a vote. Grayfell (talk) 04:37, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

The first paragraph of the lede is the most important part of the article, so it's especially important to avoid bias there. For that purpose I made three changes that you reverted without responding to any of the reasons I gave. Those reasons were: (1) I deleted the word "intelligence" before "test scores," since there is sharp debate about whether or not the test scores measure intelligence (as acknowledged later in the lede) and so they should not be called "intelligence test scores" in wikivoice; (2) I deleted the word "non-circumstantial" before "evidence" since it's unclear what circumstantial evidence as opposed to non-circumstantial evidence means; (3) I deleted the last part of the sentence concerning speculation about the possibility that evidence might some day be found, per WP:CRYSTAL (see: Although currently accepted scientific paradigms may later be rejected, and hypotheses previously held to be controversial or incorrect sometimes become accepted by the scientific community, it is not the place of Wikipedia to venture such projections.) NightHeron (talk) 02:08, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

I think this RFC was started in the wrong category. Most of the sources discussing race and intelligence are publications in the fields of psychology, anthropology and genetics, so of the categories listed at Wikipedia:Requests for comment, the correct one would be "Maths, science, and technology". 2600:1004:B16D:D752:2520:4B9D:9617:9E7E (talk) 03:23, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

• Should IQ be labeled "intelligence test scores" in wikivoice I suggest "IQ test results", should the view that it is 'at least plausible ... Not in the lead, since it is contentious and does not represent the scientific consensus (speculation about genetics here is a separate topic to general IQ statistics IRT demographics). —PaleoNeonate – 15:08, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

"IQ test results" is just about fine, although I personally don't see any problems with the current version, which conveys more information. There are many tests which approximate intelligence, which are not limited to IQ testing. For example, SATs have been shown to have some correlation with common measures of intelligence. So the current version is certainly better, but I would also be fine with your proposed version.

As to the removal of the last sentence, I don't it's warranted, given that 1) the position that genetics might have some influence is mainstream, and that 2) the position that genetics likely plays a role in explaining the differences, while not mainstream, is notable enough to be mentioned in the lede. ^{O̲L̲D̲S̲T̲O̲N̲E̲}_{J̅A̅M̅E̅S̅} 17:03, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

• should the view that it is "at least plausible that hard evidence for a genetic component [in racial differences in test scores] will eventually be found" be included in the lede? No, it isn't a good summary of the "Research into the possible genetic influences on test score differences" section (which is where the statement occurs in the article). In the article the speculation appears to be based only on Hunt (2010), so I don't think it's WP:DUE to call out that one "maybe someday" line in the lead. Schazjmd (talk) 17:57, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Should IQ be labeled "intelligence test scores" in wikivoice, it is fine to do this. While a few fringe researchers (e.g. Ken Richardson) do not think IQ tests measure intelligence, the overwhelming majority of the field think they do. should the view that it is 'at least plausible ... Since many experts believe genetics explain some part of the various group gaps known, this formulation is fine with me. The evidence for these claims can be found in the various surveys and mainstream books already cited on this talk page. There's only three surveys of IQ researchers, and a few similar ones of other more distant experts. AndewNguyen (talk) 11:32, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

• For the first, do not use IQ test results as a proxy for "Intelligence" without sourced context. This would be sloppy and severely over-simplifies a contentious point. Applying racialist categories and then attempting to accurately test these categories in a controlled way is a niche activity with a huge number of pitfalls, to say the least. Therefore, "the field" is not a neutral representation of the scientific mainstream. There is a walled-garden of academics, only some of whom have relevant qualifications. These are the people who study race and intelligence the most. This should not be mistaken for the mainstream, so WP:FRINGE applies here.

For the second no. Vague, loaded speculation doesn't belong in the lede. This doesn't reconcile with the academic consensus on "race", nor on "intelligence". It is pretty easy to find academics who support this perspective. It is also easy to find academics who reject this perspective. It's even easier to find those who dismiss the underlying assumptions, of which there are far, far too many. Grayfell (talk) 22:53, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

The reliable sources do not call IQ test scores as "intelligence test scores", they call them IQ test scores. As for the potentially WP:CRYSTALBALL of saying there may in the future be evidence of a racial hierarchy, we could only possibly agree to that if we see an exact proposal in context, but likely not, and certainly not without knowing why or how, as in this proposal. Onetwothreeip (talk) 23:08, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

No to both. they are called "IQ test scores." And per WP:CRYSTAL, we shouldn't speculate on what might happen in the future. Adoring nanny (talk) 13:40, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

No and No - As others have pointed out, they're called IQ tests, not intelligence tests. Speculation is also inappropriate, especially in the lede. I'm also concerned about the frequent use of "debate" which seems to be a weasel word used to imply serious academic disagreement on the topic. –dlthewave ☎ 02:45, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Yes and I'm not sure. I'll explain my reasoning:

IQ tests are the most widely-used type of intelligence tests, but they aren't the only type of intelligence test in existence, or the only type discussed in this article. The article's current wording is kind of unclear about this, but when the sources that it cites discuss group differences in average test scores, they are also discussing the Armed Forces Qualification Test and the Woodcock–Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities in addition to IQ. (See page 412 in Earl Hunt's textbook.) The Armed Forces Qualification Test is a type of intelligence test, but it isn't an IQ test. Thus, it would be misrepresenting the sources cited in the article for the lead to state that the research it's discussing is about IQ exclusively. "Intelligence test" is a broader term that encompasses both IQ tests and the other types of test.

The last sentence of the first paragraph reflects what a lot of secondary sources currently say, but it may not be accurate for much longer. Russell Warne's upcoming book, which is scheduled to be published this fall, will present the case that the Lasker et al. study constitutes hard evidence for a genetic component to racial IQ gaps, because this study found that when racial identity is controlled for, both IQ and polygenic scores correlate with biogeographic ancestry as measured with genetic tests. (In other words, this study controlled for the social aspect of race, and found that when the biological component of race is isolated, it still correlates with two measurements of intelligence.) If we go with the advice of WP:CRYSTAL and base the lead on what secondary sources currently say, the last sentence of the first paragraph is accurate. But on the other hand, considering how difficult it is to get a consensus to update anything in this article, maybe it's better to remove that sentence now while we have the opportunity, so that we don't have to have this discussion again later in the year. 2600:1004:B168:DFFA:5CEA:D916:2237:DCFC (talk) 09:35, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

It seems unclear that Russel Warne is notable enough as a researcher to justify using the aforementioned work of his (when it is published) as an authority on this subject). Searching for him seems to turns up little except for his personal blog (and the second link below). Warne's work does not seem to be much mentioned/discussed in other mainstream research on the topic. Russel Warne appears to have a pre-existing history of arguing on the hereditarian side of the debate. See:

https://russellwarne.com/2020/01/22/35-mitos-sobre-la-inteligenica-humana/

https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/2026630501_Russell_T_Warne

Also, the Lasker et al. study mentioned (porporting to find evidence of a genetic basis for racial IQ gaps), which Warne may mention, is apparently by several authors (such as Bryan J. Pesta, John Fuersr, and Emil O. Kierkegaard) affiliated with Openpsych, a journal/outlet that has been described as considered fringe or "academically dodgy" for several reasons, and which may have also published the study. See:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPsych

and:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPsych

Skllagyook (talk) 15:46, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

As was previously determined here, the thing that matters when evaluating a source is the quality of the publisher, not the identity of the author. (And especially not the identities of other authors that the source in question is citing.) Warne's book was accepted for publication by Cambridge University Press, so when it's published it will be a high-quality source that the article should cite. And the sentence saying it is "at least plausible that hard evidence for a genetic component will eventually be found" probably will need to be removed in light of that source, if we don't remove it pre-emptively. 2600:1004:B122:FC8D:9C32:5F11:7F5E:8FD6 (talk) 18:59, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reliable sources#Definition of a source. We must take the reliability of the author into account, mot only the publisher. Onetwothreeip (talk) 20:01, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Being published in a reliable source does not necessarily merit coverage on Wikipedia, though; the viewpoint would also have to meet our due weight policy. "Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation in reliable sources on the subject." Can you demonstrate that our current coverage of the hereditarian viewpoint in the body and lead complies with this requirement? –dlthewave ☎ 20:02, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

I think the central problem with the article is that it's out of date, so that it gives undue weight to older sources relative to newer ones on both the hereditarian and environmental side. I don't perceive this problem as giving undue weight to any particular theory, but it may have that effect in individual sections of the article, due to the state of research having shifted from what it was whenever those sections were written. The ways that the article is out of date are so pervasive that they tend to obscure whatever other problems may also exist. If the article could be updated to reflect the current state of research, that will make it much easier to evaluate whether or not there's an overall NPOV problem with the entire article. 2600:1004:B11E:E654:D915:3A5E:B89D:2D0F (talk) 02:42, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

• No and no. Per Adoring nanny, IQ tests are called IQ tests and a general article like this should not speculate about possible future findings. Wikipedia articles follow secondary sources and do not reflect what bleeding-edge research shows or might soon show. Johnuniq (talk) 06:32, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
• No and No There's no consensus on what, if anything in particular, IQ tests are actually measuring, the second proposal is too speculative for inclusion. 74.73.230.72 (talk) 15:30, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Deletion review

I have initiated a deletion review of the recent AfD of this article. Please see: Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2020 February 12#Race and intelligence. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 04:14, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

"Too long" tag

Regarding the "too long" tag that was recently added, make sure that what is being considered is readable prose size. This is per WP:SIZE. I don't see that any more content needs to be split into separate articles. There is enough debate about this article. So to create another spin-off article? No. There are enough spin-off articles and the article already employs WP:Summary style. If more trimming is needed, then do that. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 02:18, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't think the current version is too long. But if needed, one can trim some sections and link to existing pages, or move sections to their own pages. --AndewNguyen (talk) 13:50, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

I dont think its necessarily too long, but it needs a massive series of edits to conform with WP:MOS (citations for example). Lets start with the really big problems and then we can work on the small ones like it being too long, I’d start with WP:NOTJOURNAL as edits to conform with that would cut down the length and make the page readable as an encyclopedia entry which it currently isn’t. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 19:28, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

The entire article might be deleted within the next week, so at this stage there's a risk that any effort we put into improving it could turn out to be for nothing. You can try to improve the article in the present if you want to, but I think it would be more prudent to work on that after the deletion discussion has been resolved, if the article still exists then. 2600:1004:B12A:FAE4:2DE5:34FC:A221:A38B (talk) 02:41, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

The causes of differences in IQ test scores are still not well-understood

Current version: With regard to later research, observed phenomena such as the Flynn effect have also suggested that environmental factors play a greater role in group IQ differences than previously expected.

The causes of differences in IQ test scores are not well-understood, and the topic remains controversial among researchers.

My proposal: With regard to later research More recently, observed phenomena such as the Flynn effect have also suggested that environmental factors play a greater role in group IQ differences than previously expected.

The causes of differences in IQ test scores are still not well-understood, and the topic remains controversial among researchers.

Rationale: The last two paragraphs are meant to be a summary of the historical evolution of the topic of race and intelligence; the penultimate paragraph is meant to summarise the historical views on the matter, while the last paragraph is meant to outline the scholarly community's current position. In the current version, without an indicator of currency such as "still" or "currently", these roles of the two paragraphs aren't clear, and the structure hence seems arbitrary; the last paragraph looks out of place due to being disconnected from the previous paragraph. User Grayfell has argued that the introduction of such an indicator somehow makes the sentence "the causes of differences in IQ test scores are not well-understood" imply that the exact causes will eventually be found (which, to me, is a fair assumption, as I highly doubt that with testing technology as advanced as it will be in, say, a 1000 years, we will be unable to answer such relatively simple questions as the causes of differences in IQ scores, but that's beside the point); to be honest, I am a bit confused as to their line of thought, but it can be easily rebutted by taking a look at other articles with similar phrasings, e.g. in Dialysis disequilibrium syndrome#Causes.

Similarly, due to the second paragraph being a summary of important historical studies into the matter, without a clear indicator of time such as "more recently", the sentence on phenomena such as the Flynn effect looks out of place. If the word "recently" poses such a big problem for user Flyer22 Frozen, perhaps we could rephrase the sentence into Phenomena revealed by later research such as the Flynn effect....

What do the two users involved, both of whom have asked me not to ping them, as well as other editors think? ^{O̲L̲D̲S̲T̲O̲N̲E̲}_{J̅A̅M̅E̅S̅} 02:47, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure you've already been asked to be more succinct. That was good advice, and you should take it.

Your description of your own assumption as "fair" is both loaded and irrelevant. Clearly your opinion of the purpose of these summaries is contested by multiple editors, so you cannot dictate the content by assuming a specific purpose.

Per many sources, and many, many past discussions, the underlying premise of this difference is hotly disputed. We cannot assume that a contested premise will eventually be resolved in time, whether one year or a thousand. No question can be presumed to have an answer, especially not one as nuanced and contentious as this one. If you do not understand my line of thought it is comical and insulting to assert that it can be "easily rebutted".

Comparing something which is as hotly disputed as this topic to a specific medical issue is pseudoscientific. Not everything needs to be exactly the same as everything else, because context is important. Grayfell (talk) 03:35, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't really see the need in your aggressive approach, but you do you, I guess. A bit more frustrating is that I have specifically bracketed a particular sentence out, made it small, and categorised it as "beside the point", all to make absolutely sure that it isn't read as a point that shouldn't be addressed, and yet you manage to do exactly that, and only that. As with my previous interactions with you, I have to doubt whether you are being genuine here, or whether you've just scribbled something up so that you can put this diff on WP:AN as supposed evidence that you've tried to discuss the issue on the talk page.

Anyway, I'll assume good faith and continue the discussion. I'll just address your point that "we cannot assume that a contested premise will eventually be resolved in time", because it is the point to address, irrelevant though it is: the premise that there are differences in IQ scores according to some studies is not contested; even if those studies have been conducted based on poor methodology, their results still show IQ differences. So far, it has not yet been determined what exactly causes these differences, as per APA. So there is no false premise that there are differences, if that's what you're saying.

And, finally, a more important point which you haven't addressed: consider the sentence "nuclear fusion has been touted to have become commonplace by the 70s, 80s, and 90s; needless to say, in 2020, it still isn't commonplace" and tell me whether you think there is an implication that nuclear fusion will eventually become commonplace here. ^{O̲L̲D̲S̲T̲O̲N̲E̲}_{J̅A̅M̅E̅S̅} 15:51, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

The use of the Flynn effect to question causes of group gaps is not a new idea ("With regard to later research"). It goes all the way back to Flynn's original contributions in the 1980s. Flynn was trying to reply to Jensen's arguments about the causes of the gap, and in doing so discovered the Flynn effect:

Mill closes by claiming that those who favor sanctions have presumptions to infallibility or absolute certainty. They are so sure of their position they are willing to use power to ensure that no case for another opinion is ever to be heard throughout the entire course of human history. This kind of ban is far more serious than it might seem. To kill an idea is to forfeit all rewards that may flow from reaction to that idea. If I had not read about Arthur Jensen and his research, with its emphasis on IQ and the general intelligence factor, I would never have documented massive IQ grain over time, or urged a revolution in the theory of intelligence, or connected cognitive gains and moral gains, or cooperated with Bill Dickens to formulate the Dickens/Flynn model, which unifies phenomena from the dynamics of cognitive development to the results of interventions. There are actually people who are still alive“because”of Jensen: those on death row who were proved to be mentally retarded thanks to application of the Flynn effect to their IQ test scores. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AndewNguyen (talk • contribs) 16:47, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

Wholesale revert

A recent edit by Peregrine Fisher undid a number of changes that are currently being discussed, as well as changes that haven't actually been challenged. Peregrine, your participation in the current discussion has been minimal; you've simply restored contested content with accusations of trying to destroy the article and returned it to your preferred "stable version". Please join us in the discussion. A couple of specific things:

- Why was "Citation needed" tag removed from the unsourced statement ". . . finding patterns of difference between continental populations similar to those associated with race"?

- Why was "white people/black people" changed to "whites/blacks"?

- Why was the disputed Jensen/Rushton source reinstated without discussion?

I understand that you disagree with some of the recent removals, however mass reversions must be done with care to avoid "collateral damage" like this. It is often better to make piecemeal changes to specific edits instead of mass-reverting to your preferred version. –dlthewave ☎ 16:35, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

I concur in disagreeing with that undoing, and I am disheartened to see that there hasn't been any justification. Onetwothreeip (talk) 21:32, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

1RR now in effect

Please be mindful, everyone. Thanks. El_C 00:57, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Edit-warring... again

Great. Now we have two editors edit-warring a version that they in all likelihood haven't even read into the article without having any consensus for it - nay, without even attempting to discuss the changes that they are proposing on the talk page. For everyone's reference, this version contains both factual and grammatical mistakes, such as a statement which, due to poor punctuation, can be interpreted as implying that Jensen supports an environmental-only interpretation of IQ differences, and missing closing commas which make sentences hard to read.

@Horse Eye Jack: Please bother to at least take a look at what it is that you're reverting, and ideally don't add in or remove information without any consensus. 123, your reversion seems to have been accidental, so I won't go after you here. ^{O̲L̲D̲S̲T̲O̲N̲E̲}_{J̅A̅M̅E̅S̅} 00:34, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

I made a single revert, please retract your claim of edit warring. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 00:49, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

No. Edit-warring can consist of only one edit, as was the case with your reinstatement of an edit which had previously been reverted. ^{O̲L̲D̲S̲T̲O̲N̲E̲}_{J̅A̅M̅E̅S̅} 01:50, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

@Oldstone James: Enjoy your block, hopefully you learn something from it... Like what edit warring is. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 21:06, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Do we like these new changes?

I think we should undo them and discuss. Personally, I do not think they are an improvement. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Race_and_intelligence&diff=939824890&oldid=939822978 Peregrine Fisher (talk) 23:45, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Why? –dlthewave ☎ 23:47, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Onetwothreeip (talk) 23:58, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

We just had a discussion last month about how it's disruptive to try to make large changes to this article by edit warring. Being bold is acceptable, but after Dlthewave's changes were undone they shouldn't have been restored multiple times. The earlier discussion was specifically about Onetwothreeip trying to do the same thing in an earlier sequence of edits (and he has also been criticized for doing the same thing on other articles), so he has no excuse for repeating the same behavior again.

Since you asked what's wrong with these changes, though, I'll provide one example. This edit removed the statement that the publication of The Bell Curve revived the public debate over race and intelligence, and changed the section title from "The Bell Curve debate" to "Mainstream Science on Intelligence". While it would be better to cite a secondary source instead of citing The Bell Curve itself, it's completely uncontroversial that this book's publication revived the race and intelligence debate in the 1990s, and this is also mentioned in the History of the race and intelligence controversy article. Thus, there's no reason to remove that statement. The new title of that section also is misleading, because Mainstream Science on Intelligence was only one of several responses to the controversy over The Bell Curve, and not even the most prominent response. (That distinction belongs to Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns.)

That's one example of why these changes are not an improvement. However, I can't explain the problem with every change, because these recent edits removed over a dozen citations all at once. As previously happened in December, this involved removing a large amount of material that had been in the article for years. It isn't reasonable to make that many changes to long-established content at once, and then demand a consensus opposing each individual change before it can be undone. 2600:1004:B11A:7B56:3CC6:3B68:B761:EAB6 (talk) 01:47, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

IDON'TLIKEIT is when you don't have policies, guidelines, globabl consensus, and local consensus on your side. I have all those things backing my edits. You have none of them. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 01:55, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

2600, we do actually need a source stating that The Bell Curve sparked a debate. The mainstream view, as shown by Mainstream Science on Intelligence, is that someone published a fringe view and multiple academics reiterated the mainstream position; there is no sign of an academic debate or disagreement among mainstream authors.

When we cover multiple points of view, we use secondary sources or reviews that discuss these views from a mainstream perspective. Per WP:MEDREV, if all we have is "X said A, Y said B" (sourced to X and Y), we shouldn't include the content at all. Feel free to add secondary sources to support these sections, but remember that there's no deadline and others are under no obligation to slow their pace just to make things easier for you. –dlthewave ☎ 02:12, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

2600, none of what you are saying justifies the previous versions that you prefer. What was removed was far more than simply saying The Bell Curve "revived the public debate". Obviously that book is not a reliable source for describing the book's impact. There has not been consensus to retain the content I have removed.

@Dlthewave: Mainstream Science on Intelligence was very much not mainstream science. Onetwothreeip (talk) 02:22, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Oof, that was quite the oversight on my part! (Which seems to be the intent of the title) –dlthewave ☎ 02:45, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

The mainstream reaction to Mainstream Science on Intelligence, and the reaction to The Bell Curve and other Pioneer Fund-related claims, happens to be opposed to those conclusions. Onetwothreeip (talk) 02:53, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Dlthewave, I think you've unintentionally proven my point with your misunderstanding about the nature of the "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" statement. It was an editorial signed by 52 researchers in intelligence and related fields, defending most (but not all) of the conclusions of The Bell Curve, and arguing that these conclusions were entirely mainstream within psychology. The subsequent report from the American Psychological Association bears this out: on most scientific questions the APA report reached the same conclusions that "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" did, although it had a different emphasis.

The signatories of "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" included Thomas J. Bouchard, John B. Carroll, Hans Eysenck, Richard Haier, Alan S. Kaufman, John C. Loehlin, David Lubinski, Robert Perloff, Robert Plomin, and Sandra Scarr. All of these were or are among the most prominent researchers in their fields, and Bouchard, Loehlin, and Perloff were among the task force chosen by the American Psychological Association to author the APA's statement in response to the controversy. This certainly qualifies as "academic debate or disagreement among mainstream authors".

The source that History of the race and intelligence controversy cites for The Bell Curve having revived the race and intelligence debate page 440-441 in David Hothersall's book History of Psychology. I don't own a copy of that book, but I can see from the snippet view at Google books that these pages of the book do indeed discuss The Bell Curve and the various responses to it. This is beside the point, though. I brought up this particular edit because you and Onetwothreeip complained that others weren't being specific about their objections, but it isn't possible to have this sort of detailed discussion about every one of your changes when you make changes faster than they can be discussed. This is why you need to justify your changes one at a time, instead of making dozens at once and then trying to shift the burden of discussion to other editors.

Also, now that the article is semi-protected again, it isn't possible for me to edit it directly. 2600:1004:B11A:7B56:3CC6:3B68:B761:EAB6 (talk) 03:13, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

...And while I was typing that comment, you just made several dozen more undiscussed removals. Are you unable to see what's wrong with this approach to editing? You evidently won't allow your changes to be undone unless other editors can point out what's wrong with each one of them, but I think you know very well that this is an impossible demand. 2600:1004:B11A:7B56:3CC6:3B68:B761:EAB6 (talk) 03:22, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

All of these were or are among the most prominent researchers in their fields. Certainly not, unless you're arguing that things like gay conversion therapy are mainstream. This list is not representative of anything mainstream or prominent, and includes researchers linked to Pioneer Fund and other notorious groups. Onetwothreeip (talk) 03:25, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Hans Eysenck is listed by Haggbloom et al. as the third most eminent psychologist of the twentieth century. Raymond Cattell, who also signed the statement, is seventh. Please, stop wasting everyone's else's time with this kind of ignorance.2600:1004:B11A:7B56:3CC6:3B68:B761:EAB6 (talk) 03:40, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Hans Eysenck was supported by Pioneer Fund and his connections to far-right politics are well documented, including on Wikipedia. Likewise, Raymond Cattell was a supporter of eugenics. Quoting somebody called "Haggbloom" to plead eminence is not going to get you anywhere. Onetwothreeip (talk) 04:01, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

The political orientation of a scientist has nothing to do with the quality of their science. Stop this nonsense. The POV bias in your statements is a blatant violation of Wikipedia's core principles. --Toomim (talk) 07:47, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

• The subject of this page does not belong to Medicine because Race (human classification) does not belong to medicine. WP:MEDRS is irrelevant here. Using publications by experts in WSJ (an RS) is OK. This (edit summary) is not a valid justification. Perhaps undue? But I do not see why. My very best wishes (talk) 02:20, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Per WP:RSEDITORIAL, editorials are "reliable primary sources for statements attributed to that editor or author". This is the same primary source issue that affects many other passages which were removed, i.e. we can't use the source itself as evidence of its own significance or reliability. This holds true in non-medical topics as well. –dlthewave ☎ 02:50, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Like I just stated here at WP:Med, "In addition to what RexxS stated, human intelligence does fall under the topic of neuroscience, which is why the talk page for the Human intelligence article is tagged with WP:WikiProject Neuroscience. WikiProject Neuroscience is one of WP:Med's related projects, and we (those who are familiar with WP:MEDRS and adhere to it) do use use WP:MEDRS-compliant sources for neuroscience topics." Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 00:06, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Treating IQ tests as MEDRS verges on gaslighting. "Intelligence" in this article means psychometric tests such as IQ. There are medical applications of such tests, such as in diagnosing brain injuries, but none of that has anything to do with the material in the article. The WP:MEDRS restrictions on sources are to prevent indirectly giving bad medical advice or endorsing non-mainstream views on clinical medicine. There is no such medical hazard in an article predominantly about IQ tests and there has been a user abusing MEDRS as a pretext to vandalize the article, possibly to align with the AfD proposal. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 06:39, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

• Of course it's an improvement.

Almost every time this article gets any attention from the larger Wikipedia community, (of from outside Wikipedia for that matter) it becomes clear that the article is a hot mess which needs serious attention. So why are a handful of editors' fighting tooth-and-nail to preserve it the way it is? If every single improvement is going to be filibustered, the article will remain an embarrassment and blight on Wikipedia's coverage of social sciences.

"Mainstream" was intensely controversial when it was released, over twenty-five years ago. More of the people Gottfredson asked to sign it declined or outright refused than signed, for many valid reasons. Eysenck was cited so often because he was so controversial. People cited him specifically to challenge his work, or to discuss other people who challenged his work, etc. Being well-cited isn't a "high score" in the game of reliability, good lord... This letter was not the mainstream, even based on this flawed metric. That letter is a historical relic which could not be said to be a fair summary of the topic at the time, and is especially obsolete now. But of course, that's precisely the point, isn't it? By dragging this out and making it about some specific bit of minutia, the flawed, functionally racist status quo is preserved. Any attempt at doing the actual work needed to improve the article can be reverted based on a legalistic interpretation of WP:BRD or similar. By shouting the loudest, the WP:FRINGE dominate the discussion and drive-away anyone who would otherwise bother to tackle this rat's nest. Grayfell (talk) 03:47, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Among psychologists, the largest reason Eysenck is eminent is because of his highly influential criticism of the efficacy of psychoanalysis. (See this article: [4]) If you call that being controversial, well, I suppose it's controversial among people who think that psychoanalysis works, but with respect to psychoanalysis Eysenck's position in the mainstream one.

It is incredibly ironic that you would object to us wanting these huge changes to not be made without consensus. Are you aware of how ironic that is? You and I have interacted before, so I'm familiar with your favorite revert reasons. Here are a few examples from your recent edit history:

• [5] "No. The burden is on you, here. Gain consensus on talk, if absolutely necessary. See WP:BRD"

• [6] "WP:BRD. Again, the burden is on you to gain consensus for these changes. Do not restore until you have consensus"

• [7] "Revert. Lacks consensus"

• [8] "No consensus."

• [9] "That's not how consensus works, you need to establish consensus to change the article. See WP:BRD."

In terms of content, there actually are a few of the recent changes that I don't disapprove of, but I do disapprove of them being made in a way so that it's virtually impossible to discuss them. Considering how often you give this as a revert reason, Grayfell, you could say that we've taken a page out of your book. Except that in your case, this is only a valid revert reason when undoing changes that you disagree with, right? 2600:1004:B11A:7B56:3CC6:3B68:B761:EAB6 (talk) 05:28, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

• This issue has been brought up at ANI, discussion can be found here. –dlthewave ☎ 03:53, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

• Here is edit in question. No, I do not think this large-scale deletion was an improvement because the content is clearly relevant for the page and seem to be well sourced. I am not convinced by the arguments above. For example, a letter by a group of scientists published in WSJ would be clearly an appropriate source here. Many other removals were simply not explained on the talk page. The diffs above are about other pages. My very best wishes (talk) 20:22, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

This is wrong, as it was not well sourced. Few of these sources are properly summarized, and we do not assume that just because a cite template can be slapped on the end of a sentence it must be preserved. As an example from your diff, the first removed paragraph says nothing at all about the topic. The sentence The article was followed by a series of responses, some in support, some critical is so vague as to be almost meaningless. The paragraph merely documents the existence of other sources, which were somehow connected to a specific book published a two decades earlier. One of those sources is a primary "response" published via Bentham Open, which is about as fringey as it gets. We are not summarizing these sources, and we are not providing any context for these sources, therefore it doesn't belong in this article. We cannot merely list the existence of sources and assume that's good enough. This would be lazy encyclopedia writing. Grayfell (talk) 00:25, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

That was a lot of removals. OK, let' take a look at the last one [10]. Why do you think that was poorly sourced, improperly summarized or undue on the page? My very best wishes (talk) 02:38, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

See my previous comment about why "X said A, Y said B" statements are not appropriate when sourced only to X and Y. Instead of synthesizing multiple primary sources to build a narrative, these passages need to be based on secondary reviews that discuss the context and relevance of both X and Y. This complies with our WP:RS policy of using reliable secondary sources. –dlthewave ☎ 02:45, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Yeh, after looking more carefully at the last removal, it seems to it be justified, even though the content was well sourced. However, it would take a lot more time to actually study these sources and to make a really qualified judgement; I do not have it, sorry. Given that, I would rather not comment on this subject any longer. My very best wishes (talk) 03:04, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

In that last diff, I don't object to the removals of the first two paragraphs, but I do object to the blanking of the "mental chronometry" section. The section is somewhat poorly written, but mental chronometry is a major topic in research about race and intelligence, and is discussed by most sources that give overviews of this subject. If this article were to exclude any discussion of mental chronometry, that would be a problematic omission. We should work to improve that section, not get rid of it entirely. 2600:1004:B161:2F08:B96A:F343:A976:AD16 (talk) 04:15, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Is this a good source?

May already be in there. https://www.pnas.org/content/111/42/15273 Peregrine Fisher (talk) 03:51, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

This is fine, but does not relate to race and intelligence, only to heritability itself. For such claims, there are plenty of secondary sources to use. AndewNguyen (talk) 13:25, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Spearman's Hypothesis section

Oldstone James has reinstated challenged content [11], so let's discuss it. I'll concede that there's some disagreement on the question of MEDRS. At Wikiproject Medicine, editors made compelling arguments that this falls under the biomedical topic of neuroscience, so I felt comfortable citing the guideline in this case. The portion of MEDRS I cited states "Controversies or uncertainties in medicine should be supported by reliable secondary sources describing the varying viewpoints. Primary sources should not be aggregated or presented without context in order to undermine proportionate representation of opinion in a field. If material can be supported by either primary or secondary sources – the secondary sources should be used. Primary sources may be presented together with secondary sources. Although this is specific to medical topics, it also mirrors WP:SCHOLARSHIP which is part of our Reliable Sources guideline which applies to all content. In general we should not be presenting primary-source arguments side-by-side; we should be relying on secondary sources that analyze the disagreement. A section that consists entirely of contradicting primary-source statements does not belong in the article. –dlthewave ☎ 15:06, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Note how even WP:MERDS states that primary sources shouldn't be aggregated "context in order to undermine proportionate representation of opinion in a field". The current section doesn't do that; instead, it describes the views of proponents followed by the opponents' challenges of these views. No statement is made about the general validity of this hypothesis, and the sources aren't skewed towards either view, so I don't think WP:MERDS applies here. Besides, there is an independent article dedicated to Spearman's hypothesis, so it is worth at least mentioning it in the article under a dedicated subsection. If you aren't satisfied with the way that it is presented in the article, you are free to propose an alternative version, but I honestly don't see any problem with it. ^{O̲L̲D̲S̲T̲O̲N̲E̲}_{J̅A̅M̅E̅S̅} 15:20, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Giving bias to one viewpoint or another isn't limited to making explicit statements about their validity; simply giving equal article space to two opposing views can give undue weight to the minority view. Presenting these views without analysis or context is exactly the problem that I'm talking about. We need to be using secondary sources to assess these viewpoints. Relying on primary sources to this extent, even if they are reliable, is counter to Wikipedia policies. Surely you can see the sourcing problem here? –dlthewave ☎ 16:45, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Well, in that case, we should look for secondary sources instead of deleting the entire section. To me, the section doesn't read as if the hypothesis is likely to be correct, but you're free to make appropriate changes. ^{O̲L̲D̲S̲T̲O̲N̲E̲}_{J̅A̅M̅E̅S̅} 18:30, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Looks like it's mostly just about assessing the views of Arthur Jensen and Philippe Rushton, and therefore doesn't belong in the article. There would have to be substantial changes made if this section is to be retained. Onetwothreeip (talk) 21:48, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

This topic is not medicine, WP:MEDRS does not apply. Hence, you cannot just remove material based on that policy. This has been mentioned many times, so I don't understand why we have to keep going over this argument. AndewNguyen (talk) 13:30, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Removal of Rushton, Jensen stuff

It's hard to find which version is the stable one with so many edits. Anyways, seem like this edit shows that some editors want to remove Rushton, Jensen stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Race_and_intelligence&diff=940942725&oldid=940940577 Do people want to remove this info? Peregrine Fisher (talk) 20:20, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Content sourced from primary works by Philippe Rushton shouldn't be presented as potentially legitimate, since the reliable sources completely discredit him and his work. The same goes for Arthur Jensen, Richard Lynn and others. If they are to be included, they should be included in the context of how the mainstream considers their views to be, and not simply a rebuttal by Richard Nisbett for each point they make. As that content sourced to Philippe Rushton and others are excluded, those rebuttals also become unnecessary to include. Onetwothreeip (talk) 21:31, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it would appear to be WP:UNDUE. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 00:23, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

I picked Arthur Jensen to look at first. Looks like you couldn't find a more reliable source. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 15:53, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Philippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen are clearly notable and respected researchers in the field, and should be preserved in the article. The NYTimes obituary for Jensen (in 2012) says he was regarded by many colleagues as one of the most important psychologists of his day, and that although he was heckled, called a racist, and had bodyguards to protect him from death threats; he is respected by the actual scientists within his field: "Even psychologists who disagree with Professor Jensen’s conclusions defend him against charges of racism." Furthermore, many of Jensen's ideas have undeniably become integrated into mainstream Psychology: “When he wrote that paper, probably a large portion of psychologists wouldn’t have believed that there was a hereditary basis for intellectual ability. Now, there’s very little argument about that in the field.

However, Onetwothreeip in particular repeatedly deletes references to Jenson and/or Rushton based on unbacked assertions that they are somehow "fringe" and have "been discredited by mainstream science." Onetwothreeip has never provided evidence of them being discredited or fringe despite my requests, and when counter-evidence is presented, he simply ignores it with an attitude of IDHT. You can see examples of this in last December's Talk Page Archive. At one point, I counted 22 comments on that page alone of Onetwothreeip asserting that Rushton and/or Jensen are fringe.

I think it would help if we agreed right now that Philippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen are respected mainstream scientists, and that references of them should not be deleted on the basis of them being somehow "fringe". Can we do that? Toomim (talk) 09:43, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Ah, that renowned arbiter of scientific consensus, The New York Times' Obits page. Surely they would never view the recently deceased through the rose-colored lens of nostalgia. –dlthewave ☎ 13:22, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

It would be helpful if you did not use sarcasm when discussing. This topic is difficult enough. Let's keep it friendly here. ^_^ AndewNguyen (talk) 13:39, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Seems Onetwothreeip is continuing his mission to delete all mentions of Jensen and Rushton's research. The argument is the same misunderstanding of WP:RS as before. One cannot remove sources that are WP:RS by finding another source that attacks the authors. This has been explained so many times, I don't know what to do except suggest admins lock the page permanently, and also keep reverting him. AndewNguyen (talk) 13:19, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Likely untenable sections

It appears that there are sections in this article that are wholly based on the work of discredited race science proponents. The section "Global variation of IQ scores" mostly revolves around work by Richard Lynn, while the "Spearman's hypothesis" and "Mental chronometry" sections largely concern works by Arthur Jensen. These sections are almost entirely just their claims and then attempts at responding to them by critics, providing a false balance. Are there any suggestions to alter these sections so that they can be retained and not be supported by these broadly discredited researchers? Onetwothreeip (talk) 01:28, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

You can add secondary sources which outline the mainstream view, if you can find them. Otherwise, these sections should be in the article simply because they are far too notable to be excluded. Also, the section on global variation of IQ scores mentions other, more rigorous studies as well, which are independent from Lynn's research. ^{O̲L̲D̲S̲T̲O̲N̲E̲}_{J̅A̅M̅E̅S̅} 01:49, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure if I follow the notability claim. Our WP:N policy and its article content counterpart due weight, which would apply here, are both based on coverage in independent secondary sources. If its not supported by secondary sources, it's not notable. –dlthewave ☎ 03:23, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

The other sources are just responses refuting the claims by Lynn and Jensen. There aren't any reliable secondary sources supporting those claims. Onetwothreeip (talk) 02:17, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

The Rindermann 2007 study discussed in that section (cited to a summary by Hunt) is an entirely separate study, not just a response to Lynn.

A separate study about Spearman's hypothesis is this paper by Frisby and Beaujean, which found support for the hypothesis. I suggest this source should be cited in the "Spearman's hypothesis" section. 2600:1004:B15D:697F:F1AB:F59B:5A3B:897D (talk) 02:56, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Heiner Rindermann was also discredited. Given that Spearman's hypothesis relates very much to Arthur Jensen, the salvageable content here would have to come under a different section. Onetwothreeip (talk) 03:12, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

It's very apparent that no one else is taking you seriously about all sources by Hunt, Rindermann, etc. being unreliable. Since you've gotten no traction for your argument about these sources over the past two months, either here or at the RS noticeboard, maybe you should go back to edit warring to remove them? 2600:1004:B15D:697F:F1AB:F59B:5A3B:897D (talk) 03:31, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

That is not an argument. Onetwothreeip (talk) 04:17, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

The IP-editor is wrong in claiming that other editors do not agree with Onetwothreeip and dithewave. In reality, a number of other editors, e.g in the AfD and DRV discussions, have expressed the view that discredited authors such as Jensen must be treated in accordance with WP:FRINGE -- the way they're treated in articles such as Scientific racism -- rather than with a false balance. Their writings are not RS, just as the writings of climate change deniers and creationists are not RS. However, there is a big disincentive to those editors to enter into discussions on this talk page. Because the title of this article attracts people who want to give credence to pseudoscientific notions that certain races are superior or inferior to others, any editor who objects to that POV faces bludgeoning and is unable to obtain a consensus, and this is a time sink for editors. This difficulty in implementing Wikipedia policies with this article is one of the reasons why many of us believe that the article should be deleted. NightHeron (talk) 14:53, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Nightheron, the question of whether these authors' writings satisfy WP:RS, when published in places such as Cambridge University Press or journals published by the American Psychological Association, was discussed at the reliable sources noticeboard in December. The discussion is here, and the consensus of that discussion was quite clear. I'll quote: "If something is published in a respected academic journal (and not retracted), then that is a reliable source on any issue. If it is on a researcher's personal blog, then it's not."

There has been a major problem on this talk page with people trying to endlessly re-litigate certain questions that have already been resolved, because they're unwilling to accept whatever consensus was reached. Doing this is disruptive because it shows a lack of respect for other editors' time to demand they have the same discussion over and over. Please don't add to this problem. The RS noticeboard was the correct place to discuss this question, and the discussion there reached its conclusion less than two months ago. 2600:1004:B117:10E5:D530:D014:5920:FA1 (talk) 16:29, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Few editors participated in that discussion, and there was no consensus. Your claim that the discussion "reached its conclusion" (agreeing with you) is clearly false. I count 2 other editors who agreed with you, and 2 editors who didn't. Your quote is not from a neutral source (such as an admin closing an RfC) but from one of the 2 editors who agreed with you. It is also false. Unreliable fringe authors occasionally get published by respectable presses or in respectable journals. That is especially true of climate denialism and scientific racism. NightHeron (talk) 19:37, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Let's take each one to RS, or have an RfC. Or maybe that was already done? Peregrine Fisher (talk) 20:20, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

The RS noticeboard is the correct place to discuss whether sources are reliable or not. But having to rehash this issue again is something we should try to avoid. This exact issue was discussed for several weeks in December, and Onetwothreeip posted the previous RSN thread in the context of failing to get any support for this argument on the article talk page. On the talk page, four people were opposing him, with Aqullion being the only person who offered any support. And then in the thread at RSN, he was opposed by two additional editors, with the only support again coming from Aquillion.

Since neither of you were part of the earlier discussion, it would be less disruptive for you to post another RSN thread about the same issue than if Onetwothreeip were to do it, but it's still unlikely to result in a different answer. Do we have to repeat the exact same discussions every time new editors show up on this article? There must be a way to avoid these cyclical arguments, especially when it's been less than two months since the end of the previous one. 2600:1004:B117:10E5:D530:D014:5920:FA1 (talk) 21:14, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

WP:Local consensus is not okay. I count far more people opposed to the December local consensus active now than in favor of it. In any case, this is borderline WP:False claims of consensus and I would argue that we should probably shut down this talkpage to IPs. If we get consensus from the non-IP accounts to exclude IPs, we can request page protection at WP:AE. jps (talk) 21:42, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:Reliable sources, The word "source" when citing sources on Wikipedia has three related meanings including the piece of work itself (the article, book) and the creator of the work (the writer, journalist). Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:51, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

(redent) I think we have policies, guidelines, global consensus, and local consensus all going the same way (not your way). Let's figure it out. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 09:58, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Test scores

A recent edit [12] added "In the US" to the beginning of the Test scores section. I reverted because this section does not discuss test scores in the United States specifically nor does the source for that sentence. Billlion, lease let me know if I'm missing something. –dlthewave ☎ 13:24, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

The section refers to those who identify as African American. This is an identification not used elsewhere in the Americas, and is not relevant elsewhere in the. In the UK for example many people with Subsaharan African heritage would be Afro-Caribean, or their families might have moved to the UK directly from Africa. In the US those who identify or are identified as Asian typically are descended from people from China, Korea, Japan etc. In the UK for example, an Asian-British person would most likely be from the Indian subcontinent. "Hispanics" is also an ethnic identity relevant to the US. Perhaps only used about people who live in that country though. The whole section is written from a US perspective. Hence my edit. An alternative would be to change the title to "Test scores in the US"? Or perhaps I have missed that the whole article is meant to be only about the US? I would suggest that the controversy and study of the subject is a much more global topic and should reflect a global perspective. Billlion (talk)

Thanks for the explanation, Billion. Taking a closer look at the source it's clear that they're referring to US scores without explicitly saying it. I also believe that the section originally had United States in the title.

I'm on mobile at the moment so feel free to change it back. –dlthewave ☎ 16:58, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Done. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 17:06, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Missing ref

Silverman 1991 is missing a full ref. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:16, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

What did you mean about a predatory journal? https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Race_and_intelligence&diff=941676808&oldid=941676592 Peregrine Fisher (talk) 02:43, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

See predatory journal and Bentham Open. Grayfell (talk) 04:53, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

The cite was added as part of a series of edits in January 2018 which introduced some of the fringe material now being discussed. My guess is the author was Irwin Silverman, but I cannot find a likely match, so it could be someone else. Silverman was one of the comparatively few scholars who defended Rushton's differential K theory when it was topical.

Since none of the other sources were added in Harvnb format, this was likely copied from some other article. That editor has since been blocked, apparently due to POV-pushing activity on this topic. This is yet another example of the kind of disruptive behavior this article has been swarmed with. Incidentally, that editor unsuccessfully appealed their block in December 2019, which suggests that they might be still around and paying attention. Grayfell (talk) 04:53, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

"no non-circumstantial"

I hate that phrasing. It don't sound right. Do we mean "only circumstantial"? Peregrine Fisher (talk) 05:17, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Have we verified that "circumstantial" is supported by a source? "No evidence" would be a better summary of the body. –dlthewave ☎ 05:22, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

"no evidence" isn't something i've definitively read. Anyways, if you search the article for "circumstantial" you find stuff like "the evidence for a genetic influence has been circumstantial" and "Currently there is no non-circumstantial evidence that the test score gap has a genetic component,[127][62][128] although some researchers believe that the existing circumstantial evidence makes it plausible to believe that hard evidence for a genetic component will eventually appear." Peregrine Fisher (talk) 05:38, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

The term used in Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns, the statement published by the American Psychological Association in 1996, is that there is no "direct empirical support" for a genetic interpretation. I would be okay with saying "direct empirical evidence" instead of "non-circumstantial evidence". 2600:1004:B166:FE36:49EC:ECB6:3787:B508 (talk) 13:05, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

2600, the full quote from the Test Scores section is "Explanations based on factors of caste and culture may be appropriate, but so far have little direct empirical support. There is certainly no such support for a genetic interpretation." I'm concerned that using qualifiers like "empirical" and "circumstantial" out of context in our article would imply the existence of non-empirical or non-circumstantial evidence, a conclusion that these sources don't support. –dlthewave ☎ 13:21, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Does that mean "there's little support for nurture being the cause, but there's certainly no support for nature being the cause"? Peregrine Fisher (talk) 02:19, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

The wording in the article can't be stronger than what's supported by its major sources such as the APA report. Also, while that report doesn't say anything either way about the existence or non-existence of indirect evidence for genetic factors, other sources such as Hunt's textbook argue that there is indirect evidence for a role of genetics. Therefore, I think including a qualifier such as "non-circumstantial evidence" or "direct empirical evidence" is necessary for the article's wording to be consistent with most of the sources that it cites. 2600:1004:B166:FE36:49EC:ECB6:3787:B508 (talk) 13:50, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you -- I think that "no direct empirical evidence" is better than "no non-circumstantial evidence." This is partially to avoid the double negative, and partially because the term Circumstantial Evidence is typically used in court-room forensics to prove that somebody is guilty; not typically in science, where we want to know whether or not a theory has predictive power. It might also be possible that the distinction between "causal" vs. "correlative" evidence is relevant here; although I must claim ignorance -- I haven't researched this particular aspect of the topic in much depth. Toomim (talk) 23:51, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

I guess I could go with "no direct empirical evidence". At least get rid of the double negative. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 02:19, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

No, that is not acceptable. Dlthewave correctly observed that using qualifiers like "empirical" and "circumstantial" out of context in our article would imply the existence of non-empirical or non-circumstantial evidence, a conclusion that these sources don't support. The use of such terminology goes against WP:Manual of Style, where the section WP:WEASEL defines weasel words as follows: Weasel words are words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact only a vague or ambiguous claim has been communicated. NightHeron (talk) 02:41, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't want to disrupt the thread above, but others may find it interesting that A popular misconception is that circumstantial evidence is less valid or less important than direct evidence, according to the Wikipedia page on Circumstantial Evidence. It further explains: Indeed, the common metaphor for the strongest possible evidence in any case—the "smoking gun"—is an example of proof based on circumstantial evidence. Toomim (talk) 07:11, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

It is poor phrasing. Yes, it relates to the previous situation of only circumstantial evidence. I think these reviews mean the lack of direct genetic data. However, such data has existed since 2013 (Davide Piffer's work), and continues to be published to this date. The main reviews used for sources on the page are out of date regarding this. That said, I support changing it to "only circumstantial" or "only indirect" until we move to using newer secondary sources. AndewNguyen (talk) 13:27, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Concerning "such data has existed since 2013 (Davide Piffer's work)," indeed Davide Piffer is typical of the type of authors that advocates of Jensenism cite to support race-supremacist theories; for more info about Mr. Piffer, please see [13]. NightHeron (talk) 13:53, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm having trouble remembering who is racist. Could you provide a shot list? Peregrine Fisher (talk) 10:00, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Here's a very short list, quoted from the source cited in my last comment: "Piffer is a research fellow of the Ulster Institute for Social Research, a racist institute founded by Richard Lynn that publishes racist pseudoscience." NightHeron (talk) 10:25, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

RationalWiki is not a reliable source. It's a wiki. Toomim (talk) 20:49, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

This isnt text on the page... RationalWiki also happens to be right in this case. Are you denying that Piffer worked for the Ulster Institute for Social Research? Horse Eye Jack (talk) 22:04, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

*Sigh* I think you all missed the joke. Accusing someone of racism is the new McCarthyism, and your desire to build a list of "accused racists" is no better than McCarthy's attempt to build a list of accused communists (usually just one's political opponents), and then blacklisting them from participating in society, or building a list of accused witches and then burning them alive. I think Peregrine Fisher was being sarcastic when he asked you to provide a short list, but here you're actually trying to do so. Not only is this behavior morally reprehensible -- it is not how Wikipedia works. We don't do witch hunts. We don't exclude minority viewpoints. We include information that is notable and reliable. Toomim (talk) 04:01, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

We do in face exclude racists and their despicable worldview, see WP:NONAZIS. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 05:22, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

WP:No_Nazis is just somebody's essay. It explicitly says This is an essay. This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Toomim (talk) 07:12, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Once again you missed the point so spectacularly that it is challenging to assume good faith. I think you’re WP:NOTHERE. Piffer is a racist, end of the story. If you don’t like how the story ends then go check out Conservapedia. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 15:01, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Ha, ha, ha! Thank you for explaining that Peregrine Fisher was making a funny joke! Putting jokes aside, the relevant Wikipedia policy is WP:FRINGE. Authors who are way outside the mainstream of science and scholarship -- climate change deniers, flat earthers, creationists, quack cure charlatans, white supremacists (such as Davide Piffer and Richard Lynn), etc. -- must not be treated as reliable sources, but rather must be described for what they are. Your name-calling (McCarthyism and witch hunt and morally reprehensible) directed against other editors does not make those fringe writers into RS. NightHeron (talk) 04:51, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

WP:FRINGE is about theories, not people. It explains how much representation to give to a theory in an article. It has no bearing on the reliability of a person or source. It is entirely irrelevant to your ad-hominem attack against Piffer. There is no Wikipedia principle that supports your witch-hunt. You are plainly accusing anyone on the nature side of the debate a "racist", just like McCarthy called any of his political opponents a "communist", in an attempt to exclude them. This behavior reeks of POV bias. Toomim (talk) 07:12, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

One joke I've heard a lot recently is the one where an inexperienced editors lecture a talk page on how "Wikipedia works". Freedom isn't licence, and identifying pseudoscience doesn't lead to censorship or blacklisting, it leads to better science. Grayfell (talk) 05:10, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

@Toomim: Yes, someone's writings can be an unreliable source per WP:FRINGE in one area and RS in another area. In that sense they're not ruled out as people. For example, William Shockley was a white supremacist fringe figure on race issues, but his writings on transistor technology (an area where he won a Nobel Prize) were RS. Piffer and Lynn are similar. For all I know they might have written on mountain climbing techniques or favorite recipes in mainstream publications, in which case those writings should not be ruled out as RS just because their authors are racists.

Your intemperate accusations of McCarthyism against other editors violates WP:AGF. NightHeron (talk) 15:43, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Let's try to summarize the current consensus. Peregrine Fisher, 2600, AndrewNguyen, and myself support the phrase "no direct empirical evidence". (AndrewNguyen explicitly said "only circumstantial" or "only indirect"; but the latter is compatible with "no direct evidence".) AndrewNguyen further points out that the word circumstantial might not be necessary anymore—the article was written before the non-circumstantial evidence was found—but that we should upgrade the sources to include this evidence before removing the word "circumstantial."

On the other hand, NightHeron and dlthewave share the concern that "using qualifiers like `empirical` and `circumstantial` out of context in our article would imply the existence of non-empirical or non-circumstantial evidence, a conclusion that these sources don't support." I am not sure what they mean by this. The wording in question from the article is "At present, there is no non-circumstantial evidence that these differences in test scores have a genetic component." Are you guys concerned that this implies the existence of non-circumstantial evidence? I think that it says the opposite. Please clarify. Toomim (talk) 07:36, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

No, as you've quoted, we're concerned that "no non-circumstantial" evidence implies the existence of "circumstantial" evidence. The body doesn't make clear exactly what circumstantial/indirect evidence we're talking about and, in any case, it doesn't carry enough weight to justify a prominent position in the lede. –dlthewave ☎ 13:16, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

The trouble with the wording "no non-circumstantial evidence" or "only circumstantial evidence" is that circumstantial evidence is not a standard, understandable term in the sciences (although it is in criminal investigations). What does it mean? Does it just mean correlation? Encouraging readers to confuse correlation and causality is not what Wikipedia should do. Should Wikipedia have an article on Catholicism and pederasty claiming "circumstantial" evidence for a genetic connection because of all the cities in the US where the diocese declared bankruptcy because of sexual abuse lawsuits? Or would such a claim amount to just trash-talking and slandering Catholics?

The trouble with the wording "no direct empirical evidence" is that it strongly implies that there is non-empirical or indirect evidence, which is not supported by RS. What would that mean? Again, perhaps correlation. Or maybe conjectures based on fringe methodology.

In both cases the wording is confusing and misleading, what WP:MOS calls weasel words: Weasel words are words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact only a vague or ambiguous claim has been communicated. NightHeron (talk) 13:42, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Just FYI Davide Piffer co-founded OpenPsych and his history is well known, no rational person can argue that he isnt a racist. There is nothing ad-hominem about calling a spade a spade and Piffer is a racist. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 15:01, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

What is fringe? That races exist? That IQ measures intelligence? That there is an IQ gap between races? That there is a possibility that this is gap is partially genetic? Peregrine Fisher (talk) 16:30, 20 February 2020 (UTC) The gap is likely partially genetic? The gap is definitely partially genetic? Peregrine Fisher (talk) 16:32, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Your sequence of claims (phrased as questions) is a good example of what's fringe: stringing together a sequence of broadly disputed claims in such a way as to suggest that some races are inferior to others. That's fringe. As explained in the first paragraph of the section Race of this article, there's a consensus that races are a sociopolitical construct, not a biological one. Similarly, most scholars would say that the claim that IQ measures intelligence is simplistic and misleading; intelligence is a loaded word that carries many other meanings besides whatever IQ measures. The notion that heritability of some trait among individuals implies a hereditary component in group differences is a well-known logical fallacy. If you string all this together and spin it so as to suggest racial inferiority/supremacy, then you have fringe. NightHeron (talk) 16:48, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. As is common with fringe positions, every link in these chains can be propped-up, superficially, in various shoddy ways. Taking these things apart takes a bit of effort and nuance. It take more effort to debunk them than it does to share them and ignore the responses. By the time the point is properly addressed, fringe advocates have moved on to some other issue. It's not realistic to expect every one of these points to be addressed with care, because they were never well-supported to begin with. These racist ideas have been rejected for a lot of valid reasons, and ignoring those reasons won't make them go away. Grayfell (talk) 23:39, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

OK, so NightHeron thinks race isn't real and the word intelligence is problematic and maybe not useful. Grayfell seems to agree, and anything beyond those two statments is fringe or heading into fringe. I'm sure there's plenty of nuance I'm missing. Just wanted to attempt to summarize before I spend time on the next response, which is long. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 03:03, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

This was exactly what I was talking about. As far as I know, nobody here is saying "race isn't real". This is a straw-man that gets thrown around a lot on HBD forums and similar, but it badly misrepresents what we're trying to explain. Race is a social construct, and social constructs are real. Social constructs, like race, are very complicated, and very important to individuals, families, societies, legal institutions, etc. and need to be treated as such. Grayfell (talk) 06:18, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

So race is real. It's a social construct and has zero biological underpinnings? Peregrine Fisher (talk) 02:19, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

The biological underpinnings are weak. There are probably more genetic differences between your parents than between an average white person and an average black person. HiLo48 (talk) 02:36, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Yes, and even applying the concept of "biological underpinnings" to race is deeply flawed. The people trying to study these categories do not agree on who belongs, and they are not easily defined. Racial cateogires were designed for cultural reasons based on very obsolete scientific ideas, and they were not stable over time, and are still not stable. Again, nobody is saying it has "zero biological underpinnings", sources are saying it's very complicated. Sarcastically(?) putting it in simplistic terms isn't helpful. Grayfell (talk) 06:11, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Here is what makes this sort of argument particularly ironic: when each "link in the chain" is presented by itself, it is generally regarded as mainstream. The mainstream position about the validity of IQ tests is presented in this section of the Intelligence Quotient article. Aside from the sources cited in that article, two more recent sources that regard IQ as a valid measure of mental ability are Bjorklund and Gray's textbook psychology (pp. 394-399), and Michael Ashton's textbook Individual Differences and Personality (the entirety of that book's tenth chapter). I'm deliberately citing broad-level psychology textbooks here so that people can't claim this viewpoint only exists in sources that are specifically about IQ testing.

The claim IQ is invalid is coming mostly from journalists or academics in fields like media studies or critical race theory, who make the claim in newspaper articles or in popular books. These people have no scientific credentials relevant to the subject, and the psychology academic community tends to ignore them. (Again, I am referring to psychology in general here, not just IQ testing.)

How about the biological meaning of race? This is covered in its own Wikipedia article, Race and genetics, which presents the mainstream view (that race is correlated with genetic variation) reasonably well. One of the most authoritative sources cited in that article is a special issue of the journal Nature Genetics that was devoted to this matter. Here is how the special issue's conclusions were summarized by Francis Collins, the director of the Human Genome Project:

Well-intentioned statements over the past few years, some coming from geneticists, might lead one to believe there is no connection whatsoever between self-identified race or ethnicity and the frequency of particular genetic variants. Increasing scientific evidence, however, indicates that genetic variation can be used to make a reasonably accurate prediction of geographic origins of an individual, at least if that individual's grandparents all came from the same part of the world. As those ancestral origins in many cases have a correlation, albeit often imprecise, with self-identified race or ethnicity, it is not strictly true that race or ethnicity has no biological connection. It must be emphasized, however, that the connection is generally quite blurry because of multiple other nongenetic connotations of race, the lack of defined boundaries between populations and the fact that many individuals have ancestors from multiple regions of the world.

Psychology and social science generally deal with correlations between variables, not in perfect relationships. The fact that IQ is correlated with race and that race is correlated with genetic variation does not necessarily mean that variance in average IQ across races has a genetic basis, but it means that people who have expertise in the relevant fields (psychology and genetics) aren't so hasty to dismiss the idea. Steven Pinker makes this argument in The Blank Slate, and more recently David Reich has made it in Who We Are and How We Got Here - that based on what we know of genetics, it is possible that this is indeed the case, and Reich's book specifically makes the point that we don't yet know enough to determine whether it's the case or not.

But at Wikipedia, a funny thing tends to happen when these two conclusions, that are relatively mainstream in their respective fields (psychology and human population genetics), are combined together. In the context of discussions about race and intelligence, the conclusion that IQ measures a real ability and that race is correlated with genetic variation are often described as "fringe". Because if we're certain that the hereditarian viewpoint about race and intelligence is fringe, then the various lines of research this conclusion is based upon must be fringe also, mustn't they?

@Peregrine Fisher: FYI, I'm explaining this mostly for your sake. I have no hope of getting through to Grayfell about any of this, but you seem much more open-minded, and I think you have the potential to become a highly valuable editor in this topic after you've learned more about the concepts involved. 2600:1004:B104:33EC:E853:9B6:F184:116C (talk) 00:57, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

I'll try to be brief and not attempt to compete with your WALLOFTEXT. You're playing the usual game of apologists for fringe when you cherry-pick sources and claim that they're saying the same thing you are, when in fact they aren't. Let's look at your long quote by Francis Collins, which starts by referring to statements by his colleagues that might lead one to believe there is no connection whatsoever between self-identified race or ethnicity and the frequency of particular genetic variants. He goes on to say that there are correlations with geographical region of ancestry, although it's generally quite blurry. Region of ancestry, in turn, has some correlation with self-identified ethnicity and race. Okay, so in certain regions over generations people may be exposed repeatedly to some disease and develop genetic resistance to it, or they might turn out to be particularly vulnerable to certain ailments. It was known for centuries that the Native people of North America were particularly susceptible to smallpox, and in fact settlers sometimes used this knowledge for genocidal purposes, see Population history of indigenous peoples of the Americas#Biological warfare. But none of this has anything to do with the sequence of links that certain editors are trying to make between race/IQ/intelligence/genetics. None of this supports the POV of editors who admire the white-supremacist writings of Jensen/Piffer/Lynn.

Grayfell is correct that it's not worth our time to pick apart all the fallacies and go through your mainstream sources one by one and explain that they're not agreeing with you and are not supporting white supremacy. NightHeron (talk) 01:54, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

The argument you made was: "there's a consensus that races are a sociopolitical construct", and that to suggest otherwise is a "fringe" idea. Addressing that argument is why I cited the Collins source. The argument you seem to be making now is that race does have some correlation with biological variation, but that this only affects traits such as susceptibility to diseases, and has no relevance to psychological traits.

The Collins source doesn't directly address that point, but David Reich's book does, on pages 256-258. Reich mentions that studies have already identified genetic variants that affect several psychological traits, including intelligence, and that it remains to be seen whether those variants are among the genetic variants that differ in distribution between human populations. Reich says, "it seems a bad bet to argue that there cannot be similar average differences in cognitive or behavioral traits." (He is specifically referring to genetic variants here, not just to the measured IQ gaps themselves.)

As I said, I am not arguing that population differences in the distribution of genetic variants affecting cognitive ability definitely do exist. I consider Piffer's research in this area to be inconclusive. The point that's important is that mainstream geneticists such as David Reich don't regard this as an impossible or "fringe" idea, but rather as a scientific question to which we don't yet know the answer. 2600:1004:B160:E18D:59ED:E616:346B:2CF7 (talk) 02:48, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

No, neither I nor the Collins quote says that race is a biological concept rather than a sociopolitical construct. It is because race is a sociopolitical construct that Collins uses "self-identified" as the only way to say what race someone supposedly belongs to. His point is that there are detectable genetic markers that can often be used to identify where someone's ancestors came from. This is generally quite blurry, and in any case has nothing to do with anything connected with intelligence. There is also a correlation between someone's geographical origin of ancestors (if they all came form the same region) and how the person self-identifies racially. But that does not contradict the consensus that there's no stable, consistent definition of different races; rather, racial distinctions are determined by social and political circumstances. The apartheid regime in South Africa rigidly classified people into races; most of the people who in the US self-identify as blacks would be classified as "colored" and not "black" in the South African system. Dividing people into races is done by politicians and social commentators, not by scientists.

Something does not have to be impossible to be fringe. We can speculate about unlikely (but not provably impossible) scenarios if we want. No one can say that it's impossible for a civilization to be living deep underground on the dark side of the moon, and for all sorts of adventures to be awaiting us when we finally make contact with them. A whole literary genre -- sci fi -- imagines such future scenarios. But Wikipedia does not do that, per WP:CRYSTAL.

It's bizarre that you say that Piffer's work is merely inconclusive. The guy's a crackpot. He doesn't have any academic qualifications (except a Masters degree), he works at an openly white-supremacist center, and he advocates for a range of loony psychic notions. NightHeron (talk) 03:36, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Two relatively mainstream opinions can be fringe when combined together, nothing funny about it at all. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 01:38, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

AfD

Is this page up for AfD? People keep saying it is[14] but there is no notice at the top of the page. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 22:26, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

The AfD closed with a delete that was appealed, and the DRV has just reversed the closure and essentially appointed a committee of admins to reexamine how the AfD should be closed. So it's unclear right now what will happen. NightHeron (talk) 22:44, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification! This is my first time encountering an article thats fallen into that sort of administrative black hole.Horse Eye Jack (talk) 23:23, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Policy relevance and ethics section

I support the removal here: [15]. If there's a debate than the article should use sources that discuss the debate rather than quoting individuals. --K.e.coffman (talk) 02:11, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

AE Notice

Editors who are active here may be interested in an Arbitration Enforcement request related to this topic. A Consensus Required restriction is under consideration. Discussion can be found at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Peregrine_Fisher. –dlthewave ☎ 21:13, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

I reverted

What are the policy and guideline reasons this should be removed? https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Race_and_intelligence&diff=942364950&oldid=942344049 Peregrine Fisher (talk) 06:20, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

A policy was already given in the edit summary. These sources are WP:PRIMARY opinions with no indication of larger significance, and Wikipedia articles should not attempt to catalog minutia like this without a specific reason supported by secondary sources. Specifically, Rushton's and Jensen's inflammatory political opinions might belong at their respective articles, but only with support from reliable sources. Grayfell (talk) 06:29, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Sounds like you are confusing PRIMARY, INDEPENDENT, and NOTABLE. Also that you have a POV to push when you say "inflammatory political opinions". Peregrine Fisher (talk) 06:59, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

@Grayfell: James R. Flynn writing in Nature, Linda Gottfredson writing in Intelligence, and Arthur Jensen & J. Philippe Rushton writing in Psychology, Public Policy, and Law about their academic field are not in any way WP:PRIMARY sources. Mind you, the requirement for secondary review articles only exists in WP:MEDRS. While it is your opinion that Jensen and Rushton hold "inflammatory political opinions", their article was published in the aforementioned peer-reviewed journal by the American Psychological Association. --Pudeo (talk) 08:31, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

This article reeks of pro-fringe bias, with overwhelmingly positive treatment of and undue coverage of the POV of writers who dispute the scientific consensus that there is no evidence for genetic supremacy or inferiority of one race compared to another. Before there were 38 citations of Jensen and 21 citations of Rushton, and now two editors are edit-warring to put in yet another positive reference to their views, along with a positive reference to another writer (Gottfredson) who's supported by the white-supremacist Pioneer Fund. I reverted that, but I'm under no allusion that anything short of a successful AfD will fix the problems with this article, which has been cited as an example of racism on Wikipedia by the Southern Poverty Law Center. NightHeron (talk) 13:10, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

I agree with the UNDUE concern, which goes hand-in-hand with using Jenson and Rushton as primary sources for their own attributed opinions. Looking at the sentence "Jensen and Rushton argued that the existence of biological group differences does not rule out, but raises questions about the worthiness of policies such as affirmative action or placing a premium on diversity", we would need other sources to establish this view on affirmative action as a "significant viewpoint". –dlthewave ☎ 13:27, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Peregrine Fisher You reverted with the edit summary "I think this should be included. Let's talk about it." but I don't see where you've actually made an argument for inclusion other than WP:ILIKEIT. Could you explain why you think this content should be kept? –dlthewave ☎ 13:16, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Above NightHeron wrote, "now two editors are edit-warring to put in yet another positive reference to their views, along with a positive reference to another writer (Gottfredson) who's supported by the white-supremacist Pioneer Fund" You've completely misunderstood this situation. This material had been in the article for years, until Dlthewave removed it a few hours ago. For comparison, here is the same section of the article five years ago, which is nearly identical to what the section looked like until today. This is yet another example of the pattern of editors making bold changes and demanding a consensus before their changes can be undone. For the reasons I explained here, it is especially ironic for Grayfell to be doing this.

Dlthewave said that we would need other sources establishing Jensen's and Gottfredson's view as a significant one. A fairly uncontroversial source that discusses several perspectives about how group differences relate to policy relevance, including Jensen's and Gottfredson's views, is Hunt and Carlson 2007. The Hunt and Carlson paper also makes several other comments about policy relevance that would be worth including in the article.

It's also completely unreasonable to exclude the Flynn source. James Flynn is one of the most prominent scholars to have ever written on this topic, and his comments were published in one of the most prominent journals (Nature). Can anyone provide a reason why a viewpoint from James Flynn, published in Nature, is NOT important enough to include? 2600:1004:B104:B4AD:24A2:6DE8:211:3475 (talk) 15:31, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

This article has a long history of problematic editing, including violations of WP:FRINGE, WP:UNDUE, and WP:FALSEBALANCE. The article title has apparently attracted editors who are partial to Jensenism, and that has been reflected in the content. So the fact that a certain version has been there for much of the article's history or coincides with a version of 5 years ago is not a strong argument for inclusion. NightHeron (talk) 16:22, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

These should not be removed. The general approach here is for editors who dislike hereditarianism to remove all hereditarian sources based on any possible and often false policies. That edit is a typical example of this. It seems that the price to pay for keeping a summary of the field is having to constantly have revert discussions about every deletion that NightHeron, Dlthewave, Grayfell will try. This is a counterproductive way to edit Wikipedia. As before, I suggest that the page is permanently locked, and every change is proposed on the talk page before made real. This is the only way to stop the low-intensity edit warring. Just my 2 cents! AndewNguyen (talk) 20:18, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

@AndewNguyen: Why shouldn't the content be removed? –dlthewave ☎ 20:29, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

I see no reason to remove it. The policy given was clearly in error. This topic is not covered by WP:MEDRS, and in any case, these are not primary sources, and if they were, primary sources are sometimes fine. I don't know what to say. I generally oppose removing content, and definitely oppose removing well-sourced content (whether hereditarian friendly or not, I am happy to include mentions of stuff critics think is important to achieve balance). AndewNguyen (talk) 20:46, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Our WP:ALLPRIMARY supplement goes into detail about what is and isn't a primary source, even within a published piece. In this case the views of Rushton, Jensen and Gottfredson go beyond secondary analysis/commentary and stray into novel ideas about public policy points such as research ethics and affirmative action. Since there seems to be some confusion, our policies make it clear that content published in peer-reviewed journals can be considered primary source. –dlthewave ☎ 21:17, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

You've completely misunderstood this situation. This material had been in the article for years, until Dlthewave removed it a few hours ago. And it is for reasons like this that the article was identified as a POV fork of scientific racism. If AfD passes as an excuse that it doesn't replace fixing the article, the article must indeed be fixed. —PaleoNeonate – 01:16, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

If we're going to say that section should not be citing primary sources, then we ought to be consistent about it. If the removed sources all are primary sources, then the Rose, Nisbett, and Olness sources are primary sources also. As I previously described in my comment here, Nisbett's book actually is a quite controversial source, and I generally don't approve of removing the Rushton/Jensen material without removing Nisbett as well.

However, I don't think removing the primary sources on both sides is the correct solution in this case. When discussing specific lines of research about factors that might contribute to the IQ gaps, it's reasonable that the article should be mostly based on textbooks that provide neutral summaries of the research data, but in this case there doesn't seem to be any actual research data to summarize. The section is instead presenting the views about policy and ethics from various scholars, and prominent scholars on one side of the debate shouldn't be excluded from that.

The removal of the Flynn source stands out as demonstrating the POV nature of this removal, both because Flynn is a widely respected critic of the hereditarian view, and the Flynn source was published in the journal Nature, one of the most prominent publications to have ever covered this topic. No one has presented any explanation for why this particular source was removed. It seems to have been removed entirely because Flynn agrees with the hereditarians that race and intelligence is a worthwhile subject to study. 2600:1004:B15E:1A2E:64AB:BEF6:701B:39AA (talk) 01:34, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

There's no policy based reason to remove it. Or rather it's all IAR which seems to be the main policy guiding this article. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 03:18, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

@Peregrine Fisher: Could you explain your objections to the policy-based reasons that have been cited in this discussion? –dlthewave ☎ 03:44, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Let's take a look at the first one. It's from the peer reviewed journal Perspectives on Psychological Science. Peer reviewed journals are our gold standard. What's one awesome way to know if an opinion is worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia? When it's published in a peer reviewed journal. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 04:04, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

One person's opinion is still one person's opinion regardless of who they are or where it's been published. Simply appearing in a peer-reviewed journal is not sufficient for inclusion here, the content would also need to meet our WP:WEIGHT requirement. Using your Gottfredson example, has her self-cited opinion on ethics been discussed in other sources? –dlthewave ☎ 04:18, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Her opinion became OK to include when it was in the peer reviewed article. Do you deny this? Peregrine Fisher (talk) 04:22, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I do deny that. As stated previously, simply being published in a peer-reviewed article does not make a viewpoint fit for inclusion on Wikipedia. That is not the standard. –dlthewave ☎ 04:25, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

You know, it isn't very difficult to determine the answer to this question with Google scholar. Here are two sources that discuss the Gottfredson paper: Hunt and Carlson 2007b, Frisby 2018. I've verified that both of these sources include a detailed discussion about Gottfredson's paper, and do not merely cite it in passing.

Gottfredson's paper apparently was part of an exchange between Hunt and Carlson and herself. The first Hunt and Carlson paper included a commentary on an earlier paper Gottfredson had written in 2005. The 2007 Gottfredson paper was written as a response to Hunt and Carlson, and Hunt and Carlson followed the paper with a second response (Hunt and Carlson 2007b). Gottfredson and H&C agree more than they disagree, so this was more a cordial exchange of viewpoints than an actual debate. So, yes, it has definitely been discussed in other sources.

Is it accomplishing anything to point this out? Is it irrelevant that this paper was part of a scholarly exchange in Perspectives on Psychological Science, because most editors think that any paper written by Linda Gottfredson cannot be added back once it's removed, regardless of the details (and this apparently goes for James Flynn as well)? 2600:1004:B15E:1A2E:64AB:BEF6:701B:39AA (talk) 04:50, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

By the way, regarding this edit, I was not intending to actually suggest the entire section should be removed. I thought I made this clear in my comment above: "I don't think removing the primary sources on both sides is the correct solution in this case." My point was only that a double standard was being applied. 2600:1004:B15E:1A2E:64AB:BEF6:701B:39AA (talk) 04:57, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

This is more of the same "he said, she said" back-and-forth between primary sources, and simply presenting both viewpoints without analysis is not an acceptable way to write an encyclopedia article. We would need an independent secondary source to summarize the "debate" and present the mainstream view. If it has not been covered by independent sources, it should not be included. –dlthewave ☎ 05:58, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Why is it that your solution to every problem with this article (if these really are problems) is blanking content? Why don't you ever take a less heavy-handed approach, for example by adding other sources to replace those you're removing?

I have a theory about the answer. My theory is that you and the other editors taking this approach are taking it because you don't know enough about the academic literature on this topic to add any new content. If that is indeed the reason, I think you should seriously consider whether you're the right person to try to fix the problems with this article. As an analogy, if there were problems on the Betelgeuse or Andromeda Galaxy article, would the best person to fix those problems be someone who knows next to nothing of the academic literature about astronomy, and who therefore is only able to address those problems by removing content? 2600:1004:B15C:6BC8:E5F7:F7F0:8799:1BFD (talk) 12:34, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Your theory is a convenient thing for you to believe, but it's wrong. When an article has low-quality fringe sources, the solution is to remove them, not to provide a FALSEBALANCE by matching them with other sources. For example, the writings on race and intelligence of authors who are well known to hold racial supremacist views are fringe, and the ones who are financed by the Pioneer Fund have a clear COI as well (since their continued funding depends on their making claims that support the racist agenda of the Pioneer Fund). This applies to Jensen, Rushton, Lynn, Piffer, and Gottfredson. Their writings must be treated on Wikipedia the way other fringe sources are if they're going to be included at all.

Your theory that editors who disagree with you are just too dumb to know how to search for sources is incorrect. NightHeron (talk) 13:40, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Your assertion about these authors was recently discussed at the RS noticeboard. [16] The discussion there was primarily about whether works by authors such as Hunt and Rindermann satisfy WP:RS, but the claim that they're "fringe" was discussed there as well. The conclusion of that discussion was that works by these authors are reliable sources when published by reputable publishers such as Cambridge University Press, and that the authors are appropriate experts in the area of human intelligence. Unlike the previous discussion on this topic in December, the recent discussion reached a clear consensus, and was closed earlier today by an experienced admin. (My description here is a paraphrase of the closure summary.) In light of that conclusion, the course of action you're suggesting is no longer appropriate.

I deliberately did not post a link to that discussion while it was underway, because I wanted this question to be evaluated by the wider Wikipedia community, rather than simply being a rehash of local consensus on this talk page. If you object to having not had the opportunity to participate in that discussion, bear in mind that editors active on this page who disagree with you such as Peregrine Fisher, AndewNguyen and Toomim did not have that opportunity either.

If this article survives its AFD, we should create an article FAQ documenting points like these that have received a clear resolution, so that we don't have to debate them endlessly anymore. That will be the first step towards restoring long-term stability to the article. 2600:1004:B146:326B:ECD8:B0F4:F440:4BE1 (talk) 21:15, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

I have warned you about this on your talk page, well one of your hundreds of talk pages. Please don't insult your fellow editors. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 17:15, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

(response to IP-editor's 1st sentence) You're misrepresenting what that discussion was about. It did not concern any of the authors in my list (Jensen, Rushton, Lynn, Gottfredson, Piffer), all of whom are fringe racial supremacists. The first three of them are cited, generally in a positive way (as if they weren't fringe), a total of 69 times in the text and references of this article -- a clear indication of the influence of the alt-right POV on the content of the article. NightHeron (talk) 22:48, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

The broader conclusion reached by both the recent RSN discussion and the one in December is that when determining whether a source is reliable, the most important criterion is the reputation of the publisher, not of the author. Thus, this article should not be citing papers published in Mankind Quarterly or OpenPsych regardless of who the authors are, but publications from Cambridge University Press or journals published by the American Psychological Association (which includes the journal Psychology, Public Policy and Law) are generally acceptable.

When I posted the recent RSN thread, I focused on Hunt and Rindermann because they were the two authors for whom it had been most recently claimed that all publications from them are unreliable. If you think we need yet another RSN discussion about individual authors who weren't explicitly mentioned in either the recent discussion or the one in December, that isn't reasonable. Even if there are ten or twenty RSN discussions about this general question of RS policy, it will never be possible to answer every imaginable formulation of the question. Both of these RSN discussions reached the same conclusion about this general principle of sourcing, and I'm asking you to please acknowledge the general principle. 2600:1004:B146:326B:ECD8:B0F4:F440:4BE1 (talk) 23:56, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

The publisher’s reliability being more important doesn’t mean the author’s reliability is entirely irrelevant which is what you appear to be arguing. In the unlikely scenario that an article by an unreliable author is published in the most reliable source in the world that article could still be ruled unreliable, in fact it almost certainly would be. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 00:08, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

(response to IP-editor) If you read WP:RS thoroughly, rather than trying to pick snippets out of context, you'll see that Wikipedia policy is that what RS means depends on the context. Some reputable presses might in certain fields publish material that has not been vetted by the scholarly community. Some sources might be reliable on certain topics and not on others. I realize that a half-century ago Jensen was able to get his POV published in the Harvard Educational Review. That doesn't make it RS. The scientific consensus is that there is no evidence that one race is mentally superior or inferior to another race. Authors such as Jensen, Rushton, Lynn, Piffer, and Gottfredson have rejected that scientific consensus in their efforts, supported by the Pioneer Fund, to give credence to race supremacy. No amount of wikilawyering or bludgeoning on your part will change those facts. NightHeron (talk) 01:18, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

You are repeating the exact same argument that Onetwothreeip made in both discussions at the RS noticeboard. See his post here here, and compare them to your own post above. In both discussions, this argument was rejected by the broader Wikipedia community.

Do you not see anything disruptive about continuing the exact same argument that community consensus has rejected on two separate occasions? 2600:1004:B146:326B:ECD8:B0F4:F440:4BE1 (talk) 01:55, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

You are once again distorting what was said in earlier discussions. No, different editors are making different points. We are not repeating the "exact same argument." You must be blinded by your own ideology if you can't even pay attention to the points being made by editors who disagree with you. The community has emphatically not rejected the argument that claims of race superiority are fringe. NightHeron (talk) 02:33, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Reliable sources can still be fringe. This principle is supported by the RSN discussion (permalink) which closed on 25 February: "... we can give the views of Rindermann and Hunt, sourced to their books published by the Cambridge University Press, but take care not to promote their views as widely accepted unless/until sources can be found which indicate their views are widely accepted." We need to be careful about how we present this point of view here. –dlthewave ☎ 13:20, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

• The content should stay removed; it's undue, given the reputation of the authors. See for example: Scientific_racism#After_1945. --K.e.coffman (talk) 04:30, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Coffman spoke the truth for you guys. There are no policy reasons to remove a secondary source, but you don't like the authors. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 04:34, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

WP:NPOV is a policy, and WP:UNDUE is its component. --K.e.coffman (talk) 04:43, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

@Peregrine Fisher: You’ve been given ample policy based reasons for removal, its hard to interpret your refusal to acknowledge that as anything other than tendentious. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 17:09, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm seeing people calling secondary sources primary sources. And I'm seeing people saying primary sources need to be removed, which is also not true. If you think I should feel chagrined, I don't. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 03:18, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

AfD Reclosure

A panel close of the last AfD has been implemented. You may read it at the AfD page. Barkeep49 (talk) 22:00, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Well, that's one issue resolved. Now we just need to figure out what to do about the huge removals of content that keep happening.

The two most recent examples of that are in this diff and this one, and the content hasn't yet been restored in either of those cases. The justification for the first removal was that the removed content was allegedly cited to primary sources, but the prevailing view among editors commenting at AE was that this assertion about the sources is incorrect. With respect to the second removal, I asked here for a clear explanation of what needs to be changed about this section, but haven't yet received an answer. Now that it's decided the article isn't going to be deleted, it needs more attention from people who are able to recognize when these removals are being justified with vague or dubious reasons. 2600:1004:B146:7C71:C16E:37FA:6C52:4ACF (talk) 23:01, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Both of those removals are currently under discussion above, feel free to join. Editors have provided policy-based reasons for both examples, feel free to explain why you do not feel that we are applying policy correctly. I explained what should be changed in the Global variation of IQ scores discussion above.

Keep in mind that "prevailing views" and "consensus" need to be based on our policies and guidelines, not the number of editors supporting each side. –dlthewave ☎ 01:39, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

the solution to that is for people to stop keep putting it in. Guy (help!) 14:08, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Move request?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

• Race and intelligence myth
• Race and intelligence fallacy
• Race and intelligence debate
• Race and intelligence controversy

---

Is it worth starting a move request proposing some/all of above titles (or any other titles)? Levivich (talk) 07:02, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

The AfD had plenty of people arguing that "History of the Race and Intelligence Controversy" was the sub page of this one. By that argument, the most logical title of this page, which also addresses the concerns (I think) that the current title is itself POV, would be "Race and Intelligence Controversy". -- Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 07:57, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

@Sirfurboy: Thanks, I added "...controversy" to the list above. Levivich (talk) 08:01, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

History of the race and intelligence controversy should perhaps be renamed to "Race and intelligence controversy". This article should not be renamed to anything including "controversy" because this point of this article is to summarize the investigation into, evidence of, and proposed causes of any relationships between race and intelligence. I would support a renaming of this article to Race, ethnicity, and intelligence or something of that sort, as some of the investigation here examines differences between sub-racial or ethnic groups, which dovetails into things like Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence. Jweiss11 (talk) 08:48, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

A title of "Race, ethnicity, and intelligence" would be okay with me as well. Many sources note that race and ethnicity are often mixed together, and the present page covers both race and ethnicity, but only one is mentioned in the title. --AndewNguyen (talk) 10:15, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

“Controversy” implies that there’s two legitimate views here. There’s not. It’s like having an article on the “9/11 Hoax controversy” or something. “Fallacy” is inaccurate (a fallacy is a logical mistake, this here is just a fringe, empirically unsupported view) but at least gets closer to the crux of the problem. “Debate” has same issue as “controversy”. Volunteer Marek 09:07, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Okay so the question of what the best title should be is never going to be an easy one, but let's first consider the reason for changing: as has been demonstrated, there are very many editors who agree that the current title has an inherent POV bias. It implies that "race and intelligence" is a thing - which some people think it is, and others do not. The implication of the title is clearly POV and there are examples in the AfD of people saying the article should be kept but that a change of title to deal with this issue is appropriate. Thus the title should be changed (although - once we decide on a title, no doubt we will need to test the consensus on that point). Before we do, we must agree a new title, and it is essential that the new title not have the same POV bias issue. Thus "Race, ethnicity, and intelligence" is no good. It just adds in a new nebulous term of ethnicity into the mix. That one cannot stand. However, I don't think putting "fallacy", "myth" or anything else like that into the title is any good either, because that then implies that race and intelligence is not a thing. It says up front that there is no link between race and intelligence. That may well be true, but it is still undeniably POV. That is why I propose controversy as the neutral term. It is undeniable that there is a controversy, and so putting that in the title is not POV. In describing the controversy you describe the science. You don't need to focus on the history, because there is an article on that. Instead this article concentrates on the current controversy. If another neutral title is available that is not already used then we can consider that. If not, I commend adding "controversy" as the title that is most likely to reach general consensus, because (despite any imperfections we feel) it is the most neutral available. -- Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 10:46, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't have a strong opinion about this, but I should note that the title "race and intelligence" is consistent with the titles of a lot of other "X and intelligence" articles. Here are a few examples:

• Environment and intelligence
• Fertility and intelligence
• Height and intelligence
• Neuroscience and intelligence
• Religiosity and intelligence

I don't interpret these titles as saying one variable is necessarily causing the other, but only that researchers have investigated the relation between the two variables. In any case, when we consider renaming this article, we ought to consider this policy: Wikipedia:Consistency in article titles. 2600:1004:B14C:ABF6:78E5:CE46:DA06:2061 (talk) 11:15, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

As happens repeatedly on this talk page, we're getting away from the basic fact that, according to scientific consensus, there's no evidence that one race is inferior or superior to others in intelligence: first of all, because the tendency to divide people into races is not based on biology but on social and political exigencies; second, because intelligence is a complicated concept that goes far beyond whatever is measured by IQ tests; third, because heritability research measures individual variation, not differences between races; fourth, because whatever measures one wants to use to measure mental skills are hugely influenced by socioeconomic factors, quality of schools, etc. The unsupported claim of a connection between race and intelligence has a long history of being used by racists to justify policies that have caused immense suffering and death. For example, because of the draconian anti-immigrant policies enacted in the US in the 1920s (justified by the belief, supposedly supported by early IQ testing, that people coming from southern and eastern Europe were genetically inferior to those from other parts of Europe) many thousands of Jews were unable to escape the Holocaust by coming to the US.

The first two of the proposed titles, Race and intelligence myth/fallacy, reflect this reality. The other two do not. NightHeron (talk) 13:19, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

You just post a long list of claims with no sources. These are the same claims you have been making for months. It doesn't look good when the other editors can easily point to any number of high quality academic sources, and you just keep repeating. Mainstream textbooks and researcher surveys are all in disagreement of the exact opposite claim than what you are making. I don't know what to say. AndewNguyen (talk) 06:11, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

There are plenty of references in the article Scientific racism and other related articles, as well as earlier in this talk page. There's no need to give references every time an editor points out that WP:FALSEBALANCE or favorable coverage of fringe views such as climate change denial, Holocaust denial, white supremacy, etc. are contrary to policy here. NightHeron (talk) 13:02, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

AndewNguyen, the sources are in the article. And beware: scientific racism is still racism. Guy (help!) 14:06, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

• Support myth as technically correct (the best kind of correct!) and not giving undue weight to fringe ideologies. Guy (help!) 14:07, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

It seems unlikely that myth will get a strong consensus. Is there some middle ground that could be found? How about Race and intelligence hypothesis? Consistency fans should be happy, as we already have titles like Aquatic ape hypothesis, Gaia hypothesis, etc. - MrOllie (talk) 15:16, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

"Hypothesis" has the same problem that "controversy" and "debate" as, per Volunteer Marek above. It's a middle ground only in the sense of FALSEBALANCE. NightHeron (talk) 15:39, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

• Race and intelligence myth appears to be a viable potential title. --K.e.coffman (talk) 08:07, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

• I'll go along with Race and intelligence myth. It doesn't need a strong consensus, only a consensus. The present title doesn't have a consensus, strong or otherwise. NightHeron (talk) 13:20, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

• Support: Race and intelligence myth.   // Timothy :: talk  01:33, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

• Support Race and intelligence myth - This accurately presents the connection between race and intelligence as a fringe point of view. Words like "debate" and "controversy" imply that there is mainstream disagreement on the topic. –dlthewave ☎ 02:55, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose move to Race and intelligence myth as this would invoke a denialist effort to subvert neutral presentation of facts with an ideological point of view. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:06, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

The word denialist is used for fringe views that deny the consensus: Holocaust denialism, climate change denialism, etc. It is you, not us, who are denying the scientific consensus that there is no evidence that some races are inferior to other races, and it is you who are calling for a FALSEBALANCE between a fringe white supremacist POV and the scientific consensus. NightHeron (talk) 03:18, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm not arguing that any races are "inferior" to any others. The "denialism" I'm invoking is a sort of blank slate denialism. Do you want to argue that Steven Pinker is a fringe white supremacist? Jweiss11 (talk) 03:25, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

No, but Jensen, Rushton, Lynn, Piffer, Gottfredson & the Pioneer Fund certainly are. Your accusation of denialism against editors who don't want the article to give a FALSEBALANCE between the Pioneer Fund and the scientific consensus is a strange use of the word. NightHeron (talk) 03:44, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

AE Notice

I've opened an Arbitration Enforcement request related to this article. The discussion can be found at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Jweiss11. –dlthewave ☎ 19:37, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

In closing this I remind all editors here that Arbitration Enforcement is not meant to be a forum to gain an advantage in a content dispute. Barkeep49 (talk) 20:53, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Circumstantial Evidence

Made my first edit to this page. For those unhappy I removed the wording about circumstantial evidence, here is page 447 of Hunt (2010). Worth reading that with a running start and to the end of the chapter. Hunt is not saying what we said he was saying. In removing one ref to Hunt, I did first check and we do cite that exact section elsewhere, so no refs were lost.

I will also add that paragraph 1 of the lead already describes what Hunt means by circumstantial evidence, so there is no need to say it again. -- Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 22:55, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Here are the relevant paragraphs from Hunt's book:

(p. 434-435) "Rushton and Jensen (and Lynn) are correct in saying that the 100% environmental hypothesis cannot be maintained. Nisbett's extreme statement [that the racial IQ gaps are 100% environmental] has virtually no chance of being true. However, the 100% environmental hypothesis is something of a stalking horse. Many researchers who are primarily interested in environmental differences associated with racial and ethnic differences in intelligence would not be at all perturbed by an ironclad demonstration that, say, 3% the gap is due to genetics. The real debate is over the identity and size of genetic and environmental influences on group differences in intelligence, not the existence of either one."

(p. 436) "Plausible cases can be made for both genetic and environmental contributions to differences in intelligence. The evidence required to quantify the the relative sizes of these contributions to group differences is lacking. The relative sizes of environmental and genetic influences will vary over time and place. Some of these influences may be amenable to change, while others will be resistant to change. The relevant questions can be studied. Denials or overly precise statements on either the pro-genetic or pro-environmental site do not move the debate forward. They generate heat rather than light."

(p. 447) "It could be that there are genetic constraints that make inequality of cognition across groups inevitable. This hypothesis can never be ruled out, for doing so would require proving the null hypothesis and, as any good statistics instructor will tell you, that is a logical impossibility. It is worth remembering that no genes related to the difference in cognitive skills across the various racial and ethnic groups have ever been discovered. The argument for genetic differences has been carried forward largely by circumstantial evidence. Of course, tomorrow afternoon genetic mechanisms producing racial and ethnic differences in intelligence might be discovered, but there have been a lot of investigations, and tomorrow has not come for quite some time now."

Taking these three quotes together, the new wording does not accurately reflect Hunt's opinion. The current lead of the article states, "At present, there is no evidence that these differences in test scores have a genetic component." And later on, the article states, "Currently there is no evidence that the test score gap has a genetic component." However, it is clear from the first quote (the one on pages 434-435) that Hunt does think there is sufficient evidence to conclude the gap is not 100% environmental, but there is insufficient evidence to know the size of the genetic contribution, and it might be very small. Can you modify your edit to more accurately reflect Hunt's overall opinion, including the quote from pages 434-435? 2600:1004:B14B:BF17:DD28:947E:9154:ADCF (talk) 23:36, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Incidentally, the new wording slightly misrepresents the Mackintosh and Nisbett et al. sources as well. Here is what page 358 of Mackintosh's book says:

"In spite of claims to the contrary, there is remarkably little evidence that the difference is genetic in origin"

And here is the relevant quote from Nisbett et al:

"About the Black–White difference in IQ, which at the time was about 15 points, the Neisser et al. (1996) article stated, 'There is not much direct evidence on this point, but what there is fails to support a genetic hypothesis.' That conclusion stands today: There has been no new direct evidence on the question."

Secondary sources that argue for an environmental cause typically include these qualifications, saying there is "very little evidence" or "no direct evidence" for a genetic contribution. They virtually never state outright that there is no evidence, which is what the article currently states. It is not an accurate reflection of these sources for the article to use a wording that's stronger than the sources it's citing. 2600:1004:B14B:BF17:DD28:947E:9154:ADCF (talk) 00:11, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing this up for discussion and providing a reference, but that source does not seem to justify your edit— in fact, I believe it says the opposite. The Hunt source you provided says The argument for genetic differences has been carried forward largely by circumstantial evidence. In other words, there is evidence for genetic differences, albeit circumstantial. However, your edits (here, and here) now say that there is no evidence. That conflicts with the source. Can we please bring the text back in line with the source? Or perhaps I'm missing something. If so, can you please explain how the source justifies the edit? Thank you.

Furthermore, now that we are editing the lede paragraph, I see some obvious ways that it could be improved. First, we could use language much closer to Hunt and remove the double-negative: how about we say "At present, the evidence for genetic differences is only circumstantial." And second, we should definitely include a summary of the environmental position as well as this hereditarian position, to maintain WP:DUE NPOV. Perhaps we could say "It is also possible that environmental factors explain most of the IQ gap." But I think we could say something more specific. Could someone help summarize the environmental position for the lede?

Finally, I recall that we all agreed not to make any edits to the lede without first discussing them on the talk page, so I suggest we revert this lede paragraph edit until we find consensus on the improvement. (On second thought, I'm not concerned about this.)

Thanks again for bringing this up! --Toomim (talk) 00:02, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Can someone tell me if the following is an accurate description of what people mean by "circumstantial"?

Define the three variables: R, I, and G for self-reported Race, IQ score, and Genes.

• Data show a statistical correlation between R and I
• Data show G has a causal effect on I
• Data show G has a causal effect on R (ie. one's self-reported race correlates with their 23andme)

This evidence leads some people to infer that the correlation between R and I is probably caused by a common effect of G. However, nobody has actually observed a gene that determines both the race that someone calls themselves, and also their IQ score. It is possible that completely different genes impact I from those that impact R. So, although the "circumstances" are consistent with a theory where the same genes are causing both I and R, we haven't actually observed a particular gene directly affecting both.

Is that what people mean? Toomim (talk) 08:03, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

IP: Thanks for quoting these. I have no problem with finding wording that correctly supports the status of the science. but what we have in the lead now is "... whether and to what extent these differences reflect environmental factors as opposed to genetic ones, as well as what the definitions of "race" and "intelligence" are, and whether they can be objectively defined, is the subject of much debate. At present, there is no evidence that these differences in test scores have a genetic component." (emphasis mine). I think this adequately summarises Hunt's position. The reader can see that this is at present and does not need a qualification "but one day it may be different".

Toomin, I was not aware of any decision not to change the lead, but I understand that editors tend to gravitate to the lead and ignore the greater article, and this can be unproductive. However, if you check my edits, I changed the main first and then simply updated the lead to match. The reason is that the lead must summarise the article. If it is not summarising the article it needs changing. It should not be changed in a way that does not summarise the article. I am sure the lead can further be improved, and as long as it is an accurate summary of the main, and that it remains a summary, that should not be controversial (although I am willing to bet it will be ;) ) Thanks.-- Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 08:20, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Sirfurboy, you aren't really addressing my point. The quote from pages 434-435 makes it clear that Hunt does think that there is some (indirect) evidence for a genetic component. If Hunt did not think that, he would not have concluded that "the 100% environmental hypothesis cannot be maintained", and that "(t)he real debate is over the identity and size of genetic and environmental influences on group differences in intelligence, not the existence of either one." If Hunt thought there were no evidence at all for a genetic component, why would he have concluded that environmental factors cannot explain the entire gap?

Hunt presents this conclusion in the context of summarizing Rushton and Jensen's argument for a genetic component, so the obvious meaning of this paragraph is that he considers some of the indirect evidence presented by Rushton and Jensen to be valid. He is clear about this in the previous paragraph as well: "In general, I find their arguments not so much wrong as vastly overstated. But overstatement does not mean that there is no point to them."

The other two sources (Mackintosh and Nisbett et al.) also do not support the statement that there is no evidence for a genetic component. These sources only say that there is very little evidence for it, and no direct evidence for it.

The wording was a more accurate reflection of these sources before your edit. Since Toomim is concerned about the double negative of "no non-circumstantial" evidence, I would support saying "no direct evidence" in both the body and the lead, which is the wording used in the Nisbett et al. paper. 2600:1004:B104:18E8:5017:B34A:213B:7FF (talk) 09:12, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Toomim's attempt to attach scientific meaning to the unscientific term "non-circumstantial evidence," in addition to being OR, doesn't make much sense. Putting 3 unrelated statements together and claiming you have a syllogism or partial syllogism is neither logical nor scientific. Genetic variation between individuals has nothing to do with claims of genetic explanations for differences between population groups. Correlation by itself gives zero evidence for causality. Because Hunt uses non-scientific terminology in a speculative statement and does not explain what he means by circumstantial vs non-circumstantial (and it's not the job of Wikipedia editors to speculate about what he means), his textbook is not RS for this statement, although it is for other things. It often happens that a respected scholar makes a statement showing some degree of support for a fringe view. For example, the great physicist Freeman Dyson, who just died, gave support to climate change denialism. That does not turn a fringe view into a non-fringe view. Hunt speculates that three well-known white supremacists might not be completely wrong. Making that statement a focal point of this article violates WP:UNDUE, WP:FRINGE, and WP:FALSEBALANCE. NightHeron (talk) 10:45, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

IP: Thanks for your input. I have read Hunt carefully, and most of the chapter can be read by any editor using the link I provided to Google Books. It seems to me that Hunt is quite clear that (a) there is currently no evidence for a genetic link, (b) that some genetic input into intelligence is likely, but very unlikely to be anything like the size claimed by Rushton, (c) that the heritability of IQ, while likely to have some truth, is not clearly going to be associated with any concept of continent of origin. He says more. He does not say that we will ever explain difference in test scores based on genetics, but he does posit that we might find group difference in distribution of alleles associated with intelligence. He believes the questions are unanswerable until that happens. The chapter is interesting and enlightening, but we need to be careful of a simplistic summary that misrepresents him. I would oppose any summary that says that intelligence is 100% environmental, but we do not say that. It is a straw man (as Hunt suggests). Instead, the current summary says "At present, there is no evidence that these differences in test scores have a genetic component." That summary is correct. Even if and when we find genes associated with heritability of IQ, the current state of what we know about genetics of group difference makes it astonishingly unlikely that a simplistic link will explain the IQ variation between black people and white people (largely in America).

That is not to say that we should leave the heritability section of the article alone. We can definitely update and expand that. I merely removed a misrepresentation of Hunt regarding the wording "circumstantial evidence". It is definitely relevant that Hunt and others are quite clear that we expect some genetic contribution to intelligence. I will read that section again and see if I can see a way to improve it. Perhaps other editors can do so too. The article must not say that intelligence is 100% environmental. I don't think it does say that. Yet we need to beware of a sloppy link between saying that intelligence has a genetic component and leaping to "thus the test gap is explained". That would be a non sequitur. Consider: although intelligence is likely to have heritable components, that does not mean the IQ differences noted are relevant. Those differences can be 100% environmental and intelligence can still be heritable. -- Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 11:13, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Sirfurboy, you seem to be confusing the overall heritability of IQ with the question of whether or not group differences are heritable. Hunt is very clear in the book's eighth chapter, "the genetic basis of intelligence", that variation in IQ scores among individuals is heavily influenced by genetics, and this conclusion also is stated in the APA report. Among professionals in the relevant fields, this conclusion isn't controversial. However, this does not necessarily mean that racial IQ gaps must have a genetic basis as well, because it is possible for variation among individuals to have a different cause than differences between group averages. Recent studies such as Lee et al. 2018 have identified many of the genetic variants that contribute to individual variation in cognitive performance, but research into whether or not the distribution of these variants differs between ethnic groups is still in its infancy.

The article's section "heritability within and between groups" does not currently explain this well. It appears to have been written by someone who doesn't understand this concept, but it's somewhat better explained in older versions of the article, such as the version from 5 years ago.

Your confusing of these two concepts may be causing some confusion for you about what Hunt is saying. In the section where he discusses the Rushton and Jensen paper, he is talking specifically about whether or not there is adequate evidence to conclude that there is a genetic component to differences between ethnic group averages. He isn't talking about the overall heritability of IQ in that section. His discussion about the genetic basis of individual variation in IQ scores is in the book's eighth chapter, around 200 pages earlier. 2600:1004:B151:D5C8:CD41:D6AC:F49A:96 (talk) 12:17, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

No, I understand he is talking about group difference, and if I appear to say otherwise, I apologise for my lack of clarity. But when he is talking about group difference, he is saying something more subtle than "Black/White." When he speaks of continent of origin as a proxy for race, he then clarifies with discussion of variability. So what is he saying? I think he is saying that it is very likely that we will discover some variability between groups, but he does not suggest these groups will broadly configure with race, nor does he say the correlation will be strong, nor does he say it will explain the difference noted in IQ testing. He says, quite rightly, that one day we will be able to say that group X has a greater distribution of certain alleles associated with intelligence than group Y. I might add, though he does not say it, that group X may also perhaps have the same average number of these alleles as group Y but could just have greater variability, with the expectation of greater spread of the distribution. Heritability of IQ in individuals is clearly going to figure, to some extent, in heritability of IQ in groups, as there is almost no chance that groups will be entirely homogenous across disparate populations, even though we know that the history of human population is a history of mixture. Yet genetic populations don't neatly line up with notions of race. As long as we are talking about black people and white people here (as this article does), we are in danger of oversimplifying the subject and creating misunderstanding rather than enlightenment. We should therefore be very careful not to suggest something beyond the sourced evidence. My edit removed a statement that misrepresented Hunt. That is all. -- Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 13:01, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Let's leave aside the question of Hunt's opinion for for a moment, and look at the other two sources cited for that sentence (Mackintosh and Nisbett et al). Mackintosh says there is very little evidence for a genetic component, and Nisbett et al. say there is no direct evidence for a genetic component. Your edit summarized these sources with the statement, "Currently there is no evidence that the test score gap has a genetic component."

Do you not see how your edit slightly misrepresents those two sources? Saying there is very little evidence for something, or no direct evidence, is not exactly the same as saying there is no evidence. Most secondary sources do not make as strong a statement as the statement made in your edit, and the article needs to reflect what sources say. 2600:1004:B110:F899:1956:2391:D5E7:7747 (talk) 22:15, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

I have put "direct" in, because, as you say, it is a word that Nisbett uses, and we are citing Nisbett among others. He means, of course, that there are test score differences etc, but nothing that links it to the genetic hypothesis. That is clear, but as he says "no direct evidence" I have put it into the main and lead. Of course, Nisbett does not say "at present", but I won't touch that. -- Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 22:53, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Two comments: (1) Speculation about what future evidence might or might not show does not belong on Wikipedia, per WP:CRYSTAL. (2) It is interesting that when writers speculate about what future evidence might show there always seems to be an assumption, explicit or implicit, that if future evidence shows a genetic basis for group differences in intelligence, it will be to the advantage of whites. It seems to me more likely that the future evidence will show that whites tend toward the stupid side and blacks are, on average, more intelligent genetically. Given the history of slavery and colonialism, we should be surprised that there are so many examples of achievement by blacks. (A similar argument can be made that some day women will be proven to be genetically more intelligent than men.) Also, it's still the case, and has been for a long time, that white males have largely controlled the decision-making that seems to be leading to ecological dystopia, and whites have been voting in some quite unintelligent ways in several white-dominated countries. Because of the difficulty in predicting whether the hypothetical future evidence will support white supremacy (as Jensen/Rushton/Lynn assume) or black supremacy in intelligence, maybe we should just agree to adhere to WP:CRYSTAL. NightHeron (talk) 13:24, 6 March 2020 (UTC)