Talk:The IQ Controversy, the Media and Public Policy

I no longer support deletion of this article, but I do support a rename and a top-to-bottom rewrite with broader sourcing.

An experienced Wikipedian who monitors Article for Deletion discussions has convinced me to stop recommending deletion of this article. I agree with his view of the current state of the article: it looks like POV-pushing, and the article needs to be renamed to the title of the book by Snyderman and Rothman and to be rewritten almost from the ground up. Some of the sources now cited in the article will still be useful. It will be very useful for other editors to have the actual article by S and R, and their actual book, at hand as editing continues, as I do. Other reliable sources related to the topic will also be useful, and all of you are welcome to recommend more sources. See you here and on the article page itself as the AfD fizzles out for lack of support and the article editing resumes. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 14:59, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

The AfD result was (once again) no consensus. Let's discuss how to improve the article. If I hear no objection, I will soon rename the article to be the same as the name of the book produced by Snyderman and Rothman, and I will look to the WikiProject on books for guidance on how to improve the article. I appreciate suggestions from other editors here. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 22:00, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I support your suggestion for new name.--Victor Chmara (talk) 07:12, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

As you can see, done. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 15:37, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Last paragraph

Currently, the last paragraph reads as follows:

Sociologists such as Irving Horowitz and Peter Conrad have made comments on the role of the media. Writing partly in his capacity as managing editor of the publishing company, Transaction Publishers, that had published the Snyderman-Rothman book and more recently a controversial book by hereditarian researcher J. Philippe Rushton, Horowitz (1995) pointed out that researchers into heredity and intelligence like Rothman "sought media attention as a mechanism for making their policy views known." Conrad (1997) noted that Snyderman and Rothman echoed the claims of Richard Herrnstein, another psychologist of the hereditarian school, in claiming that "the media, relative to the scientific experts surveyed, were overly critical of testing and the heritability of IQ and that it continually manifested an environmental bias in explanations of IQ differences between blacks and whites." Conrad on the contrary suggests that this has been the reaction of the press every time the hereditarian views have become the centre of media attention and that the resulting "avalanche of commentary pieces" has inadvertently promulgated the original message, giving it "unintentional credence".

The paragraph misrepresents the sources it uses, because in the sources:

- Horowitz does not say that he writes in the capacity of S & R's publisher
- Horowitz does not mention S & R's study or book
- S & R are not even mentioned in the same sentence in the Horowitz piece, and when they are briefly mentioned, it is not directly connected the book or the study
- the last sentence in the paragraph makes it look like as if Conrad were talking about S & R's work, when he is in fact talking about The Bell Curve.

According to WP:NOR, to "demonstrate that you are not adding original research, you must be able to cite reliable published sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and that directly support the material as presented". As Horowitz's article does not mention the subject of this article, i.e. S & R's book and study, Horowitz's article is not directly related to the topic and therefore cannot be used as a source. At best, Horowitz's claims with regard to Rothman (and only him, not Snyderman) are indirectly related to the topic, but that is not enough.

The only part of the paragraph that does not violate any Wikipedia content policies is the following:

Conrad (1997) noted that Snyderman and Rothman echoed the claims of Richard Herrnstein, another psychologist of the hereditarian school, in claiming that "the media, relative to the scientific experts surveyed, were overly critical of testing and the heritability of IQ and that it continually manifested an environmental bias in explanations of IQ differences between blacks and whites."

We will have to either retain only this bit of the paragraph, or remove it entirely. I think it should be removed entirely. Any comments before I do so?--Victor Chmara (talk) 12:08, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Who else has the Horowitz source at hand? I'm not as convinced as you appear to be that to keep out information from someone who is knowledgeable about the origin of the book and about its author upholds Wikipedia policy, but I would have to see the source to decide how to resolve this issue. Maybe there is a better source that speaks more directly to that issue anyhow. I do have the S and R 1987 article at hand, and I wonder if any Wikipedian has yet added to the Wikipedia article their acknowledgment that Richard Herrnstein helped them design their survey of psychologists? That, it seems to me, is quite important information about the composition of the book, and definitely belongs in the article, as it is irrefutably well sourced. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 18:24, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Horowitz's article is partially available here[1]. That version contains all that he has to say about S & R, namely:

To be sure, in a thoughtful and sympathetic early review of the Rushton book in The National Review (September 12, 1994), Mark Snyderman wamed of the barrage to come. "Philippe Rushton has written his own epitaph. Any genetic predisposition toward the defense of one's race only adds to the near impossibility of rational response to the scientific study of race in a world that has seen the Holocaust and racial subjugation...Rushton's work may be ignored by the fearful, damned by the liberals, and misused by the racists. It is unlikely to be truly understood by anyone." Subsequent events have proved Snyderman prophetic; although Malcom Brown's review in The New York Times Sunday Book Review made a valiant effort at understanding and empathy.
...
In the 1960s there was the work of the late William Shockley, in the seventies that of Arthur Jensen, and in the 1980s that of a group of people much closer to media studies, such as Stanley Rothman. These individuals sought media attention as a mechanism for making their policy views known.

Horowitz may be knowledgeable about this topic, but in that article he does not directly say anything about it. If you think Herrnstein's involvement should be mentioned, then we could use the short version of Conrad's argument quoted above, and mention Herrnstein's involvement in that context.--Victor Chmara (talk) 19:52, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I should clear up one factual issue. The Horowitz (1995) article, which I have at hand, is headed by a boxed paragraph that includes the statement "This statement relects the views of its author, not only as an academic concerned with policy-making and social sciences, but also as a publisher of academic and scholarly books, and as a citizen who take the First Amendment seriously." So Horowitz was writing as

1) an academic,

2) the publisher at Transaction Books (as is abundantly made clear from other context in the full source),

and

3) a United States citizen.

It's very valuable to have a book's publisher available as a source when editing a Wikipedia article about a book. I didn't write the paragraph being discussed here, so I don't have any ego invested in how it is now written. Maybe the paragraph needs a rewrite. (And I think the Wikipedia article could end in a much different way, but it will take some work to lead up to a better ending after more editing.) It will be good for other editors, I think, to take a look at the source (I was able to obtain my copy of the Horowitz article from a print copy kept at my county library system) for perspective on the composition of the book and the milieu in which the book was published. I don't see any Wikipedia policy violation here. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 01:00, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

According to WP:NOR, a source to must be directly related to the topic of the article, and it must directly support the material in the article. In other words, we can only use direct quotes from sources or paraphrases of them. Horowitz's article is about Rushton and he writes partially in his capacity as Rushton's publisher, but nowhere in the article is there even an inkling that he has ever published anything by S & R, let alone that he were writing as their publisher. Horowitz's article has nothing to do with S & R's book, and the only reason Mathsci used it was because it contains a brief, somewhat negative characterization of Rothman. If there was a source saying that "Stanley Rothman is a brilliant and meticulous scholar, and his research warrants great attention", and this source was about one of Rothman's other works and not directly related to The IQ Controversy book, do you think it would be okay to quote it in this article? Perhaps we should ask about this at WP:NOR/N.--Victor Chmara (talk) 09:25, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm happy to hear from other editors who are reading this talk page about that question. I invite everyone who is reading along to have the Snyderman and Rothman book at hand (noting which company published it) and the Horowitz article at hand as the discussion continues. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 13:48, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I looked over the Horowitz article and agree that the paragraph looks like original research. In the time I've been quietly paying attention to this article, I've seen little support for keeping it. I think it's probably time to can it if no one else can give WBB a reason it should stay. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 22:23, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Before doing the revert, maybe it would be a good idea to bring up this interpretation of original research policy on the appropriate noticeboard, with a link to the recent ArbCom case findings. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 00:36, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

That seems like overkill to me - I don't think there's enough of a dispute here to drag this onto a noticeboard. Though, if you really strongly disagree that this is original research, then maybe it makes sense to do that. Do you have an argument against Victor’s point? -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 07:29, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it makes much difference whether we include the stuff about Horowitz or not, but on the other hand I wouldn't mind if we brought this up on the NOR noticeboard just to get some outside opinions on this, because there are endless debates about sources and synth issues in these R&I articles.--Victor Chmara (talk) 11:20, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good either way to me. I'd say the issues with this paragraph have been discussed long enough to get rid of it, but if someone wants to run it by the NOR noticeboard first, that might be useful too. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 00:53, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

I just brought this up at WP:NOR/N.--Victor Chmara (talk) 17:42, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

One week and no response at NOR/N. Is it ok to remove the paragraph now, or do we need to try and find another avenue of dispute resolution first? -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 20:21, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

I removed from the paragraph a claim attributed to Conrad because he did not actually write it. The bit from Conrad still there is pretty irrelevant, so I think it could be removed, too. The references to Horowitz's article are very dubious because he does not mention the book at all. Would anyone object if I removed the entire paragraph?--Victor Chmara (talk) 10:10, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Looks like no one objects. I support canning it.

Anything else about the article you think should be cleaned up while you're at it? I see that the "reception" section has been renamed "publication background" even though the study/book's reception is what it's describing. And there's also a new "reception" section which is empty. There's another empty section too, "sources and citations" even though all of the sources are already in the "references" section. Not sure what he was going for here, but I don't think it's a very good way to organize the article. I also see from the discussion above that there was never a clear resolution about the Templer and Sternberg exchange, maybe that's something that could be improved too. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 23:44, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Someone objects. I noted above I think that the analysis that there is a sourcing problem for that paragraph is incorrect. P.S. The new sections were added in light of the Wikipedia guidelines for articles about books (which you are all encouraged to read). I or you or any other editor could move around existing content to get the article's content into that order, to prepare for further improvement of the article on the basis of good sources like the Horowitz article. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 01:30, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

...Okay, so now we're back where we started. It was posted at NOR/N, got no responses. I asked whether we were ready to remove the paragraph now, or whether we need to find yet another avenue of dispute resolution. So do we? -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 02:44, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Weiji, I don't think you're being reasonable. Every time we've brought up the idea of dispute resolution and tried to get into specifics of why you think it should stay, you've disappeared from the discussion. But when you've been gone for long enough that others of us are ready to edit the article, you reappear just long enough to say that's not acceptable.

If you object to the paragraph being removed, that's fine. But your involvement is necessary if you want to influence what happens with it. It seems to really go against the spirit of collaborative editing to participate in a discussion only to say you disagree with a change, and then not make any effort to reach a consensus about it. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 15:48, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

You are entitled to your own opinion (about whether or not I am being reasonable) but you are not entitled to your own facts (about what the current consensus is here). My statement is that the paragraph as it now is is well sourced, fairly written, appropriate for a neutral point of view encyclopedia article, and not a problem under any Wikipedia policy or guideline. My further statement is that the paragraph will no longer be the last paragraph of the article if the article is further edited according to the usual Wikipedia outline for articles on nonfiction books. I have found some sources citing the book and those will add content to the article by showing how other authors have applied what the book says in their writings. That's what I'd like to add to the article rather than debating endlessly about a paragraph that was fine when it was written and is still fine today (but no longer belongs at the very end of the article). -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 18:47, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

You've said all of this before - how the paragraph is well-sourced and not a problem, etc - and when Victor pressed you about how it met the definition for OR, you haven't explained why you believe any of this is the case. When he explained this to you at the beginning of this thread, the only thing you had to say in response to him [2] was that you wanted other editors' input before removal. We can move forward with this issue if you can present a detailed argument for why you disagree with Victor about the paragraph being OR, or are willing to discuss the possibility of dispute resolution. Continuing to claim the paragraph is fine while refusing to go into detail or discuss dispute resolution is basically just filibustering. This has been going on for a month.

I think the article is basically okay apart from the issues Victor has been trying to change in the past month. I don't see that any other sources need to be added to it. Maybe it can be improved in other ways, but from my perception this possible OR issue in this paragraph is the biggest issue this article has, so fixing it ought to be a priority. In preventing the paragraph's removal and also refusing to engage in detailed discussion about it, you're preventing progress from being made on the article, and that's why I'm not content to just "move on" as you suggest. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 05:54, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm adding WikiProject Books standard templates and Infoboxes to the article and talk page

While we discuss other edits, I'll refer to WikiProject Books for information about how to put together a Wikipedia article about a book. You are all welcome to advise me on how to do this right. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 13:54, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

removed figure

The figure I removed appears to be synthesis, and misrepresents the data by excluding the number of people who did not respond to the question. aprock (talk) 17:55, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Confliction in paragraph.

The phrase "The study found that psychologists were not in agreement about the heritability of intelligence" conflicts with the following sentence which states "almost all felt that it played a substantial role" and is WP:OR. BlackHades (talk) 17:17, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

The sentence continues: " ... but half of those that felt qualified to reply in this section agreed that the there was not enough evidence to estimate heritability accurately.". aprock (talk) 20:06, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Then it would make more sense for it to be a part of that phrase instead of making the implication that there's no agreement for everything. This is WP:OR. Although to insert that in for the 2nd half, the 1st half has to also state that there is a consensus agreement. You can't do one without the other. But it would make even more sense to just leave it the way it was. There was nothing wrong with the way it was. Your change has removed NPOV. BlackHades (talk) 21:05, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

It is a part of that phrase. Is English not your primary language? aprock (talk) 21:46, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Is it yours? Either make it part of the 2nd half or don't insert it in. If you're going to insert it in the 2nd half, balance out the 1st half. It's not that hard. BlackHades (talk) 22:00, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Done. One part has agreement, the other doesn't. I made it more clear. BlackHades (talk) 22:07, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Your edit isn't even supported by the source. The poll has nothing to say about "substantial". aprock (talk) 22:10, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

You do realize your revert still includes "substantial" right? BlackHades (talk) 22:14, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, my mistake, I misread the sentence. I'll self-revert. aprock (talk) 22:29, 2 March 2013 (UTC)