Talk:Race and intelligence (research)

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Contents 1 Newbie question 2 Title change? 3 merge 4 content 5 Academic Opinion

[edit] Newbie question

I noticed that this article is inappropriate. What to do?

Here is what you can do.

1. Start by telling us what's wrong with it.
2. Suggest sources to improve it.
3. Just start editing it yourself, but remember you need to cite sources for things you add, and avoiding removing anything that has a source (look for the <ref></ref> tags, these are sources.
4. Be bold and help us improve it.

I agree with you, it needs a lot of work! futurebird 04:11, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Title change?

What is the reason for the title change? I'm not saying it a bad thing...futurebird 02:01, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] merge

this article should be split up into the three components --W.R.N. 07:44, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

done. three sub-articles are created. --JereKrischel 05:52, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Great! futurebird 05:53, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

one of them is locked, so you couldn't have merged. --W.R.N. 09:37, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] content

what is or is supposed to be in this article that isn't in the sub-articles (as detail) or in the main article (as summaries)? --W.R.N. 09:37, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

this is the question that needs to be addressed regarding this article. right now it's just a dup. --W.R.N. 22:48, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

We could ask the same thing of the main article "Race and intelligence" It's a summary, since the combined content of the subarticles would simply be too long. futurebird 23:03, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

The main article is the root of this web of articles. All content should be ultimately distilled by summary down to it. So, I'm confused. Are you suggesting that the section in the main article is too long? If so, this is a rather indirect way to make that case. Putting my original question another way, what is the function of this article?--W.R.N. 23:16, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Academic Opinion

Should have always been in media portrayal. The scientific community isn't always so supportive of these surveys since "science isn't done by majority rule" It makes so much sense to make this move. Nice work Jere.futurebird 15:16, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

The scientific community isn't always so supportive of these surveys - per the main article discussion thread, critical opinions about an otherwise mainstream subject don't dictate how we present them. the topic of the section that was moved is the topic of the explanations article. it was not about media portryal and there is no reason (citation or otherwise) to claim that it is. --W.R.N. 23:34, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Of course it was not about media portrayal. It was a media portrayal. An opinion poll is clearly media portrayal, and therefore belongs in that section. --JereKrischel 05:21, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

(1) I say it obviously is not a media portrayal. Cite the source that says it is. (2) The content is about explanations, so it should be described in explanations. A summary of a televised debate about explanations would still belong in that article, even though commentary about it as media portrayal would go in the media portrayal article. --W.R.N. 05:25, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

The content isn't about explanations, the content is an opinion poll regarding explanations. An article on explanations would examine explanations, not people's opinions about them. The opinions of viewers of a televised debate about explanations is a media portrayal, and has nothing to do with the actual explanations. --JereKrischel 05:34, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

An article on explanations would examine explanations, not people's opinions about them. - not just any people, but "experts", the people who's opinions fill these articles on a case by case basis. The content of that section is about the distribution of opinions among experts regarding explanations. Because what WP does is report what people think about things, reporting it on an individual case by case (single author) basis is not different than reporting the results of a massive collection of data about what scholars think.

let's drop the TV hypothetical because it seems to confuse rather than enlighten. --W.R.N. 05:44, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I've said it before, a survey of "experts" ain't science. JJJamal 05:46, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

JJJamal, there are a lot of things written in these articles that I can "prove" isn't good science, but that's not how we write articles. --W.R.N. 06:22, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

From Snyderman & Rothman themselves, in their survey report:

Such a survey is needed, but not because it will resolve any of the various controversies surrounding testing; issues of fact are not settled via consensus...A survey of expert opinion will not settle this issue; but it will allow a clearer picture of informed opinion to enter the public debate.

The entire point of the survey, as described by S&R themselves, was to bring public notice to expert opinion -> it was an explicit exercise in media portrayal (attempting to add information to the existing portrayal), and they explicitly state it was not meant to settle any issues of explanations. --JereKrischel 07:30, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

The point of all science is to inform the public about the world and/or to change the world, etc. There's nothing special about that paper which makes it "media portrayal" as compared to the many other papers which make similar claims. Something goes in the "media portrayal" article if what it says is about media portrayal (such as their 1988 book). It goes in explanations if it is talking about explanations.

Perhaps we need to revisit the TV analogy. A TV broadcast is a media event. Say Flynn and Murray debate the cause of the BW gap on CNN. An account of the event that describes it in terms of media portrayal would go in media portrayal. But accounts of what they actually said in the debate about the causes of the BW gap would go in explanations (assuming they had a scholarly debate). The situation is analogous to the S&R 1987 paper, but American Psychologist is a lot less notable as a "media" outlet than CNN. --W.R.N. 08:46, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

A TV broadcast is a media event. Say Flynn and Murray debate the cause of the BW gap. Then someone does a poll of college graduate viewers of that show, and asks them who they thought was correct. This is not an account of what was said in the debate, it is an opinion poll of those who viewed the debate. This situation is analagous to S&R 1987.

Simply put, S&R themselves see their survey not about what the explanations are, but what the opinions of a select group of people are, and how to get that information into the media stream. --JereKrischel 08:50, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Something goes in media portrayal if it is an example of media portrayal, be it a poll, a public relations campaign, or pop-culture TV. Something goes in explanations if it is an example of an explanation. --JereKrischel 08:52, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

And, AFAIK, the point of all science isn't to inform the public or to change the world, but to model and understand it. Although certainly some scientists may be motivated by different goals than others. --JereKrischel 09:06, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm surprised we're not making progress on this. The poll was taken of IQ experts. It was asking about their opinions about "explanations" not their opinions about (say) "a TV debate". A scholarly write-up of the results from the latter poll would most likely be described in the "media portrayal" section. But a write-up of the poll of experts goes in the explanations section because it reports on what experts believe is the cause of the BW gap. If it had polled experts about their views on media portrayal, then it would be described in media portrayal.

The fact that the APA report goes in the same section as the S&R survey and together they make a section called "expert opinion [about the cause of the BW gap]" should make it clear that this is a section that goes in the article the describes scholarly views about the cause of the BW gap. that a survey happened to be the technique that S&R used to arrive at their presentation of expert opinion has nothing to do with where their results should be described. if they had done individual interviews, would you still think it was media portrayal? i would think 'no'. it's the topic of their publication and what we describe about it that dictates its place in WP, not the particulars of their methods. --W.R.N. 05:38, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

The "TV debate" is simply a proxy for the academic debate regarding the source of the B-W gap. The poll was asking their opinions about that academic debate.

But let's try taking a left turn here and suggest some compromises instead of having it one way or the other. Would it be sufficient for you to put the main body of the poll text in "media portrayal", and have a link to it from the "explanations" intro? Can we have our cake and eat it too? --JereKrischel 08:05, 21 February 2007 (UTC)