Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 12

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Brain size info moved to craniometry page

Much of the info on brain size and structure was moved to the craniometry page. But much of that info, such as info on studies using MRI or autopsy, or the info on cephalic indices, is not directly related to craniometry. Perhaps it deserves its own page, maybe "Race and brain structure" or "Race and brain size"? Dd2 30 June 2005 17:36 (UTC)

Go for it. Or that material could be moved back to a subarticle if we employ Summary Style on that section, see below. --Rikurzhen July 5, 2005 15:58 (UTC)

References for IQ gaps in other nations

I continue my Herculean task to check all our references. Two questions for the cognoscenti below. Please help. Arbor 2 July 2005 13:38 (UTC)


15 point catholic/protestant gap

In the same section

The difference between the neighboring white Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland is as large as the differences between whites and blacks in the U.S.[6]

Now, footnote [6] is again an external link (to Myth: some ethnic groups have genetically inferior IQ's (sic)), but that web page is much harder to navigate. What I am looking for is a reference for the catholic/protestant gap. A POV web page isn't good enough for that.Arbor 2 July 2005 13:38 (UTC)

If I read the web-page above correctly, the data might be in

Richard Lynn discussed in Ciaran Benson, "Ireland's 'Low' IQ," pp. 222-23 in Russell Jacoby and Naomi Glauberman (eds.), The Bell Curve Debate (New York: Times Books, 1995).

I don't have that book. Could somebody please, please check it? Currently we seem to rely on a web page, which relies on a survey by Benson of reseach by Jensen. That's simply too long a chain of dependencies. Arbor 5 July 2005 09:54 (UTC)

Moved from Village Pump (misc.)

This was originally posted at the Village Pump: (unsigned, by anon User:12.21.214.77)

"This article was such an eye opener that I hardly know where to begin. Let me begin by appoligizing for my self and my poor writing skills. As a minority type person I am undoutably working with faulty equipment so please make allowences for that. I am certain that the test results for every I.Q. test I have been given and that have showed an I.Q. score around 120 must of been an error, or perhaps I cheated- you know how we are. still my puctuation is really bad I know. Well my grandmother was from Florida, that must explin it. It certainly couldn't be because of the schools I went to. After all the grade school I attended was full of sucessful white students. They did very well. There were only three disruptive minority students in the entire place. And we were not allowed to disrupt the other students. In fact if we asked any questions we were sent into the hall for the rest of the day. Some times in order to insure that we didn't cause any trouble we would be sent to the princibles office before class where we would be carefully monitored, sometimes for days on end. No that school cannot be blamed for my underachievement. Besides I was not reaaly there all that much. I had a very poor attendace record. Now I have learned that is due to my southern heritage. I allways thought it was because when I was 2-3 years old I was subjected to dental experiments which I have always blamed for causing my bones to ache so badly that somedays I can barely walk even to this day. i allways kinda suspected that might of also been the reason I did not begin to get my permanent teeth till I was 13 years old. But I'll bet those things are just a racial quip. I thought having pnumonia 3 times in forth grade becuse we had no heat might of influenced my educational opportunities. Also having malenutrition did not really give me the energy to do a lot. I always felt that our poverty leval income was because my father was never hired, the jobs all went to the white people. Now I know it was just a factor due to his race, he was probably mentally incapable of aquiring and holding down a job. What about when I got older and went to a bigger and better school? Did I do better there? Well I allways got F's in math but I know that was not because of my race. That was because i was a girl according to the head of the math department that everyone knows girls can not learn math. I was however able to raise my grades to a c average by following his adivce which was to stop wasting the teachers time by asking questions and turning in papers. Just be a good girl and go sit by the window with the other 2 girls and smile and wave at the high school boys when they drive by. I guess he was doing me a favor by preparing me for a future under a street lamp. i'm so ungratefull. Besides as the school princple so tactfully put it any attempt at "training" me was a waist of time because anyone could tell just by looking at me I was untrainable. so when I quit school in the 8th grade I was at least right about one thing- people like me are untrainable. We are a drain on society. It is depressing to be genetically inferior but I was greatly uplifted by the final sentence that we have the glorius future hope that some day You might be kind enough to alter us genetically so we will be more like You. You know what I want? I really want straight blond hair, blue eyes, and different facial features. I have noticed that people with these things also seem to do much better in life. After all hair, eyes, and faces are very close to the brain. I bet that some how they affect ones funtioning abilities. I bet you can find statistics to prove this. and if you dress up the charts to make them look impressive enough the klan and other similar groups will be even more likely to use them to prove their point. I'm sure this can only benefit people such as myself in the long run. Because after all I am smart enough to have been a sucess in life but I have never done very well. So what else can we attribute my lack of achievement too? Doing all this genetic altering might be expensive though. I wonder if instead of changing all the minority members brains (there are a lot of us) it might be cheaper to just make the white people color blind. after all you guys all have health insurance right? I also must appologize for not reading the article as thourghly as I could of. some how I just couldn't force myself to it- I'm probably attention deficet another racial quip. But from what I could see You didn't really look at all the angles either. I would like to suggest a book that even though it is rather old might add a twist to your ideas. Savage Inequities discusses race and intellegence.I don't remember the author but I bet you can figure that out all by your supperior selves. I didn't see it listed any where but that might of been my own oversight. I also hope you forgive me for just writing things as they came to my smaller head. But that does appear to be an accepted way of doing things here or am i inheritently wrong again??Finally I must say that if the purpose of learning and aquiring knowledge is ultimately for the betterment of mankind (and I assume that despite my genetic heritage i fall into that catagory) you have really let a lot of us done with this article and the manner in which it was presented. Of course i might think differently after I get that glorious genetic altering that you will undoubtedly learn from your German scientist friends."

Are you an African American? I apologize if the article offended you. No one here intends to offend anybody. The point of the encyclopedia is to disseminate information, not to offend anybody.
We did not conduct any studies on intelligence research. We only have written about them. Would you rather those studies exist and us write about them, or would you rather they exist and us not write about them?
If you wish to contribute to the article you are more than welcome to do so. Dd2 4 July 2005 18:51 (UTC)


A concrete case as model (1)

We have several people with formal credentials whose knowledge and training may be applicable to a question that has occurred to me. What was the course of formation of hypotheses and falsification of hypotheses that let to an effective approach to the "disease called kuru [that] was common among the Fore people in Papua New Guinea"? P0M 3 July 2005 14:17 (UTC)

I'm aware of the kuru story only through a popular-science account, Deadly Feasts. Kuru presents like a brain-related illness. Infectious causes were rapidly ruled out because of the complete lack of inflammation. Heredity appeared less likely because of the widespread involvement of multiple brain regions in the disease, lack of fit to any known hereditary disease pattern, and extremely high rate of occurrence, though a familial pattern of the disease was noted. Fore cannibalism as a transmission method was considered obvious from the beginning. In particular, the disease afflicted adult women and children, while adult males were spared; the men did not participate in cannibalism. Nearby non-cannibalistic tribes had no kuru. However, cannibalism was initially considered unlikely because no infectious agent was found in the tissue specimens and attempts to transmit the disease to cultures, mice, rats, chicks, and rabbits had failed.
Analogies between Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD, rare human disease) and scrapie (common sheep disease) were soon noted. With scrapie, transmission of the disease to sheep, goats and then to mice had been demonstrated. Transmission of kuru to a chimpanzee succeeded, as did transmission of CJD, demonstrating the existence of an infectious agent.
Cannibalism as the transmitter of the infectious agent of kuru became clear when it was realized that the cannibalism was specific: relatives were eaten. This explained the familial disease distribution, and the lack of disease in children growing up in a cannibalism-free community. Once this was realized, the effective approach to kuru (your question) was clear: stop cannibalism. The causative agent of the disease was still not known; biology had to take in a novel concept (infectious proteins) to move forward, and the story is still unfolding. It's fun, and much more familiar to me, but not really relevant to your question.
Briefly, the causative agents are now called prions; they are ubiquitous (yeast prions are known), and are aberrant or non-native forms of a normal host protein. Through nucleation and/or misfolding, a single prion protein (often the normal protein in the non-native conformation) induces normal proteins to take on the non-native prion state, spreading the "infection." The prion itself reproduces its structural information but relies on the host to produce its normal protein substrate. --DAD T 3 July 2005 18:42 (UTC)

So according to your understanding the following hypotheses were examined (and I will add a detail or two that I think may be significant):

1.(Commonplace) Infectious causes

rapidly ruled out because of the complete lack of inflammation.

2.Heredity

appeared less likely because of the widespread involvement of multiple brain regions in the disease, lack of fit to any known hereditary disease pattern, and extremely high rate of occurrence, though a familial pattern of the disease was noted.
+(Also, the disease was so highly lethal that it was hard to understand why it hadn't self-extinguished.)

3.Contagion of a microbial or viral agent via culture-relevant features of the Fore population

no infectious agent was found in the tissue specimens and attempts to transmit the disease to cultures, mice, rats, chicks, and rabbits had failed.

4.Further study produced the hypothesis that something had to be being transmitted in connection with cannibalism because of the close fit between Fore group members who actually practiced cannibalism and Fore group members who actually contracted the disease.

This hypothesis became more and more well confirmed -- especially after Fore group members were persuaded to cease their practice of cannibalism and new cases of the disease rapidly declined.

5.Prions, and their mis-folded forms, were discovered, and infection by transmission of the mis-folded forms is now the hypothesis that has the most support.

[Progress required the discovery of] (infectious proteins) to move forward, and the story is still unfolding.

6.+The story is still unfolding, for one thing, because some researchers still accept the idea of some kind of a viral agent that is behind the ability of the one form of the prion protein to be re-folded into into a disease-causing form.

+The viral hypothesis stands, albeit on shaky legs, because it is next to impossible to prove a negative. Some researchers are still hard at work, searching for a virus.
Really? Definitely need citations for this. I don't doubt there are a few renegades mining the tail of the odds distribution, science encourages that, but I do doubt that there is substantial justification for the pursuit. In other words, a review of Kuru would be complete if it never mentioned these guys. The consensus view, reflected in the review-paper webpage you provided [1], is:
This means that a prion does not contain DNA or RNA, which disproved Prusiner’s first hypothesis (that the prion could possibly be a virus).
It is always possible that I have misremembered something. When I read about it I was looking for something else. My mind tends to pick up all kinds of lint. I didn't retain the impression that there were lots of people seriously interested in tracking this thing down since people are already clear enough on how to prevent transmission of the disease. In general, however, whenever there is a paradigm change there are people who try to explain away the things that argue for the new view.
Love to have more detail here. --DAD T 3 July 2005 22:37 (UTC)
Maybe the undead are still crawling around, but I found some recent indications that serious researchers are still looking. http://eagle.westnet.gr/~aesclep/prion.htm gives a number of references that look fairly reputable to my inexpert eye. My original point was that you never know when the red swan will swim into sight, and it looks like these folks are still out bird watching. ;-) P0M 4 July 2005 03:32 (UTC)
+It might receive convincing confirmatory evidence if the suspected virus could be isolated and could be shown to pass the disease when provided with a suitable host. (Probably would require a primate -- one thing that wasn't tried in the earliest search for an infectious agent.)

I found a couple of useful documents by Googleing, the first and second hits were: http://www.public-health.uiowa.edu/icphp/grand_rounds/archive/2004/pdf/1118-Prion-Torner.pdf http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/bindon/ant570/Papers/McGrath/McGrath.htm

Does this sound like a correct account of the scientific study of this disease so far? P0M 3 July 2005 21:05 (UTC)

Seems fair to me. I can't speak to the ordering or relative weight of the hypotheses, if that's what you're asking; we should consider this little history a "just-so story". --DAD T 3 July 2005 21:36 (UTC)


General and "new intro" specific questions

Note: Answers in sub section below.
  1. Could someone list and explain the "practical consequences of group differences in intelligence"? And doesn't this first sentence in the article errantly conclude that there are "group differences" in "intelligence"? Contradictorily, later on in the intro "race" is not presented as a cause, instead the question of "race" being a cause is the "the primary focus of the scientific debate"? [emphasis mine] If there exists a scientific debate then shouldn't we be required to caveat all sentences that hint or imply "race" has conculsively been determined to be a cause?
  2. Isn't it inconsistent to, on the one hand judge everyone by "IQ", and then on the other hand judge everyone by "race", that is judging everyone twice?
  3. What about the potential for a "psychologically damaging lowered expectations feedback loop", by that I mean how much of the differences can be attributed to "race and intelligence" research itself and its "race" based expectations? Certainly "race and intelligence" research is pervasive in society these days and people may be assuming its conclusions or set of expectations and then unwittingly and errantly creating the differences, to a large degree even. In a society that values freedom shouldn't everyone be encouraged to view their and others' "intelligence" as being limitless? But how can that be if "race and intelligence" and related "research" has psychologically damaged the expectations of some "racial groups" and/or people that just happened to receive a low/mediocre score on an "IQ" test? It seems to me that the use of presumption inducing language repetition and one sided presentation of the issue helps construct this "psychologically damaging lowered expectations feedback loop".
  4. Shouldn't the article note, or have a caveat sooner, regarding the lack of scientific consensus for whether "intelligence" is something that can be objectively measured?
  5. Instead of "expected results" to describe "environmental factors" wouldn't it be more clear to say "caused by" (plus the claim by intelligence researchers of the potential for a "genetic component" additionally)?

Answers

Answers go here, I am especially interested in #3. zen master T 4 July 2005 12:25 (UTC)

Answers 1

Me, too. I do not believe that "intelligence" is an immutable, purely genetically inherited quality. Wealthy people would be fools to send their children to private schools if teaching were not a significant factor.
Hear, hear. I'd love to find anyone who did believe such a thing, since it contradicts all the research of which I'm aware. --DAD T 5 July 2005 06:24 (UTC)
I have read claims by a statistician that he has found a way to identify good and bad teachers by tracking the students randomly assigned to their classes.
At the risk of "presenting original research", I should also say that I've had terrific success in helping children overcome "math anxiety". My students typically catch up two to four years in a few weeks. I went from 4th grade math ability to high school level in one summer, merely from learning ONE PARTICULAR TECHNIQUE.
I don't think my melanin deficiency accounts for my 760 in math (at age 13). It's because of what I learned from my algebra tutor. -- Uncle Ed (talk) July 4, 2005 13:57 (UTC)
Ed: I do not believe that "intelligence" is an immutable, purely genetically inherited quality. Are you implying that the article says so? It doesn't. I myself am a maths teacher (and a damn good one), and quite stubbornly believe in the value of education. Arbor 4 July 2005 15:55 (UTC)
Sheesh, everyone's so sensitive and touchy here, these days. How shall I answer this? ("Are you implying that I'm implying something? You wanna step outside and settle this like trees?" Are you 'arboring resentment? :-) -- Uncle Ed (talk) July 4, 2005 16:55 (UTC)

Answers 2

1a) The practical consequences of group differences in intelligence are:

  • Because intelligence predicts so many valued life outcomes (see practical importance of IQ), groups will also show differences in those outcomes (attending college, entering a profession; spending time in jail, having children out of wedlock), but these differences will be greatly reduced or vanish when individuals of different groups but the same IQ are compared. Understanding the source of IQ differences may unlock ways to combat social injustice.
  • Because group differences in academic achievement are a persistent concern for (US) society, and group differences in intelligence may explain some achievement differences, understanding group differences in intelligence is crucial to proper formulation of corrective measures. In particular, attempts to equalize treatment for all students, if group IQ differences are real, will favor the higher-IQ groups and hurt the lower-IQ groups. See Linda Gottfredson's writing for a more detailed discussion ([2])
  • Group differences in hiring patterns are a persistent concern for (US) society. Cognitive ability scores are the single best predictor of job performance, the key hiring parameter (Hunter & Hunter 1984), but the higher the predictive validity of the test, the more marked the group differences in scores. This is called "adverse effect"; e.g. see Hausdorf et al. 2003. Thus group differences in measured intelligence have a direct impact on discrimination in hiring. Understanding the source of group differences in intelligence may help combat discrimination.

1b) Your point of view that inquiring about racial IQ disparity presupposes that "race" is a cause has been noted. Your posts have not provided any evidence that this POV is shared by any scientist or peer-reviewed publication, or indeed by anyone. Moreover, "race" is not proposed as a cause, nor does the scientific literature show any consideration of "race" as a cause. Genes that have segregated along ancestral lines, such as the Ashkenazim DNA repair cluster, are a potential cause, as are cultural, socioeconomic and environmental factors. The article lists the non-genetic causes first. This might induce the supposition that these factors are believed to be most important by researchers. I, for one, am willing to let it stand.

I mean the intro contradicts itself directly, "race" is presented as both a conclusion for "intelligence" differences and also presented as determining whether "race" is an additional cause is the "primary focus of the scientific debate", how can something be conclusive and yet still be open to debate? The issue is the way the first sentence is constructed. zen master T 4 July 2005 20:06 (UTC)
Stating "groups differ where their members cluster along the IQ line" does not present "race" as a conclusion, or even a hypothesis; consistent with this, "race" is not even included in the list of non-environmental factors. Suppose, for a moment, that nutrition explained 100% of IQ differences. Such a finding would not in any way contradict the first sentence. Nor would it invalidate the question, "Why is there racial IQ disparity?" Instead, we could simply answer, "Because, interestingly enough, racial groups have distinct patterns of nutritive intake." Where is the contradiction again? --DAD T 4 July 2005 22:39 (UTC)

3) Multiple parts:

  • The influence of expectations has been treated extensively. One (of many) predictions of the expectations model is that racial differences should persist, with a consistent direction, across almost all forms of cognitive testing. The corresponding prediction of group differences in cognitive ability is that racial differences in scores should be an increasing function of g-loading -- the more the test loads on general mental ability, the larger the difference. The former prediction has been repeatedly contradicted, while the second has been confirmed. Many lines of evidence converge on the same results (e.g. reaction-time tests, biological correlates of IQ such as brain size, congruence of g factors between racial groups).
All forms of testing and test authors, teachers, and students may suffer from and perhaps unwittingly perpetuate unjust expectations for how "racial groups" or people who just happen to score low on a test will perform? Low test scores can certainly have the effect of dramatically lowering a child's expectations for their intelligence (which would not be a kosher thing to perpetuate if aware of the effect). zen master T 4 July 2005 20:06 (UTC)
  • In a society that values freedom shouldn't everyone be encouraged to view their and others' "intelligence" as being limitless? Sure, if it's true. A mountain of literature suggests it's not; the 0.5+ heritability of IQ is among the best-established and simplest demonstrations. (This point has nothing to do with race.)
My point is society should not limit, arguably artificially, the pursuit of intelligence (even if "race" is a factor)? Has this "mountain of literature" considered in detail the possibility of the "psychologically damaged lowered expectations feedback loop"? Have others/critics considered the possibility this "lowered expectations feedback loop" is the goal of "race" and "intelligence" "researchers"? zen master T 4 July 2005 20:06 (UTC)
That sort of "should" statement, without a citation, is naked POV and has no place on WP. The article openly states that some have questioned researcher motives. And don't ask me what's in the "mountain" regarding the pet feedback-loop theory, or regarding rank speculation about researchers' goals. It's your job to cite your sources, not mine. --DAD T 4 July 2005 23:02 (UTC)
I mean should as in "logically follows". It would be unscientific of "intelligence researchers" to discount counter criticisms and the effect their implied results may have on the psychological expectations of the masses, the only other explanation for the discounting of criticisms, the one sided frame, and the presumption inducing repetition is these "intelligence researchers" have political motives and a plan outside of the realm of science. zen master T 5 July 2005 00:48 (UTC)
Uh...logically follows...right. Perhaps it would help if you'd state your claims as a syllogism ("A implies B. B implies C. Therefore A implies C.") and then we could all weigh in on whether your conclusion logically follows. I'm dubious. Kindly stop with the raw slinging of accusations about motivations and plans. It's not helping. --DAD T 5 July 2005 02:42 (UTC)
  • Certainly "race and intelligence" research is pervasive in society today. Couldn't disagree more. None of my colleagues were aware of this research; they had heard of The Bell Curve but all believed it had been thoroughly debunked. In my experience, the belief that racism (overt or structural) infects every corner of society is pervasive today and virtually no one knows about the research.
  • Citations are key for this interesting theory about a feedback loop driven by the research results. (Logically, one prediction should be a widening of the IQ disparity over time, but in fact the gap appears quite stable...but this is original research, too. Sorry!) I'd like to see what literature you're referring to that specifically states the hypothesis.
That is inaccurate, the "IQ" gap is lowering, and lowering worldwide and it changes over time, how do you explain that (the Flynn effect). I also meant "pervasie" as in "illegitimatelly pervasive", or at the very least "researchers" and critics should in detail consider this possibility. zen master T 4 July 2005 20:06 (UTC)
Let me first note the failure to provide citations, again, despite a direct request. I'm perilously close to concluding that there aren't any. Now, the Flynn effect is a worldwide rise in IQ, not a narrowing of the IQ gap; kindly check your facts (or just the Flynn effect page). There is also substantial evidence that the Flynn effect does not operate on general mental ability (g) much or at all (again, see the page, or for a second set of results see Rushton and Jensen 2005). Thanks for distinguishing the kinds of pervasiveness; perhaps you can provide a citation for what constitutes "illegitimate" pervasiveness versus "legitimate" pervasiveness? I'm having trouble keeping up with the novel terminology without citations. And again with the "should" -- uncited normative opinions have no place here. Moreover, telling researchers and critics what to consider is completely orthogonal to what WP is about. We're assembling knowledge, not setting research agendas. --DAD T 4 July 2005 23:02 (UTC)

4) IMHO, the article should indicate clearly that "intelligence," while the most general term applying to measures of cognitive ability, is used solely as the common-sense term, but that the article will treat the measurements, and that Intelligence (trait) and IQ should be consulted for consideration of how valid these measures are. The present article does this. We can quibble about how soon or late this should be done; for my taste, it's done properly.

5) I think you're right on this point, and I've edited the intro accordingly.

Hope this helps. Thanks for your thoughtful questions. --DAD T 4 July 2005 19:12 (UTC)

Answers 3

Before someone else “kills” me, let me say that I think that many of these are public policy or “politics” (= what is out there that we have to deal with whether we want to or not) questions. Their answers may be more important in guiding the way information is presented in the article than in determining information to be presented.

1. “ practical consequences of group differences in intelligence”

To me, it just means that if, for instance, the kids attending school in Chester, Pa. all or almost all have a miserable time and all test out way low on IQ tests, college boards, etc., then even though a few of them may do exceptionally well in life the whole group of them is less likely to do well than kids in the XYZ Science High School who tested into it, and came out with high scores in those same kind of tests. Noticing that one demographic group is doing poorly is a good indication that something is probably going wrong and needs attention.

2. It is wrong to “judge everyone by ‘IQ’”, and it is wrong to “judge everyone by race,”

and to do both things is even worse. On the other hand, evaluating everyone by race may be the right thing to do if you are trying to decide which people in Boulder, Colorado to allocate limited supplies of UV blocker spray to. Evaluating everyone by IQ may avoid stupid things like happened in my high school where my friend was steered into vocational education classes because his father was a traveling salesman.

3. “What about the potential for a "psychologically damaging lowered expectations feedback loop"….”

It will tend to lower expression of the genotype, tend to produce an individual who will test out at a lower level on IQ tests. Probably worse than that, it will have strongly deleterious effects on the general self-evaluation of those who are not immunized by good parents, teachers, etc. against its effects. That’s what the whole “Black is beautiful,” movement is about. And that is why it is especially important for writers to inoculate the readers of their reports against mistakes of interpretation that could make those writers the unintentional allies of racists.
This question is interesting because it deals with self reference and feedback. If you have a phalanx of studies that look at factors that influence test measures that attempt to measure intelligence, then that will dilute the effects of such feedback to some extent, because the individual will see many factors that are not beyond his/her control. If you make it clear that correlation does not prove causation, the individual is more easily able to see that his/her group may be subject as a group to certain deleterious influences, and seek ways to counter these influences rather than accepting as his/her fate the permanent state of his/her IQ score and the permanent state of his/her group’s IQ score.

4. “Shouldn't everyone be encouraged to view their and others' ‘intelligence’ as being limitless? "

That was my favorite high school teacher’s belief. It’s like the story of the man who was somewhat tipsy and late getting home to his wife. He took a shortcut through the cemetery and fell into a grave. He was helplessly fingering the top of the hole when a despondent voice said, “You’ll never get out of this grave. It seems like I’ve been down here forever.” But the tipsy guy got out. The moral of the story is that if you assume you are defeated and never try then you’ll never get anywhere. The person who says, “You can’t do that!” is not your friend.
On the flip side, believing that one has an unlimited potential to accomplish one’s goals may cause feelings of guilt if one can’t overcome some problem. My Chinese surrogate mother watched me trying to make myself sick by studying too frantically for an exam. She said the right way to view things was always to do your best, never be a slacker, and then take the result of the test as an objective measure of what you were capable of when you had really done your best. Take guidance from that result in planning future studying.
A third way of looking at things is to say that anyone can win at cards when dealt an unusually rich hand. The good card player, however, is the one who makes the best of the cards that fate has dealt him/her.
Educationally, what we most need to avoid doing is anything that would cause students to believe that they have no hope of succeeding. How to deal with a world in which the test results we are discussing are already “out there” is the big question. That is why I think your questions are relevant, not as suggesting content issues in the article but as suggesting valid concerns about how the facts (Dr. X made study Y that established a correlation between factors A and B) need to be contextualized for the general reader.

4. “Shouldn't the article note, or have a caveat sooner, regarding the lack of scientific consensus for whether "intelligence" is something that can be objectively measured?”

In “A possible fix” I spoke of “intelligence as measured by standard IQ tests.” Probably that way of saying it is not clear enough. I was trying to get an idea expressed, that when we speak of “intelligence” all we really have as the referent of that word is the result of some tests that measure some responses. We may imagine that there is an unseen thing called “intelligence” that is being measured, but who knows whether we are even coming close to characterizing what is really there. There is also a too-easy assumption that we get the full cooperation of the people being tested. Back to your question, the problem is how to say the thing correctly. A “capstone” article on “things that influence intelligence” would be a good place to start because the little section that leads to the fan-out article on “race and intelligence” could point out how misleading that word is. All my attempts to get “intelligence” put in scare quotes or otherwise flagged have failed. People in the general population are unsophisticated about issues of this kind, and sometimes it is very difficult to even talk about things simply for terminological reasons even among well informed people. P0M 5 July 2005 01:00 (UTC)

"Members of all racial-ethnic groups can be found at every IQ level"

This statement is technically not true. I've done some rudimentary calculations giving Blacks the benefit of the doubt, but it is statistically not likely that there are any African Blacks with IQs over 180, assuming an avg IQ of 80, SD of 15, and a population of 1 billion. On the other hand, there should be about 343 East Asians with IQs over 180 (assuming an avg of 105, SD of 15, and a population of 1.2 billion) and 44 Ashkenazim with the same (assuming an avg IQ of 113, SD of 15, and population of 11.2 million). Dd2 4 July 2005 15:53 (UTC)

The distribution is not perfectly Gaussian in the tails. Can't make the kind of statistical statement you made at IQ 180. --DAD T 4 July 2005 16:52 (UTC)
I tried to link that statement to the opening picture (which shows a restricted IQ range) in order to circumvent that problem. --Rikurzhen July 4, 2005 20:08 (UTC)

Archiving

Hey -- ZM has complained about archivists archiving his active discussions. While I'm not sold on the attendant conspiracy theory, I think he has a legitimate beef. Just wanted to make two recommendations:

  • When archiving, try to avoid removing subjects that have been active in the past 24 hours.
  • If your conversation is improperly archived, simply copy and paste the relevant content into the new Talk page.

My belief is that no one has insidious motives, and that improper archiving has occurred only because we're blessed with an unusually vibrant discussion that rapidly produces unwieldy pages. IMHO, the best way to combat this is to allow archivers to occasionally act when the page gets huge, and then to copy and paste your pet discussions back in. Expect regular archiving. --DAD T 5 July 2005 23:31 (UTC)

I guess I am the main archiving nazi here, and repeat my apologies for being over-zealous. (It's supposed to be helpful.) As you can see I tried to restructure everything yesterday, adding some infrastructure and also a "archiving policy" paragraph expressing the same sentiment as yours above to the (new) main archiving page, Talk:Race and intelligence/Archives. By all means have a look at what I wrote there. (I also tried to only remove stuff that has been inactive or replaced by another discussion. In the current case, I removed all of Zenmaster's work but the current "5 question" section, which seemed a useful way to focus our debate.) Arbor 6 July 2005 09:49 (UTC)

Vote: Can the phrase "race and intelligence" have 2 meanings?

Please vote on whether the phrase "race and intelligence" can be read more than one way. One arguably non neutral definition it can have is that it can imply "race" is the cause for the "intelligence disparity". If this vote determines there is consensus that the phrase is needlessly ambiguous and suggestively presupposing then we will rewrite and retitle the article.

Change - "race and intelligence" is duplicitous and suggestively presupposing

  1. Change. Wikipedia should discontinue the use of presumption inducing language. zen master T 6 July 2005 01:08 (UTC)

Keep - "race and intelligence" is ok

  1. Keep. Wikipedia can make it clear that the article is exploring the relationship - not presupposing that genes are the controlling factor, or even the biggest factor. I suggest a sentence or two in the intro, clarifying this. Uncle Ed July 6, 2005 02:29 (UTC)
  2. Keep. I wrote a paragraph to immunize the random reader. It could be improved, but it already does what needs to be done. P0M 6 July 2005 02:46 (UTC)
  3. Keep. The phrase uses common terms and, at least according to others, has precedents even in other encylopedias. Certainly less presumption-inducing than Global warming. Article must immediately distinguish between established findings (racial disparity in measured cognitive ability) and explanations under consideration (hypotheses including environmental and genetic influences). I believe the present introduction does so effectively. --DAD T 6 July 2005 02:58 (UTC)
  4. Keep for the reasons above and my previous comments on this topic in the archives. --Rikurzhen July 6, 2005 03:07 (UTC)
  5. Keep - agree with DAD's comment.--Nectarflowed T 6 July 2005 07:39 (UTC)
  6. Keep – (also, we shouldn't have VfD-like discussions every four weeks) Arbor 6 July 2005 09:51 (UTC)

Comments

Regarding the notion that the intro presupposes that genes are "the controlling factor", on my reading the Intro clearly relegates genetic influences to a "whether there might be" as opposed to anything approaching a dominant role, despite powerful results virtually guaranteeing genetic influences (heritability and heterosis, to name two). I'm fine with that, just want to point out that significant ground has been given up here. --DAD T 6 July 2005 02:58 (UTC)

True. The current intro may give too much credence to minority POVs. So long as it doesn't overpower the majority published opinion, I'm okay with it. --Rikurzhen July 6, 2005 03:09 (UTC)
The science in this article shouldn't be compromised by our natural tendency to want to heal disputes.--Nectarflowed T 6 July 2005 08:03 (UTC)
What is the natural tendency or motivation of the "pro" supporters of this article that explains the presumptive inducing language repetition and one sided framing of the issue? zen master T 6 July 2005 09:53 (UTC)

Questions for those voting keep: are you saying the phrase "race and intelligence" only has one meaning? The point is wouldn't it be more scientifically precise if we avoided the use of phrases that have more than one meaning? To partially quote from Ed Poor's vote comment, what better way to make it clear that the article is exploring the relationship rather than presupposing than use precise unambiguous language is there? You all are acknowledging the language ambiguity confusion then down playing it, why not eliminate it? zen master T 6 July 2005 03:28 (UTC)

A phrase that consists of two nouns conjoined with "and" may be the subject or object of an infinte variety of sentences, but it's a perfectly good encyclopedia article title. Prior discussions of more precise titles demonstrated that precision would require unacceptably verbose titles, unfitting of a general encyclopedia. The sentences following the title (should) give us the needed precision, as is standard WP practice. --Rikurzhen July 6, 2005 03:35 (UTC)
That's right. I, for one, am respecting your referendum, ZM, but the question, "Does it have more than one meaning?" is a bit silly. I can't find a title in this encyclopedia that can't be misinterpreted (or interpreted, since in this case "Race and intelligence" only promises that both will be mentioned in the article). Global warming implies -- nay, practically screams -- that the globe is warming! Evolution, by its very unqualified existence, puts Wikipedia's encyclopedic imprimatur on that ludicrous left-wing conspiracy. More substantively, Israeli-Palestinian conflict implies that there's only one conflict and that it involves two parties, something the article quickly addresses. --DAD T 6 July 2005 03:46 (UTC)
IQ test controversy or Intelligence test controversy or Heritability of intelligence controversy would be more precise. How can someone vote keep yet still value the scientific method? If "race and intelligence" has two definitions (as many of you have admitted) then clearly the second definition is non neutral and it exists. Why perpetuate what is, at best, an ambiguous title and way of describing this issue if there are phrases that are unambiguous? How about Heritability of intelligence controversy? I've learned definition confusion mind games work best when phrases are involved, see Wikipedia:Conspiracy theory. zen master T 6 July 2005 03:52 (UTC)
Don't studies of identical twins, fraternal twins, siblings, in that order, indicate that intelligence (or at least the ability to do well on "intelligence" tests) is heritable? P0M 6 July 2005 04:20 (UTC)
They do. The lowest estimates of the heritability of IQ are 40%; coming from a study that tried to attribute some of the 80% heritability figure found elsewhere to shared pre-natal environment. More commonly 50% is offered as an easy approximation for the sake of discussion. --Rikurzhen July 6, 2005 04:23 (UTC)

Let's get back on track here. I will state it in simple logic for you guys. Does "race and intelligence" have more than one meaning? If there are multiple is one meaning conclusive? If one meaning is conclusive then why does the general subject and article still use the phrase? A subject has to be presented neutrally before any conclusions can be determined, to do otherwise would taint the subject at a fundamental level. Would Heritability of intelligence controversy be ok? zen master T 6 July 2005 04:35 (UTC)

Thanks for the simple logic, since sometimes I get lost. See my response of 3:46 (UTC) regarding your first questions. But let me try again. I propose we remove the present title and use Intelligence and race. This should remove all confusion, since your novel reading of "and" as "causes" will no longer pose any problems. Before we make the change, though, kindly explain where you found the WP title requirement WP:Article titles must not have multiple interpretations, and what you propose to do about the thousands of violations already well-established on the site such as Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"Heritability of intelligence controversy", while almost completely off-topic, does seem less ambiguous: you do mean that the intelligence controversy is heritable, right? (Note: this is a joke!) --DAD T 6 July 2005 05:21 (UTC)
There is no controversy, so how could it be inherited? (Also a joke, sort of.) I like your new title. I think it does lessen the "Sugar and tooth decay" interpretation of "and". P0M 6 July 2005 05:47 (UTC)
So you support a renaming and perhaps a re-thought presentation of this article and subject? If there is an unambiguous or less ambiguous way of stating something why not use it (assuming science and neutral presentation is a goal)? zen master T 6 July 2005 09:53 (UTC)
All I said wss that I like DAD's idea of switching the word order. It's interesting. I don't know yet whether it is anything more than that. P0M 6 July 2005 14:04 (UTC)
Intelligence and race sounds good to me. It emphasizes that this topic is primarily about intelligence research.--Nectarflowed T 8 July 2005 01:37 (UTC)

Factors other than race genetics

I'm not sure what Ed meant by "race" and whether it is being conflated with genetics here (See "Comment" below). I take it that his interest in starting this section is to look at factors that might not actually pertain to the people whose intelligence is being measured and instead pertain to the influences that are directed upon them. I think it is worth airing these issues out, even if the discussion only influences our presentation "from the outside" and doesn't result in any article content. My factors are listed below Ed's. P0M 6 July 2005 03:34 (UTC)

In the language of behavioral genetics, such effects may be called reactive gene-environment interactions. The classic example is a hypothetical situation where all red-heads were subjected to cruel treatment. Such treatment would impart a phenotype that would appear heritable in a naive analysis. However, common sense causes behavior geneticists to call such effects a distinct sui generis class of factor, separate from genes or environment. Racial or sexual discrimination would be such an effect. However, more sophisticated analyses exist which could detect them. --Rikurzhen July 6, 2005 04:07 (UTC)

Nutrition

Breast feeding makes a huge difference, about 7 IQ points. Blacks do not breast feed as often or as long as whites. Big, easy change to make in society. [3]

Attitude / mental state of the mother

Poor moms are more depressed, more black moms are depressed, and depressed moms are less likely to provide a stimulating environment for their baby.

On the other hand, some reports claim that Headstart provides no lasting effects.

Expectations of peers / society at large

I have personally witnessed peer pressure in American black females, sapping the motivation to excel in an intellectual task (i.e., learning how to use a computer to do office work). And if I, a white man with no sociological credentials or exceptional observational skills could detect this, how much more might there be? Let's look at social psychology. Uncle Ed July 6, 2005 02:27 (UTC)

I suspect such peer pressure comes from those that lack mental talent. They view anyone that can excel mentally as a threat to their ego. When you're part of a group that is dominated by such people, the peer pressure is going to be enormous. It must be hell to be gifted and black and surrounded by morons. Perhaps peer pressure is acting to magnify what would be smaller difference between black and white.
Why would it be any less hellish to be gifted and white and surrounded by morons? I'm not disagreeing with you. I think there are real reasons why gifted black people in the US have a more corrosive set of interactions.
Both sex and power are powerful motivating factors in most primate species. One of my colleagues observed that freshman women are, as a group, much more willing to enter into classroom discussions than are senior women. His explanation was that if women demonstrated an intimidating degree of intelligence then they were less likely to get dates. Similarly, people (male or female) who are driven to dominate others are hindered when other people in the group exhibit superior intelligence. Rather than improve their own abilities the expedient thing seems, to many people, to be to "put a stop on" those demonstrations of intelligence. Add to this already potent mix the perception that there exists a state of quasi-war among [racial] groups, and a demand to "stop trying to act like the enemy" can function to inhibit exercise of intelligence in the group setting.
The main reason, as I see it, for even having a university is the environment it creates for interpersonal reactions. (Some of the same kind of thing happens in these discussion pages, but it can be less effective because of the turn-around time and the tendency to say too much at one time, leading people to get off the track.) If social factors inhibit individuals from taking advantage of the learning environments they find themselves in, then they are left to their own devices to make progress, and that progress is likely to be much inhibited.
Whether there are "small differences between blacks and whites" as a group or not, there are always differences among individuals. Individuals tend to sort themselves into groups that can talk to each other about topics that are significant to themselves. One of the characteristics of extreme intelligence (such as demonstrated, I suspect, by Malcolm X) is that one will figure out for oneself that one is being held back by one's group members and will act to escape from those inhibiting forces. The people of average intelligence and average courage may be less able to escape. So what is the salient difference between groups of blacks and groups of whites, assuming that we match the groups we are comparing? It would seem to be the relationship of the individuals in each group to the background social situation. P0M 16:31, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Inadequate schools

I taught as a long-term substitute for one year in a so-called "inner city" junior high school. The textbooks provided for English were very inappropriate. There was a vicious cycle of problems. Everybody involved blamed some other sector of the circle. The school was fairly chaotic. If I had been a student there I would have rebelled. This factor is invariant with respect to genetics and can only be somewhat modified by ethos/cultural factors.

Prenatal environment

If you have never had the experience of living in a society in which you personally need to fear for your safety and well being, you will have no idea of what it is like to have your endocrine system fired up repeatedly. After a while it gives up trying to turn off and turn on and just stays stuck in "fight or flight" mode. No wonder people suffer so many heart attacks. Prenatally, the hormones can get into the baby's bloodstream. Also genetic/ethos/culturally invariant.

Infant environment

Infant minds are like sponges. Everybody is excited and interested in their environment when they are in their natural state. That's what makes for survival, among other things. If infants are put in cribs and left unattended in an orphanage that can kill them. More affection and more interaction is nurturing. If adults are turned off to their environment, if the environment is itself not a vibrant one, if adults to not have time and energy to spend with infants showing them the world at this early part of their lives then they fail to grow mentally -- perhaps there are even brain differences involved. Even if the parents are too busy to interact with the kids they are better off if the environment itself is rich. A fenced garden is better than four white walls. True of all humans.

Childhood environment

Check out Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun by Geoffrey Canada.

The more inimical to learning the environment is, the easier it is to get behind. A young person at the age of 15 who has missed much in childhood may simply give up on the possibility of learning, and/or the person may have been turned off by education, perceiving it to be a kind of punishment imposed on members of his/her group.

Unspoken expectations at this age can have lifelong effects. My grandmother never wondered aloud whether I would go to college. It was always, "When you get into college...." So that was part of my life script from childhood. It was what the most important person in my little universe expected of and for me. The child that gets followed around like a known shoplifter every time s/he goes into a store gets an entirely different message. True of all humans.

Early adolescent environment

It's peer pressure against culture. Some parents, like those of Julian Bond, immunize their children against the effects of social pressure and peer pressure. One of the reasons that Chinese kids do so well in schools is their culturally acquired attitude toward education. It doesn't come at them as a lecture given at midterm grade time and at report card time. It's always there, woven into virtually every aspect of their lives. True of all humans.

Later adolescent and adult environment

A society that is divided against itself creates problems for the underdogs. Energy can get diverted to resisting submission to the dominant group. If the dominant group insists on school performance it is easy to see resisting school as an act of self preservation. If you don't believe me, check out the life history of Malcolm X. He had to put aside an enormous investment in order to force his way up through layer upon layer of oppression -- including a lot of internalized stuff, not just what was on the outside. He didn't stop resisting bad stuff either, he just got better at it. The only thing [racially] relevant to that example was that his oppression came from racists. P0M 6 July 2005 03:36 (UTC)

Epigenetics

So poorly understood that it could be responible for anything. Epigenetic modification of the genome is both maleable by environment and partly transmitable from parents to children. A recent study finds that differences in epigenetic state exist between MZ twin ("identical" twins); more in separated twins than those raised together. --Rikurzhen July 6, 2005 15:54 (UTC)

Comment

  1. I believe that you are conflating race with genetics. While the two are obviously connected, the relationship is not straightforward enough to warrant that conflation.
  2. I believe that these or closely related concepts (but that have been published) have been explored at length in the Race and intelligence (Culture-only or partially-genetic explanation) article. --Rikurzhen July 6, 2005 03:05 (UTC)
Right. According to the article (here, 2nd para.), it has been hypothesized that black culture as a whole (of which peer influences are a reflection) denigrates intellectual accomplishment, and that this influences cognitive ability. I would (genuinely) love to see more results on this; cite away! --DAD T 6 July 2005 03:09 (UTC)
Yeah. Any published research that meets WP standards is a welcome addition to the detailed subarticles. Expand details of those article or branch them further as you wish. --Rikurzhen July 6, 2005 03:39 (UTC)

Restoring a puzzle and setting a challenge

I earlier posted a request that we examine the hypotheses that were involved in discovering the cause of Kuru (a prion disease). I left something out, but nobody seems to have noticed. Who can supply the first hypothesis that investigators made? (I have condensed material that has been archived.) In trying to understand Kuru, the following hypotheses were examined:

1. (The missing hypothesis.)
2.(Commonplace) Infectious causes are at work.
rapidly ruled out because of the complete lack of inflammation.
3.Heredity causes it
appeared less likely because of the widespread involvement of multiple brain regions in the disease, lack of fit to any known hereditary disease pattern, and extremely high rate of occurrence, though a familial pattern of the disease was noted.
Also, the disease was so highly lethal that it was hard to understand why it hadn't self-extinguished.
4.Contagion of a microbial or viral agent via culture-relevant features of the Fore population causes it.
no infectious agent was found in the tissue specimens and attempts to transmit the disease to cultures, mice, rats, chicks, and rabbits had failed.
5.Further study produced the hypothesis that something had to be being transmitted in connection with cannibalism because of the close fit between Fore group members who actually practiced cannibalism and Fore group members who actually contracted the disease.
This hypothesis became more and more well confirmed -- especially after Fore group members were persuaded to cease their practice of cannibalism and new cases of the disease rapidly declined
6.Prions, and their mis-folded forms, were discovered, and infection by transmission of the mis-folded forms is now the hypothesis that has the most support.
[Progress required the discovery of] (infectious proteins) to move forward, and the story is still unfolding.
7.The story is still unfolding, for one thing, because some (diehard?) researchers still accept the idea of some kind of a viral agent that is behind the ability of the one form of the prion protein to be re-folded into into a disease-causing form.

Good hunting. P0M 6 July 2005 02:42 (UTC)

What? No takers? I offer one darn spar for the missing answer. (That's what they call 'em innit?)P0M 6 July 2005 05:51 (UTC)

Thanks

I like Nectarflowed edit comment:

Many layreaders need all the help they can get when trying to imagine biological or genetic influences on the mind.

Thanks for taking care of the needs of these readers. P0M 6 July 2005 14:40 (UTC)

"Irrefutable direct evidence is currently lacking and may continue to be so until intelligence is mapped to specific genes."

This is a questionable statement. The frequency of several genetic markers correlates with intelligence (Plomin et al., 1994, 1995). The D2 dopamine receptor A1 allele affects visuospatial performance (Berman, & Noble, 1995) and its frequency varies among racial groups. Dd2 6 July 2005 15:15 (UTC)

No IQ tests for the D2 allele, no study showing different frequency. Ultramarine 6 July 2005 15:22 (UTC)

attention needed

some attention is needed at Talk:race --Rikurzhen July 7, 2005 01:17 (UTC)

A Change in Graphs May Be Necessary

The current graphs in this article only depict Blacks, Latinos, Whites, and Asians. However, Jews are discussed and treated in this article as a separate race. In my humble opinion, the graphs should relect that. -Isaiah R.

To all: is there enough data to make a precise graph? I don't think there is. (p.s. terrible day) --Rikurzhen July 7, 2005 17:59 (UTC)
What's up? --DAD T 8 July 2005 06:29 (UTC)
Oh... London. --Rikurzhen July 8, 2005 06:41 (UTC)
I don't care much either way. Ashkenazim are a very, very small population compared to the other ones, so for that reason alone we might want to omit them. (There would be certain Indian subpopulations that merit similar attention otherwise.) But while we are thinking about it, we might want to go in the other direction and remove Hispanics from the graph. (Why? 1: they aren't a very "good" race, 2: much of the recent data focuses on Blacks, Whites, Asians, 3: It would make the article less US-centric.) Arbor 8 July 2005 07:07 (UTC)
Easy enough if we want to do that, but Hispanics are now (or soon will be???) the largest minority in the U.S. and studies of Hispanic achievement play a prominent role in the interpretation sub-article. --Rikurzhen July 8, 2005 07:11 (UTC)
I think there are a number of practical reasons that suggest keeping the "Hispanic" [race] in the picture. First, they are not a very homogeneous [race], yet everybody seems to treat them as though they were, and in IQ testing they seem to be testing out as though they were. It's interesting to me if an inherently "fudge ripple" kind of quasi-homogeneous group doesn't test out all over the place every time you take a new sample. (A crucial question would be: How many test subjects in each group does it take to get a predictable average every time you give a test? If you were testing clones all raised in the same creche it would seem likely that testing 10 or 10,000 would give you very close to the same result. You might need more than 10 randomly chosen Hispanic [race] members to get such a consistent result.) The group is also interesting because they share with the Black [race] at least a diluted form of the racist and classist inimical forces being directed on them. If people are out there making these tests then we would be behaving in a subjective way to eliminate mention of some of the tests. P0M 8 July 2005 07:45 (UTC)
It looks like immigrant status matters a lot: for recent Hispanic immigrants in 1992 on the NAEP the gap was 1.15 SD, compared to 0.67 SD for American-born Hispanics. Roth et al (2001) reports 0.65 in a meta-analysis; those studies probably excluded recent immigrants because they would have problems with English. [4] Of course, that average could be masking any population stratification. --Rikurzhen July 8, 2005 08:11 (UTC)
Well, it's certainly not important to me, so by all means keep them in. Just note that much of what you two say above has a strongly American perspective, and the "argument from public policy" is one can be used against their inclusion as well (because, all other things being equal, the scientific validity of the findings in this article trump whatever national policies might be influenced by them). Also, everybody seems to treat them as though they were [a homgenous race] is certainly not true. I hardly knew what Hispanics means. (Honestly, I didn't know if the group included, for example, Americans of Italian descent.) Arbor 8 July 2005 08:37 (UTC)
Hispanic is not a race so these graphs are a ton of bullshit. You can't mix in the same race a Caucasian Spanish Speaker from Spain and an African-American Spanish Speaker from the USA. I was going to remove the graphs directly but I think I'll wait till someone fixes them. Maybe we should add my explanation that the graphs are bullshit. I'll add the explanation if nobody disagrees. (Unsigned comment by User:163.117.141.63)
Here's what the article says: Hispanics, more often called an ethnic group rather than a race, form a genetically diverse group that includes many recent U.S. immigrants with mixed ancestry. See the articles Race and Race (U.S. Census) for further discussion. Anything you'd like to add? Arbor 8 July 2005 11:53 (UTC)
I just mean: Hispanic is not a Race thus the graphs are incoherent. What are you going to do with them? Remove the graphs, update them, or what? (Unsigned comment by User:163.117.141.63)
The introductory graph is indeed an over-simplification. (One that was arrived at after Peer Review.) The more informative but less accessible graph is now in section 2.1 (IQ Gap in the US). The caption there makes a comment about the higher variance of the Hispanic results. I assume that is in line with your objection. (Please sign your posts, by the way, by typing four tildes in a row.) Also, have a look at Section 4.2.3.3 Arguments for races as lineages of Race which discusses the problems you mention in greater detail. Would you think it prudent to link to that subsection more prominently? Arbor 8 July 2005 13:07 (UTC)

When I said that everybody thinks of Hispanics as though they form [a homogeneous race] I should have qualified my remark rather than being ironic. Some people don't have any idea of what the word means, and some people are familiar with it as used for demographic (census) purposes and are aware of how much diversity is papered over in the creation of this rough and tumble category. But most people who know the word will identify it with people whose appearance resembles those in the mugshot, and will assume the same kind of uniformity that is presumed to exist in the case of the other [races]. Actually, the other groups are not in equilibrium either. The African-Americans have origins in all parts of Africa, and admixtures of Native Americans, whites, Asians, etc., etc. The mixing process has been going on for a few hundred years, so genetically the group may be nearer to equilibrium than the Hispanics despite the fact that by social definition mixed-origins progeny are assimilated into this group and mixed births are becoming more and more common. Even the supposedly "pure" White [race] turns out to have significant components of non-European heritage in its mixture. So, if "Hispanic is not a Race", it is only so because it is a more transparent example of the fact that none of these groups is, or ever has been, "pure." My tree model is severely handicapped because the branches of real trees do not often self-graft whenever branches cross. To make a better analogy you'd need to imagine a tree whose branches are laced together by something that looks like Spanish moss or dodder yet is not constituted by a separate organism.

One of the big problems with discourse in this area is that MDs and other people with a practical interest in genetic heritage are often content to use the word "race" knowing that each "race" name is a one to many mapping. If Zha Jie is the nominated the exemplar for the Chinese [race] then every other "Chinese" person is so only by reason of being comparatively closely connected genetically to that individual. The specialists use these terms knowing that they give fairly good odds of being able to predict things like lactose intolerance, curly hair, agenesis, shovel-shaped incisors, red hair, etc., but that if you want to know whether an individual has shovel-shaped incisors you had better ask the patient to "open, please."

It would really be neat if researchers could recover DNA from Original Nations people in Australia from before 1400, and then at regular intervals down to the present. That's the only group (along with their near neighbors) I know of who may have been reasonably well isolated from other humans during the last 80,000 years or so. It would be interesting to know what percentage of their genetic heritage is not represented somewhere in the rest of the world.

If we could start with a "stick man" genetic connections diagram, then zoom in on it one notch, we would see many more branches (the Sardinians and the Ainu have to be in there somewhere, for instance), and we also ought to put in indications of cross-over breeding. A few steps closer and the diagram should start looking like a bushy tree with branches laced together with dodder. The Hispanic [race] would be represented by branches from the European, African, and American Indian limbs twisting around each other and developing many, many cross-connections.

All graphs such as this one are abstractions and therefore oversimplifications to some extent. The question is whether they clash with the finer-grained data in a way that is deceptive. P0M 9 July 2005 01:38 (UTC)

summary style discussion cont.

The Wikipedia:Summary style proposal has been brought up again as a solution to a newly recognized problem. I agree that we should try to employ Wikipedia:Summary style for this article. I did the (relatively) easy job of turning Culture-only or partially genetic explanation? section into a sub article with the help of MS Word's autosummarize feature. It was relatively easy because the text of that section has high in detail but low in total number of topics. It was also, I think, crucial because it was running far too long. Other sections may be harder--autosummarize probably won't help--but I encourage the willing to try. Summary sections should be ~1 paragraph per 10k summarized, up to 3 paragraphs. I would recommend Race and intelligence (History) and Race and intelligence (Public policy) OR Race and intelligence controversy (moving from IQ test controversy) and something like Intelligence and public policy (which could optionally be merged with IQ#Practical importance and serve as the sub-article for that section as well). (Careful naming suggested to maximize room for growth.) --Rikurzhen July 4, 2005 21:17 (UTC)

from above ... material that was moved into craniometry could be moved back into a subarticle. --Rikurzhen July 5, 2005 15:59 (UTC)

No takers? --Rikurzhen July 7, 2005 18:01 (UTC)

I'm working on Intelligence and public policy. There's a lot of content, and I'm still doing a lot of reading. Expect at least a preliminary post within next few days. --DAD T 7 July 2005 19:12 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure that should be "public policy and intelligence" ;-) P0M 8 July 2005 05:56 (UTC)
Gottfredson's writings, the June 2005 issue of PPPL, The Bell Curve, and IQ and the Wealth of Nations are sources for that. --Rikurzhen July 7, 2005 19:22 (UTC)

Ok, a draft of Intelligence and public policy is up. I have tried to flesh out the sections where WP has little content, particularly on the employment law side. I've also tried hard to target specific policies and rulings. I invite everyone to move relevant content over from Race and intelligence and other sources into the detailed article. (I confess I'm a bit tired, though certainly I will do some moving and write the summary paragraphs should no one else take up the gauntlet soon.) The Education section is painfully lacking. --DAD T 00:23, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Nice. --Rikurzhen 00:38, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

Encyclopedia style instead of survey style

While we are discussing style, I would like to propose that the article be rewritten to employ encyclopaedic or textbook prose instead of the prose found in survey articles in a scientific journal. To illustrate, in all those cases where there is no contradictory evidence in the scientific literature, I would like to replace

In a 1984 study based on 23453 frogs submerged in beer, McWolter and Goomph (1989) found little effect of alcohol on aquatic creatures.

by

Alcohol has little effect on aquatic creatures.[3]
[3] McWolter and Goopmph (1989), using 23453 frogs submerged in beer

This is the style (though often without the footnotes) used throughout the rest of WP, and also the style used by (say) EncBrit on Race and Intelligence.

It replaces an indirect statement by a direct one, giving more credence to the conclusion. (Note, however, that we are still sourcing it meticulously.) Hence, this style should not be adopted whenever there is major controversy about the result.

In a 1984 study based on 23453 frogs submerged in beer, McWolter and Goomph (1989) claimed that there is little effect of alcohol on aquatic creatures. However, in 1995, Schuster et al. were able to kill 211 toads by submerging them in whiskey (Schuster et al., 1996).

This would be replaced by

Biologists disagree about the effect of alcohol on aquatic creatures. While a 1984 study submerged 23453 frogs in beer to little effect, an experiment in 1995 killed 211 toads by submerging them in whiskey. [3]

This is better than the original paragraph because it makes the disagreement explicit.

So the textbook prose approach will have the benefit of reporting consensus as fact, and controversy as controversy. (I also think that pretty much each style guide recommendation in this WP, including the footnote proposals, agree with textbook style.) Note that I am not trying to hide any controversies (on the contrary. I want them exposed.) I want to write better prose. Many of us here are scientists and seem to be trapped in in scientific journal style. Arbor 8 July 2005 10:41 (UTC)

Part 1, definitely yes. Part 2, with care. In some cases¹ a single counter example is given to show that little controversy exists, whereas in other cases a lot of back and forth shows a lot of controversy. Also, in some cases in text citations are used mostly to introduce quotations, which might sound awkward if not attributed in-line. So... with care. (¹I may be thinking of the big sub-article). --Rikurzhen July 8, 2005 17:05 (UTC)
One other point. We maybe we want to do the Survey->Encyclopedia style transition simultaneously with the application of Wikipedia:Summary style. The detailed articles can remain in Survey style for the time being as we put the summaries in Encyclopedia style. IMHO, that worked with Culture-only or partially genetic explanation?. --Rikurzhen July 9, 2005 01:12 (UTC)

summary progress

I tried to summarize the Average intelligence gaps among races section. Futher work is needed, and the notes need to be reconciled. --Rikurzhen 21:20, July 9, 2005 (UTC)

Brilliant work. Reads really well. And I'm happy to see the income/parental education graphs back. Arbor 08:12, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Moved references to separate article

This seems like a new idea to WP, but it is consistent with the spirit of Summary Style and is how many academic monographs handle their references (with footnotes in each chapter and a full bibliography in its own chapter). I doubt most people actually want to read the refs, so putting them a click away ought not hurt anything. --Rikurzhen July 9, 2005 01:52 (UTC)

Why "culture-only" instead of "environment"?

Why does this article use the phrase "culture-only" to mean "environment"? Seems to me like that is an attempt at implying "race" is the cause for the "IQ disparity" even within the "environment" possibility section. Culture is a sub aspect of "environment", not the other way around and neither of them have anything to do with "race" or are the editors of this article arguing otherwise? Can this article have at least one section that presents "environment" causes neutrally? zen master T 22:45, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

If Chinese farmers refuse to eat the meat of cattle and water buffalo, is that a feature of their environment? or a feature of their culture? P0M 23:12, 9 July 2005 (UTC)
That is an environmental factor that may lead to differences in nutrition, easily corrected. zen master T 23:50, 9 July 2005 (UTC)
I think the question is: why "culture-only" instead of "environment-only"?. Ultramarine and I seem to have settled on that phrase borrowed from the literature as a more-common-sense term than environment, which to most people will sound like the term related to ecology. So the reason is just ease on the novice reader. It could be replaced if there is a movement to do so, but additional explication may be required. --Rikurzhen 23:16, July 9, 2005 (UTC)
But why isn't the word "environment" used at all? All alternative causes, such as "nutrition", can't possibly be explained in total through "culture-only"? At best the phrase "culture-only" gives a disingenuous presentation of this subject. zen master T 23:50, 9 July 2005 (UTC)
Um... "environment" is used all over the place, including the line that defines "culture-only": "culture-only" interpretations that posit environmental causes (e.g., socioeconomic inequality or minority culture membership) that differentially affect racial groups'. The intro text describes these differences may be caused by environmental factors, such as.... --Rikurzhen 23:53, July 9, 2005 (UTC)
Since when is "socio-economic inequality" a "culture-only" effect? Why do you and the "literature on the subject" add yet another layer of presenting exclusively in terms that are similar to "race"? "Culture" is one among many possible environmental causes -- "environment" is the superset of "culture" possible causes wise but you and the article present it backwards, why? zen master T 00:00, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
Re-read Rikurzhen's post: "culture-only" interpretations that posit environmental causes (e.g., socioeconomic inequality... Socioeconomic inequality is given both the "culture-only" and "environmental" label, and as Rikurzhen explained, this a byproduct of an attempt to help the novice reader. Few would argue that socioeconomic inequality, e.g. in the US, is environmental in the ecological sense; however, it is often attributed to culture (dominant-class oppression of the less-fortunate, or beliefs about varying worth of people that create inequality, are cultural factors). --DAD T 01:32, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree in principle that "environment" is the more inclusive term. But it seems to me that this discussion is going in a circle because it does not address two important facts. First, the relationship between culture and environment is complex. Second, for the very reason that "environment" as such is the most inclusive term, it is imprecise. If we want understand the relationship between culture and environment — or the relationship between anything and the environment — we need to be more precise and should specify different kinds of environment (e.g. the social environment, the cultural environment, the biotic environment, the abiotic environment). Let's take POM's example: it is meaningless to say that the fact (if it is a fact) that Chinese farmers refuse to eat beef is "for environmental" reasons. The specific "environment" that explains this behavior is the cultural environment. Why Chinese farmers have this value is a different question, and it may be because of the biotic environment. But the cultural environment also shapes the biotic environment. I think the only way to handle this is to be very specific about which kinds of environments scholars are referring to, and if any of them refer to several different kinds of environments, we should try to provide an account of what those scholars claim is the relationship between these different environments. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:54, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Why does the article only get "specific" regarding "environmental" causes that are suggestively related to "race" at a psychology of language level? Why are causes for the "disparity" presented as a contrast between culture or genetics when environment is actually the proper generic superset that includes culture? zen master T 01:53, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

What is a good term for non-genetic factors in general that could differentially affect individuals, because of different strengths (higher and lower temperatures for different cultures of lactobacilli, for instance) and/or because of different inherent suitabilities to various levels of such factors (some cultures that grow in milk like temperatures around 110 degrees F., and other cultures grow better at lower temperatures)? Is there anything better than "non-genetic"? P0M 02:57, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

"environment" is better. zen master T 03:06, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
No, Zen-master is mistaken, "environment" is too imprecise. POM, I think "abiotic environment" is the precise way to refer to the things you mention. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:20, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
"Culture-only" is too suggestively related to "race" (tricks the mind into thinking about the issue only in terms of "race" "differences", how can nutrition and environment generally get a neutral presentation in this article? The phrase is nature vs nurture, not nature vs "culture-only". zen master T 17:04, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
Why are you asking this question? I provided a clear answer to this question above. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:32, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

based on a quick skimming of the article series, it looks like "environment" is used to describe any particular factor, whereas "culture-only" is used to describe the class of hypotheses. as such, "environment" occurs many more times than "culture only". i personally think the article makes it clear that culture-only theories aren't strictly about culture (narrowly defined), but it would probably be best to get someone completely fresh to read the article and make that assessment. --Rikurzhen 04:33, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

There is a sub article with "culture-only" in the title, why are there no sub or see also articles with "environment" in the title on this subject? zen master T 07:52, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
Ahh... do you read our comments? See above. culture-only == environment-only. --Rikurzhen 08:00, July 10, 2005 (UTC)
Then let's switch the article to use "environment-only" everywhere "culture-only" is used? "Environment" is never a header and never the title of a sub article and the issue is never described in environmental terms. If "culture-only" is one class of hypotheses, which section in the article presents other "environmental" causes neutrally? The article seems to be implying "culture" is "genetic" based too and/or reinforcing the mistaken framing of everything in terms of "race" "differences". We need to discontinue the use of only one set of descriptive words. zen master T 17:04, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
Wait... this is completely off topic, but are you suggesting that people will think culture is genetically transmitted? Isn't that the opposite of what the average WP reader will believe? They're certainly presented as contradictory alternatives in the article. Even the staunchest hereditarians don't believe that. --Rikurzhen 17:55, July 10, 2005 (UTC)
I think that very many times it kind of works in reverse, however. The experience of seeing members of another group doing things in a way different from that of their own group is one of the things that probably acts most strongly to create the impression that "they're something else." So cultural features, and especially culture shock, can feed racism if they are not properly understood. P0M 18:20, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Each of us seems to have a slightly different view on this. So I really suggest we gather some fresh opinions. Environment is the behavioral genetics term of art for non-genetic factors (including culture), but I think that will not be understood by the naive reader. --Rikurzhen 17:49, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

Without further context, I generally read "environment" to mean things like air purity vs. polution, etc., so I think you're right about that. On the other hand, "culture" can suggest very elegant features of life, and the naive reader might not understand it to include items such as method of toilet training. P0M 18:20, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Any creative solutions? Search for instances of culture-only here and here, to get the context for where it's used. Do the same with environment. --Rikurzhen 18:27, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

Will anyone at least respond to my suggestion above, even if it is only to explain why they reject it? Slrubenstein | Talk 19:03, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, I can try. I understand your concerns about the imprecision of "environment" and your desire to replace it by a family of different, more specific terms. However, that is not our task. What you are suggesting is close to original research. What few papers I have read in this area use the terms culture or environment as a catch-all for anything that is not genetic. Your suggestions may be fruitful directions for future research; but they are not useful concepts to report a body of research that does not use them. Arbor 19:29, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

As I read them, the relevant parts of the article are trying to describe salient factors that are not genetic. I suggest "non-genetic", and then your idea will come into play. "Non-genetic factor one is adequacy of nutrition. The double-blind study of malnutrition and IQ scores by X, Y, and Z demonstrated..." And so forth. P0M 19:41, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Arbor, I am afraid I do not see how my suggestion is even close to original research. POM, the point is that there are many different kinds of non-genetic factors, and we shouldn't use one word for all of them. "Cultural environment," "social environment," "biotic environment" and "abiotic environment" are not terms I made up, they are routinely used by anthropologists, sociologists, and environmental scientists. Nor am I proposing to apply them in any original way. I am just saying that, to avoid confusion, if an article is talking about non-genetic factors that have to do with, say, pollution (lead in paint) or the fact that some milk cultures grow better at different temperatures, we are talking about the abiotic environment. If we are talking about non-genetic factors like high levels of exposure to shildhood diseases, or parisited, we are referring to the biotic environment. If we believe these factors also are a function of political and economic forces (e.g. there may be more pollutants in areas where poor people live) then we are talking about a combination of cultural and abiotic environments. If we are talking about a custom that pregant women or women who have just given birth eat diets very low in protein, despite its availability, that might be purely a matter of the cultural environment. This is only about precision and clarity. I didn't make up the words, and I didn't do the research we might apply them to in our article, Slrubenstein | Talk 20:41, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps we should go back to the article, which currently says:

In general, interpretations of the "IQ gap" can be divided into two categories:

1. "culture-only" interpretations that posit environmental causes (e.g., socioeconomic inequality or minority culture membership) that differentially affect racial groups; and
2. "partly genetic" interpretations that posit an IQ gap between racial groups caused by approximately the same matrix of genetic and environmental forces that cause IQ differences among individuals of the same race.

How should this be better stated? P0M 21:05, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

"environment" vs "genetic" would be the most clear and avoid needlessly ambiguous language. The explanation for "partly genetic" doesn't make sense. What are the "genetic" factors that cause IQ differences among individuals of the same "race"? If there are such "genetic" differences within a "race" how can they be compared to other "races"? If members of every "race" are found at every IQ level isn't that evidence there is no genetic component, the genes would be active or not, one "race" would be consistently more "intelligent" but that is not the case. This evidence actually disproves the entire premise of "race and intelligence". zen master T 23:00, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
"Environment-only" versus "partly-genetic" is plausible, so long as it doesn't confuse the reader. On your other points, to cut a long story short... No, you're wrong. Study up on the concepts of alleles and allele frequencies in populations. --Rikurzhen 00:33, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

It will confuse some people, as everyone but Zen-Master seems to think. In the context POM is concerned about, we should specify "social environment." There is growing research about how the social and the biotic environments interact in ways that have profound effects on childhood development, and research on how the social and abiotic environments also interact to affect development. I wouldn't be surprised if some of this research has addressed the issue of incidences of learning disabilities, or even IQ. And if it hasn't yet, it will come. Time Magizine maybe will reduce this to a simple "nature versus nurture" argument, but scientists know that it is much more complex and as more knowledgable people join the project, we will be able to fill in gaps in the article. In the meantime, we should at least be precise. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:54, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

let's see what people think about this after short break to mull it over. --Rikurzhen 06:10, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

Just a sort of footnote: I mentioned above that cultural differences tend to be a large part of the reason for people to decide of members of other groups that "they're really something else." I just ran into a quotation from The Voyage of the Beagle. Darwin described the natives of Tierra del Fuego as "stunted in their growth, their hideous faces bedaubed with white paint, their skins filthy and greasy, their hair entangled, their voices discordant, and their gestures violent. Viewing such men, one can hardly make one's self believe that they are fellow creatures." P0M 16:52, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

MRI and Race

What are the claimed MRI studies showing racial differences in brain size? I could only find this. "For example, using MRI technology, Harvey, Persaud, Ron, Baker, and Murray (1994) found that 41 Blacks in Britain averaged a smaller brain volume than did 67 British Whites.". Is that all? Ultramarine 21:16, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Twenty-six patients with RDC bipolar disorder were compared with a previously reported group of 48 RDC schizophrenics and 34 healthy controls, using volumetric MRI measurements of cerebral, cortical and sulcal volumes. The bipolar group appeared no different from the controls, and both of these groups had significantly larger cerebral and cortical volumes than the schizophrenics. Our previous report of a significantly reduced cortical volume in the schizophrenic group, with a corresponding increase in the volume of sulcal fluid is, therefore, not a generalized feature of psychotic illness but may be more specific to schizophrenia. [5]

This is the study showing that races differs in brain size when measured with MRI? Ultramarine 21:41, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Are we claiming this, even implicitly? The article includes Note that none of the MRI studies have studied racial differences. Maybe I am not looking at the right section. Arbor 21:54, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
It is claimed in both articles. "Numerous historical and modern studies, using skull and head measurements, weighing of brains at autopsy, and more recently, magnetic resonance imaging report racial differences." And there is no mention of the critique against these results, see for example this [6].
The really scary thing is that Rushton and Jensen managed to include the above statement about MRI and the study in a peer-reviewed article in 2005 [7]. Ultramarine 22:12, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
Let's figure out if there's a primary source to support those claims or not. If not, then let's delete the questionable material. --Rikurzhen 00:15, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
... because Wikipedia can't be the venue for calling Rushton a liar about the [8] article, we'll need to remove that unless that charge is published elsewhere. --Rikurzhen 00:43, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
I am not calling him a liar. Ultramarine 02:48, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Why are you claiming [9] Harvey et al. is a misrepresentation? Have you read the study? Although the intent of the study was not to study racial differences, statistically significant racial differences did appear. And the statement "Note that none of the MRI studies have studied racial differences" was inserted not to mean that the MRI studies did not show racial differences in brain size; it was meant to clarify that while MRI studies have shown intra-racial correlations between brain size and intelligence, they haven't shown that group differences in brain size are responsible for group differences in IQ. I quote from Harver et al. (p. 693): "Over the entire sample, intracranial volume was related to height (P=0.0001), gender (P=0.001), ethnicity (P=0.007) and IQ (P=0.03), but not age; larger volumes generally occurred in those subjects who were taller, male and Caucasian." Dd2 01:03, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

It was I who inserted the statement.
You are actually claiming that a study where most of the subjects have serious mental disorders are representative for the Black and White population? I would certainly say that it is a gross misrepresentation to claim that this study shows that Blacks in general have lower brain size than Whites. Ultramarine 02:28, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
The report is either irrelvant, in which case we should delete mention of it, or it is relevant, in which case we should discuss problems at the same time we discuss the report. The history section is an inappropriate place for this discussion. --Rikurzhen 03:09, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
If it were one case, I would agree, but Rushton has a long pattern of similar deeds. Maybe not in the history section, but after this I strongly think that we need a section on related issues like the Pioneer Fund.
For their own faults, Gould and Sternberg are at least as worthy of ridicule, but I don't think we achieve much by doing that. Rushton's interpretation is plausible, if over-reaching. There's no need to splatter that point all over the intro section. --Rikurzhen 06:12, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
Intelligent design mentions the Discovery Institute. No double standards. The study was not intended to study race differences and for example the quoted text above only applies to the whole sample. Differences in Schizophrenia and gender in the sample for Blacks and Whites are not controlled for. And intracranial volume is not the same thing as brain size, which the study points out. Ultramarine 12:42, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
I'm not referring to the Pioneer fund, although Science for the People quickly comes to mind when you mention the Discovery Institute. I'm talking about the brain size stuff. The article will grow quite long if we take a moment to point out any mistatements or exaggerations by researchers involved (e.g., Gould and Sternberg); details which are seemingly best left for some other publication than WP to point out. I think we can simply elect to not include claims that have strong flaws such that they might be seen as minority POVs/interpretations. --Rikurzhen 16:29, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
The few times that Gould or Sternberg is mentioned here they are immediately contradicted. Most of their arguments are simply excluded. In contrast, Rushton who have become rich with help of the Pioneer Fund has many studies in this article without similar critique. Ultramarine 17:03, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
Find a published criticism like that and cite it, rather than forcing the MRI stuff to fit that point. --Rikurzhen 17:10, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
I have already included 3 articles that shows that Rushton systematically misrepresents the evidence. I find is amazing that a literature review by him should be taken seriously, but it still cited in several places in this article. Why is it not allowed to mention that his claimed references are false, while the article contains numerous extremely dubious studies from nineteenth century in order to support his view? Ultramarine 22:45, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

(1) We need to be more stringent and self-policing on WP:NPOV and WP:NOR. (2) Your points about the MRI material is fine if put in the right place, like next to the actual claims, rather than in the history section; or just delete the offending claims if they are demonstrably a minor POV interpretation. (3) Logically, being wrong about one thing doesn't make one wrong about something else. Even if Rushton is a racist, he would be correct if he said "1+1=2". (4) Maybe the Pioneer fund stuff would go better in the moral criticisms section. --Rikurzhen 22:54, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

How about a new section? This is a common critique and should be mentioned. It would be good to have some responese also. Ultramarine 23:15, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Income/parental eduction image

Ultramarine removed the figure about SAT scores versus family income and parental education, with the reason "Removed image which is POV when explanations is not presented". While I understand this reasoning, I would like to see if we can agree how much explanation we ought to present before we can include the image. I ask because the two charts were extremely important for my own understanding of this topic. Indeed I used to discard this entire topic off-hand before I knew of the data abstracted in these charts. (Well, similar charts, but the concept remains.)

They illustrate brilliantly two central points for this section: (1) that cultural (or whatever we want to call them) factors correlate highly with intelligence. (This is an important point, attacking an important misconception.) And that they to so within racial groups. (2) that these factors alone cannot explain the difference in SAT scores between racial groups. We who edit this article may think this is obvious, but as usual a picture says more than thousand unicode characters.

Could we simply extend the caption for the image in the summary article so as to hint at the possible non-genetic causes for the SAT gap? Here's a suggestion, basically just a list of headlines from the in-depth article:

Family income and parental education are positively correlated with SAT scores. However, the score gap between races persists at all levels of family income and parental education. For example, in 1995 Black students from the highest income group have lower average SAT scores than White students from the lowest income group. Suggested non-genetic factors to explain this gap include test bias, motivation, language problems, different manifestations of the Flynn effect, other features in the socio-economic and cultural environments, or non-genetic biological factors such as insufficient nutrition or drug abuse during pregnancy.

This would give us a good and visible spot to rattle off a number of valid suggestions for non-genetic explanations, making the entire article more inviting. Arbor 21:35, 10 July 2005 (UTC)


This is the text in the article and I do not think that it should be shorter:

  • Some argue that Blacks are discriminated against such that they must have a higher or at least equal intelligence in order to achieve the same socioeconomic status (SES) as Whites. One should then expect that Black children should have a higher or equal IQ compared to children from Whites with the same SES. That they score lower on SAT tests can thus be interpreted as evidence for strong adverse influence from environmental factors different from SES or from SES factors other than income and parental education, like systematic discrimination discouraging school and achievement motivation and learning or cultural differences in nutrition like duration of breastfeeding.
  • It is possible that Black and Hispanic parents achieve higher SES with lower intelligence; perhaps by having (on average) greater amounts of a compensating character, or through affirmative action. However, affirmative action has lts largest effect on young people newly employed with lower income.
  • Another alternative explanation is that by comparing the SES of parents to the intelligence of their children, the score gap shown here reflects regression towards different average racial scores from one generation to the next; a partly-genetic origin of intelligence differences would predict this effect.
  • SAT scores correlate fairly well with IQ scores but they are not the same and may measure different things. Ultramarine 22:03, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

No. It certainly should be shorter. The data should be inviting people to look deeper into the sub-article. Arbor's suggestion is a good one. --- also, several of those suggestions are not supported by references. we'll need to update that. --Rikurzhen 22:05, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

No POV pushing. I am not certain that it should be included this prominently at all, SAT scores are not IQ. Ultramarine 22:18, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
If this could be called pushing a POV, which I think is hard to argue when it is just data, then it should be noted that it is the consensus POV presented in the 1994 APA task force report. It should be sufficient to paraphrase the APA's view in the caption: [10] --Rikurzhen 00:23, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

Socio-economic Factors. Several specific environmental/cultural explanations of those differences have been proposed. All of them refer to the general life situation in which contemporary African Americans find themselves, but that situation can be described in several different ways. The simplest such hypothesis can be framed in economic terms. On the average, Blacks have lower incomes than Whites; a much higher proportion of them are poor. It is plausible to suppose that many inevitable aspects of poverty, such as poor nutrition, frequently inadequate prenatal care, and lack of intellectual resources, have negative effects on children's developing intelligence. Indeed, the correlation between "socio-economic status" (SES) and scores on intelligence tests is well known (White, 1982). Several considerations suggest that this cannot be the whole explanation. For one thing, the Black/White differential in test scores is not eliminated when groups or individuals are matched for SES (Loehlin et al, 1975). Moreover, the data reviewed in Section 4 suggest that excluding extreme conditions, nutrition and other biological factors that may vary with SES account for relatively little of the variance in such scores. Finally the (relatively weak) relationship between test scores and income is much more complex than a simple SES hypothesis would suggest. The living conditions of children result in part from the accomplishments of their parents: if the skills measured by psychometric tests actually matter for those accomplishments. intelligence is affecting SES rather than the other way around. We do not know the magnitude of these various effects in various populations, but it is clear that no model in which 'SES" directly determines "IQ" will do. A more fundamental difficulty with explanations based on economics alone appears from a different perspective. To imagine that any simple income- and education-based index can adequately describe the situation of African Americans is to ignore important categories of experience. The sense of belonging to a group with a distinctive culture, one that has long been the target of oppression, and the awareness or anticipation of racial discrimination are profound personal experiences, not just aspects of socio-economic status. Some of these more deeply rooted differences are addressed by other hypotheses, based on caste and culture.

You are talking about the same report that concluded that the evidence fails to support the genetic hypothesis? Ultramarine 02:47, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Of course that's not logically related to the issue at hand. But, yes, that report got some things wrong -- if you can produce a similar report that contradicts it, as exists for the genetic hypothesis, then we can use that as reason to exclude their conclusion. --Rikurzhen 02:59, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
Of course it is logically related to the issue at hand. The section is called "Culture-only or partially genetic explanation?". Why should one quote selectively from the report and only include statements supporting one view? Ultramarine 03:05, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
So you're suggesting that we can't have a graph showing that some environmental factor isn't involved in the B-W gap unless we have a graph suggesting one that is? That would be fine with me -- if you can find one. --Rikurzhen 03:07, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
I am saying that graph that supports one POV when there are no added explanations and that is almost as big as the rest of the text is POV in a summary. Why not instead have a graph showing the Flynn effect? Ultramarine 03:12, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure what POV the graph supports, because people of all POVs seem to accept the obvious interpretation of it... but if you have a graph of the Flynn effect that says something meaningful about race and intelligence, that would be worth considering... it would definitely be worth adding to the sub-article. --Rikurzhen 03:19, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
Why are you insisting that your POV graphs should be in the summary and that mine must be in the sub-article? Ultramarine 03:23, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
Is that your answer? No more time for WP tonight, I'll check back later. --Rikurzhen 03:42, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
I could see an objection on other grounds (e.g., it's trival, too much detail for the summary, a waste of space, etc.) but I don't get the objection from NPOV: because proponents of all POVs would endorse the graph and the obvious (but limited) interpretation of it. --Rikurzhen 06:17, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
Maybe if all the text was also included. I still think that it would be too detailed for the summary. Ultramarine 12:19, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

External links

The external links section could use some housekeeping or an organizational plan. --Rikurzhen 16:33, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

Footnotes

The footnotes need some cleaning up as well. Future-proofing against lost external web pages for example. --Rikurzhen 22:11, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

Tons of fun

The comments on the unexpected FAC page are tons of fun!!! --Rikurzhen 02:22, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing it out. I was surprised by the nomination. I'm quite happy, not because of the compliment to the article, but because it attracts an even broader cross-section of editors. I believe the stepwise increase in exposure is crucial for the article's quality and long-term survival. We'll see what happens.

Mass reversions

Here are the justifications for the edits I made last night, which were reverted by ZM with no accompanying Talk entry. I have reinstated them. Kindly do not revert without discussion.

First, the section formerly titled "IQ, race and public policy" actually does not mention policy until the very end; the bulk of the text concerns the significance of IQ disparities. I have retitled the section to reflect that.

Second, because policy remains an interesting area, and is distinct from discussions of significance, I have promoted it to a section.

Third, the last paragraph of the Significance section, regarding Jewish accomplishment, was re-written to better reflect the facts and to remove irrelevant (and speculative) material about the sources of income disparity. The edits were reverted without comment (the only entry was "last 2 edits reverted", which did not include this edit).

Another recent reversion [11] also bears comment. The edit commentary "No consensus that IQ is very important for income" is consistent with the deletion of the income content. The income-related content in the sentence at issue appears entirely speculative. I've improved the sentence regarding science. If it's really necessary to justify the statement that science is a high-IQ occupation for which g has a high predictive validity (what it means to be g-loaded), see Herrnstein and Murray p.100 (social scientists, natural scientists, mathematicians, engineers and computer scientists all listed as "high-IQ occupations"), Gottfredson 1997 Table 1[12] (biologist = high-complexity profession for which g has a high predictive validity), Gottfredson 2005 [13] Figure 15.1 (chemist and engineer both shown with mean IQ more than 1sd above average). I can get more, but these should be more than sufficient. --DAD T 18:33, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Fourth, the link to the Intelligence and public policy article was removed with no explanation. Because this article contains highly relevant information, and was in part designed to be cited from the present article, it's hard to see why it was removed.

Fifth, the Copenhagen Consensus article says nothing about cognitive gains. The link between execution of the Copenhagen Consensus programs and cognitive development is speculative. Moreover, is this really the best policy reference we can come up with? More recent additions (by Ultramarine [14]) which do propose cognitive-development-specific improvements are precisely what's needed in this section. I have, again, removed the Copenhagen material.

Reformulated as that many of policies already advocated for other reasons as being economic would in addition have a beneficial effect on IQ. Ultramarine 18:16, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
I repeat, the Copenhagen consensus link is speculative. In the article, it now comes across as off-topic: "may have a large scale effect" (on what is left for the reader to fill in -- the implication "on cognitive function" continues to be speculative). Also, I can find no mention of iodine in the Copenhagen consensus page, yet iodine is specifically called out as having a cognitive benefit as if Copenhagen recommended it. This has raised my skeptic's hackles. Either find a specific Copenhagen/iodine link or keep the two separate. --DAD T 18:57, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
Iodine is mentioned 7 times in Copenhagen consensus paper. Use search. Ultramarine 19:17, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
Sold. This helped: direct reference to lack of iodine and iron in lower intelligence as well (p.2), which makes the CC material directly relevant. Not sure why this wasn't included before. I'll update the article accordingly. --DAD T 19:30, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Again, kindly refrain from mass reversions with minimal explanation without a Talk entry. It's not right. --DAD T 17:23, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

further research

While the editors of this article are very good at exhausting my personally accumulated knowledge on this subject, a great deal more is available out there. As one example, here's a recent letter to Science:

  • [15] "Regulating Mercury: What's At Stake?" Science, Vol 309, Issue 5732, 244-245 , 8 July 2005

Which in turn cites:

  • T. Gayer, R. W. Hahn, "Designing Environmental Policy: Lessons from the Regulation of Mercury Emissions" (Regulatory Analysis 05-01, AEI-Brookings Joint Center, Washington, DC, March 2005).

--Rikurzhen 17:36, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

Interesting. Something about this should be in the policy article and also something about lead. Ultramarine 21:32, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
Here is one study [16]. Ultramarine 21:45, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
Would like to see a direct policy link, otherwise this belongs with other environmental causes. Incidentally, I feel the same way about the genetic engineering statement -- the policy link is extremely speculative, and unreferenced, and I feel the subject is not up to encyclopedic snuff. --DAD T 22:05, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
The problem with the GE statement is that there is no proof-of-principle to cite. We may be better without it for the sake of WP:NOR. --Rikurzhen 22:13, July 12, 2005 (UTC)
I strongly disagree on the genetic engineering. It one of the strongest arguments against various racist policies that might follow from propganda using racial differences in IQ, like mass scale involuntary sterilization, creation of an exclusively White or East Asian state, persecution of the more intelligent or less intelligent minority or majority, and even genocide. I will dig up some Transhuman philosopher if you insist. Ultramarine 22:25, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
Personally, I think John Locke and the principle of natural rights would be sufficient even if GE were impossible. Isn't there a consensus statement against genocide or something like that? --Rikurzhen 22:29, July 12, 2005 (UTC)
I (and arguably the rest of humanity) am utilitarian. Ultramarine 22:33, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
But, like me, you're also probably a rational preference utilitarian. ;) --Rikurzhen 22:37, July 12, 2005 (UTC)
Yes, probably. But this argument is extremely important; I consider it or some variation the be most important paragraph in whole article and will strongly object to any deletion. Ultramarine 22:42, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

A statement about the futility of using race as a selection for intelligence would be fine as a statistical matter. --Rikurzhen 22:47, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

That would a nice addition if it could be explained effectively without complicated math. Ultramarine 22:54, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

From the section above policy ... Jensen (1998, p. 357) estimates that in a random sample of equal numbers of US Blacks and Whites, most of variance in IQ would be unrelated to race or social class. Put another way, most IQ variation is within families. --Rikurzhen 22:59, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

That is a good argument if it can be fitted into the policy section in an understandable way. Ultramarine 23:07, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
I have edited the genetic engineering paragraph. The claim that GE "may soon" be able to change genetic determinants of intelligence, in particular, is a howler: it implies that such genetic determinants will be identified, which the rest of the article spends considerable space debating, and certainly there is no indication that genetic engineering of humans will happen anytime "soon" except in extreme cases of lethal diseases. Also, it is no more speculative (and probably less so) to claim that genetic engineering will allow changing of racial traits (light skin color in particular comes to mind, as it is valued -- for good or ill -- in at least Western and East Asian cultures) at least as soon as intelligence; racial traits are now mentioned alongside intelligence. --DAD T 23:36, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
Some minor tweaking. Ultramarine 23:47, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

summary

since the summary doesn't include any citations, i'll leave it to the interested to do something with it. --Rikurzhen 17:56, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

We should move the material to genetic vs culture since all the material is about that, will do it soon. Ultramarine 18:15, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Looking for reference

The article says (section 3):

The consensus among intelligence researchers is that IQ differences between individuals of the same race reflect (1) real, (2) functionally/socially significant, and (3) substantially genetic differences in the general intelligence factor.

The reference appears to be Gottfredson (2005). (I note that there are two references by that author in that year — these should be distinguished.) The first reference is online at [17]. The relevant material is on page 157–158, which reports the results of a 1984 survey of "experts" who estimated that IQ is 57% heritable.

Is this the reference that is intended to support the sentence I quoted? Or have I missed it? Gdr 23:57, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

The other one... Gottfredson, L. S. (2005). "What if the hereditarian hypothesis is true". Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 11, 311–319. --Rikurzhen 00:36, July 14, 2005 (UTC)
I've marked the references as 2005a and 2005b, and propagated the changes. --Rikurzhen 00:39, July 14, 2005 (UTC)
That's the proximal reference, but you're correct that the 1984 survey is primary data on that subject. We discuss that paper and others here. --Rikurzhen 00:51, July 14, 2005 (UTC)
Another more descriptive way is to include the volume and perhaps the page number, e.g., (Gottfredson 2005, vol. 11) or (Gottfredson 2005, 11:311–19).
—Wayward 03:13, July 14, 2005 (UTC)


Consolidation

The Significance of group IQ differences and Policy implications sections have complementary sections/articles elsewhere in WP, as highlighted by their leading see also links. Unless there is a compelling reason to do so, we should avoid repeating content between the corresponding sections. Any suggestions on this problem? --Rikurzhen 02:59, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

Not a big problem. The sections here can be seen as sections also of the other articles. I suggest simply noting in the other articles that issues related to race are discussed here. Ultramarine 03:04, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
What I was sort-of thinking was that specifics that are general beyond race should be moved out and simply summarized here. That is, we should sort the details to the appropriate article and summarize what's moved. --Rikurzhen 04:06, July 13, 2005 (UTC)
Agree, that makes good sense. --DAD T 06:02, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
The only thing that I think could be moved is the general discussion about the role of IQ in income. Ultramarine 06:14, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
It could be summarized, but the table of Bell Curve data needs some kind of introduction. --Rikurzhen 06:45, July 13, 2005 (UTC)
The bit about use of leaded gasoline in developing nations seems quite unrelated to racial differences in intelligence. Malaria is marginally acceptable as the content focuses on Africa, though I'm unhappy about it. We need to be very clear: the article is not about intelligence differences between geographical locations, but between racial groups, and generally groups that coexist geographically. A citation that explains why the effect is race-linked (I might even consider a poverty-linked effect or something equally indirect) might be okay, but no such citation doesn't fly. --DAD T 06:30, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
If we can include a few skull samples from the nineteenth century from Africa as evidence, then we can certainly also include environmental differences in Africa or the third world. IQ and the wealth of nations is about geography, should it be excluded? Ultramarine 15:05, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
To the extent that IQ and the Wealth of Nations data doesn't concern race and IQ, content from it should be moved into a related article. I haven't read the book, so I can't comment on whether it addresses race explicitly, or whether other authors have used its data in building a race-related case. I will never fight for the inclusion of African skull samples, unless it's a debate on the field's history or on the evolutionary origin of racial cognitive differences. (That a skull is "from the nineteenth century" seems to me quite irrelevant.) --DAD T 16:02, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
Why can we discuss iron but lead? In general, all discussion about the developing world are more uncertain. There has certainly been no general study in the developing world showing that races in general have lower IQ, only a very few small studies here and there. Ultramarine 16:45, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

We can discuss both iron and lead. Discussing them on the Race and Intelligence page is not the right place, for precisely the reason you give: "developing nation" does not mean "different race", nor does it mean "different IQ" (though, from what I gather, Lynn's book makes that explicit claim with supporting data). For the micronutrient/toxin data, the right places are Intelligence and public policy (for the policy stuff) and IQ. I am rapidly expanding the public policy page in an attempt to make sure all the data (including lead, iron, iodine, and so on) is discussed, and in the proper place. Asserting that lead and iron and so on are racial issues seems to me to be quite far-fetched. --DAD T 17:36, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

I have made these changes. Still some work to do on reference cleanup. --DAD T 17:53, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Notes, References, etc.

I've found a few discrepancies in the notes/references. First, there's this listing in the reference section: "Degler, C. N. (1991). In search of human nature. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 041528659X." However, ISBN 041528659X is In Search of Human Nature by Mary Clark (2002). Second, note number 4 looked like this "Bean (1906); Broca (1873); Mall (1909); Morton (1839); Pearl (1934); Vint (1934)." There are no entries in the reference section for Bean, Mall, Morton, Pearl, or Vint. Also, "Bean (1906), etc." is text citation style; I've converted note number 4 to note style and commented out the other listings with no references. —Wayward 10:18, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

I see that you are putting full references back into the notes section and undoing a clean-up process I started but which slowed down for several reasons, technical frustrations being among them. A few weeks ago I posted a plea for help to the talk page at Wikipedia:Footnote3 pointing to the problem. Especially, our frequent citations to (Gottfredsson 2005) accentuate some fundamental faults with the assumptions underlying the Footnote3 proposal.
However, seeing your current notes section, it is certainly more useful than the half-baked attempt I started (and didn't finish because of the problems of cleaning up an article that is undergoing major refactoring). I think we should keep the style you are implementing, in spite of the future problems of maintaining footnotes like 3 and 28, together with the full citation at Race and intelligence (References), and a number of references in the associated articles to that text. How this is supposed to survive further editing is beyond me, but you have convinced me that current technical limitations shouldn't stand in the way of polishing the Notes section. I think for the moment we are stuck with the problem of very weak Wikimedia support for an ambitiously referenced article like this one. Thanks for doing all this work. Arbor 11:13, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
There are two basic styles of references: notes and bibliography, and text citations (author-date) and references. The problem is we have a mix of the two. It would be easy enough to convert all the journal and book citations into author-date system, which would clear the article page of a tediously long list. The problem is how to handle the strictly web-based citations. BTW, here's what a text citation would look like for note 1: (Sternberg, Grigorenko, and Kidd 2005, 60:46–51)
As for numerous references to a single work, the first time a work is mentioned it is listed in full (like the 2nd entry in note 6). All subsequent references to that same work are given in short form (like note 7). However, this doesn't stop the list from growing lengthy.
—Wayward 12:33, July 13, 2005 (UTC)
The larger problem with numerous references to a single work is that subsequent editing may change what note 7 is, thus breaking the footnote. --Rikurzhen 14:52, July 13, 2005 (UTC)
Well, of course, they have to be kept in order. —Wayward 19:55, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

Got it! Haha! Finally I have defeated the linking mechanisms of Mediawiki to at least produce a mock-up of what I want to do with the links. Look at the subpage on my user page, User:Arbor/Notes for Race and intelligence. You see there our current Notes section, with the exception of the first note, which is now itself a hyperlink to Race and intelligence (References). The cool thing is that this link points precisely to the relevant entry of that page, which contains the full reference for the cited work (At least that's what I am getting on my machine now, after some experimenting. See below.) I also changed the fourth footnote, which points to two different articles. Notes 3 and 26 could now have just identical text, and so could the 5 or so footnotes we need for Gottfredson (which are currently all still inline), all pointing to the proper entry in the References page.

I think this is the proper way to do it, mainly because (1) we have every full reference and off-site link in exactly one place, (2) we avoid the editing "opt cit" hell that otherwise awaits us and other editors.

Technical cruft: Problem is it doesn't quite work. I have problems with cached pages or reloading or something else I cannot quite reconstruct. However, the idea of linking to a named element on another page seems within the confines of what Mediawiki is supposed to be able to handle, the template magic underlying Footnote3 is much more advanced and works. (Need to look at this when not drunk.) Also, the existing templates for Journal and Book references could be easily tweaked to produce automatic ID elements for each entry (concatenating name, year, first word of title, or something like that), which would alleviate and streamline this process quite a bit. Still, it's a proof of concept. Arbor 20:49, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

When not drunk, huh? Imagine what you'd be capable of if you weren't soused while editing. I cry when I think of the musical turns of phrase your alcohol habit has denied us. Truly you bring shame on all of us. *hic* --DAD T 21:05, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

ALL irrelevant material on IQ-income should go

  • (cur) (last) 08:15, July 13, 2005 Ultramarine (Rv deletion of many other things beside income, beside the Murray study had disproptionate room before)
  • (cur) (last) 08:11, July 13, 2005 Rikurzhen m (rv - after deleting the IQ/income details, the counter POV need not include everything the internet has to say; a few prominent theories are enough)
  • (cur) (last) 07:59, July 13, 2005 Ultramarine (→Real-world outcomes - Reverted POV deletion of one side arguments)

what part of the things I deleted are important to race and intelligence that isn't already in the article? the murray data spoke to the importance of IQ. saying that other things than IQ are important doesn't make IQ not important. I don't see the point of digging for material there. if you insist that the opinions of the Lefton Learning Community really need to go into that section, then we'll have to balance it with something that counters their POV. in which case, we'll be right back where we started. ... a consiously balanced view of what experts really think is the best possible article. so highlighting personality as also being important is essential; if we could find a study of race and personality, that would help too. --Rikurzhen 15:28, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

You deleted one study that specifically examined the role of IQ and race for income. Murray's study is less relevant as it only examined the role of IQ in general for income, but you still kept it. (And it had a very disproportionate entry before, considering that it was not about race.) Ultramarine 15:32, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
Murray's general conclusions are needed to introduce his race specific ones. I didn't notice the intergen note. Keep it, but I would really like to see someone else citing it because it's conclusions are contrary to a large body of previous evidence; any reviews? The other bits are still irrelevant; past mistakes are also irrelevant to making future progress. Delete irrelevant material. --Rikurzhen 15:39, July 13, 2005 (UTC)
I see, they condition IQ on schooling and schooling on IQ, as the two are intercorrelated. The school indepedent effects of IQ will thus be reported lower in their analysis than the effects of IQ by others. Then it's not much of a rebuttal as a new way of analysis. Let's set that straight. --Rikurzhen 15:56, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

an interesting tid-bit from the intergen paper: --Rikurzhen 15:50, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

Downward mobility from the top quartile to the bottom quartile is nearly five times as great for blacks as for whites. Thus successful blacks do not transmit to their children whatever it is that accounts for their success as effectively as do successful whites. Correspondingly, blacks born to the bottom quartile attain the top quartile at one half the rate of whites.
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