User talk:Rikurzhen

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[edit] Archives

[edit] Reverted Editorial Change

Please explain why you removed my factual remarks in the race and IQ article and said that they are editorial. The bell curve and graph are misleading unless similar remarks are included. Otherwise the bell curve and graph should be removed from the article and replaced with charts that display the correct ranges. Thanks in advance for any clarification that you can provide.

[edit] gene article

Hi, could you look at my comment here [1]? Might you be one of the people who could respond to my point by adding accurate information to the "gene" article? Slrubenstein | [[User talk:Slrubenstein|Talk]] 19:08, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Charles Murray

Did I mention Murray's Libertarianism correctly in the intro to the article about him? Elabro 17:53, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Intelligence and success

Thanks for posting that quote from Stalking the Wild Taboo. I've seen it many times before, and I've often wondered how "mainstream" it is.

A recent statement by Murray likens the furor over his Bell Curve book (race and intelligence) to the furor over the Harvard president's remarks about women and math ability. [2]

Does Wikipedia shy away from taboo topics? Elabro 19:50, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Negroid

Hey Rikurzhen, I thought you might be able to verify offhand some claims at negroid. It's been claimed there that "most of the modern middle east had indigenous negroid inhabitants." Do you know anything about this? Also, there's a claim that melanesians are classified as negroid. Do you know offhand, is this due to a more recent wave of migration out of Africa? And is it correct that Indians are, generally speaking, caucasoid, micronesians australoid, and polynesians mongoloid? (I assume negroid is generally a term for biogeographic ancestry, not physical resemblances.) Thanks, Nectar 01:00, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I wonder about #6, though.
"No one uses these terms anymore. they really aren't of much utility (i.e., the '5 race model' or whatever) on anything but the most gross geographical scales. i.e., classifying indians as caucasoid-australoid admixes is fallacious because there were likely never ideal caucasoid and australoid types which interbred in south asia."
A scholar.google search yields 2,300 hits for negroid, 3,400 for caucasoid, and 3,700 for mongoloid (and the terms do generally correspond with genetic cluster analysis). The weakness of classifying Indians as caucasoid-australoid kind of reminds me of Neil Ritsch's point that sex and age are also significantly problematic categories.[3] Anyway.. Nectar 08:23, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sources for Polyunsaturated fatty acid

Hello, good work on Polyunsaturated fatty acid, and thanks for the contribution. However, you forgot to add any references to the article. Keeping Wikipedia accurate and verifiable is very important, and there is currently a push to encourage editors to cite the sources they used when adding content. From what websites, books, or other places did you learn the information that you added to Polyunsaturated fatty acid? Would it be possible for you to mention them in the article? You can simply add links, or there are several different citation methods list at WP:CITET. Thanks! — BRIAN0918 • 2005-12-4 20:29

[edit] favor?

Among many, many other things, you really helped give the Race article a logical structure. If you have the time and energy, could you give the same attention to the Evolution article? I do not see any problems with the content, I just don't think it is well-organized. I have a comment on the talk page saying as much. I'd value your input, Slrubenstein | Talk 22:39, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Apologies

My apologies for reverting you. I saw the diff (your first one) and it looked like vandalism. I checked the history and saw you got another edit in before I reverted you. I tried to restore your version, but again you beat me to it. I must be getting slow... — Knowledge Seeker 07:05, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

no problem --Rikurzhen 07:06, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] hello

hi --Ptwham 09:15, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Human chromosome articles

Hi, as a genetics student, I thought you might be interested in the articles about the human chromosomes I created the last few days: --WS 17:52, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Terminology question

Hi,

I was editing an article a few minutes ago and realized that I've forgotten a new term that you brought up in response to one of my remarks on the race issue. You had a single word for characterizing a sort of setting of initial genetic conditions by turning on or off genes prenatally or maybe in infancy that then could, e.g., make identical twins be "innately" different. I think it was ___genetic something or other. (I've always wanted a reverse dictionary where I could fill in a definition and then have the dictionary give me the exact word for it.) I searched the discussion files for the last several months, but didn't find it. If you can't remember it, don't bother about it. Thanks. P0M 18:19, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank you very much. P0M 20:23, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] R & I

Hey Rikurzhen, offhand, do you recall any instances of critics or neutral parties acknowledging the results of Snyderman and Rothman's media portrayal study? (I remember seeing critics acknowledge their survey of expert opinion.) (This is regarding the discussion at: Talk:Race_and_intelligence#Media_portrayal.) --Nectar 23:46, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for checking. Hope you're feeling better, Nectar 10:27, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] update for you

I ran across your user page while cleaning up links following a merger/re-write.

I just wanted to let you know, because I'm wary of editing people's user pages. --TheLimbicOne(talk) 04:08, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] # of South Africa studies used in IQ&tWoN

Rikurzhen wrote: IQ&tWoN reports a South Africa IQ of 72, which appears to be based on a dozen or so reports.... Just Fick (1929), Notcutt (1950), Owen (1992), and Lynn & Holmshaw (1990) were used.[4] --hitssquad 19:56, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, the reference list I saw must have been from RDiI.
Fick, 1929
Dent, 1937
Hunkin, 1950
Notcutt, 1950
Notcutt, 1950
Lloyd & Pidgeon, 1961
Avenant, 1988
Richter et al., 1989
Lynn & Holmshaw, 1990
Owen, 1992
Lynn & Owen, 1994
Nell, 2000
Sonke, 2000
Skuy et al., 2001
Skuy et al., 2001
Jinabhai et al., 2004
--Rikurzhen 22:08, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I see. That's interesting that Lynn and Owen worked together on a 1994 paper. Comments on R&I Talk seemed to imply that Owen was mad about Lynn "misusing" Owen's South Africa data. --hitssquad 22:32, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm guessing this is the paper: Lynn, R. and Owen, K. (1994). "Spearman's Hypothesis and Test Score Differences between Whites, Indians, and Blacks in South Africa". Journal of General Psychology 121: 27-36. PMID 8021630.  --Rikurzhen 22:38, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RPM to IQ

Hey Rikurzhen, Kamin 1995 argues the Raven's Progressive Matrices, which was used for a significant amount of the African studies, cannot be converted to IQ scores:[5]

The test's developer, John Raven, repeatedly insisted that results on the Progressive Matrices tests cannot be converted into IQs. Matrices scores, unlike IQs, are not symmetrical around their mean (no "bell curve" here). There is thus no meaningful way to convert an average of raw Matrices scores into an IQ, and no comparison with American black IQs is possible.

On the otherhand, all measures of human cognitive ability tend to strongly intercorrelate with each other, etc. (I see GNXP covers Frey and Detterman 2003 that correlates SAT with IQ and RPM with SAT.[6]) Do you know the answer to this?--Nectar 22:39, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

AFAIK, RPM is commonly used as an "IQ test", and is the regarded as being the most g loaded of all tests. I remember that Thompson and Gray (2004) in NRN[7] mentions RPM briefly. --Rikurzhen 22:41, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
This looks to be a paper that dicusses what RPM measures: Carpenter, P. A., Just, M. A. & Shell, P. What one intelligence test measures: a theoretical account of the processing in the Raven Progressive Matrices Test. Psychol. Rev. 97, 404–431 (1990). --Rikurzhen 22:45, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
See also Raven's_Progressive_Matrices --Rikurzhen 22:47, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Rikurzhen just submitted the summary: RPM is definitely an IQ test in that it is strongly g loaded. High g-loading is only part of what makes an IQ test an IQ test. Please recall that Kamin's objection was that the Raven was not "symmetrical around [the] mean". Jensen similarly reports that even and correctly-sloped gradations are critical in a "power" type IQ test like the Raven. However, Jensen also reports that the Raven test is in fact evenly graded and correctly sloped (according to his investigations and regardless of what John Raven might have had to say about it) and that therefore it is exemplary as an IQ test in at least that regard. Thousands of other citations, of course, can be found that refer to the Raven as an IQ test. I wonder if Kamin ever published his revelatory finding that it is actually not an IQ test. I would think the rest of the differential-psychology world would be very interested in hearing that about a test that they have been relying on for decades and for thousands of differential general-ability, learning-disability, ADHD, autism-spectrum, schizophrenia-spectrum, personality, and other investigations. --hitssquad 00:10, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I haven't read what Jensen has to say about Raven's but the shape of the distribution is a product of the construction of the test. The shape of the distribution of g is unknowable. Even with an non-normal distribution, it should be possible to make a Ravens to IQ conversion. --Rikurzhen 00:13, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
hmm... I think I can intuitively grasp how the shape of a distribution will affect the statistical power of the test. --Rikurzhen 00:35, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RAPM to "High-Range" test distributions

Just skimming your user page. You may find the following two links somewhat interesting or helpful:

Statistics of Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices (reported raw scores)

Statistics of Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices (reported IQs)

Provocative quotes from those pages (though the speculation presupposes certain things I wouldn't presuppose):

"Yes, this test has a negative g loading in its upper range. That means higher scores correspond to lower intelligence levels. This is of course not true for the full range of the test, but only for a tiny segment, probably that above the 99th centile, but I will later try to establish exactly where the breaking point lies. A possible explanation for the negative correlation is that the test contains a few bad items that are often answered wrongly by the most intelligent, giving too far-fetched answers."

"This test is one of those which have suffered the most from the Flynn effect; the rise of raw scores over the years."

Required IQs per raw score
Raw Required Mean SE
36 134 147 12.7
35 144 149 5.4
34 140 146 6.3
33 144 Insufficient data
32 136 139 2.6
31 Insufficient data
30 Insufficient data
29 156 Insufficient data
28 137 Insufficient data

[edit] Please read this article

(Personal attack removed)I give everyone the benefit of the doubt the first time around, so I'll assume you are mislead. Please read this short book (or long article) on the history of IQ testing and race. I would be interested to hear your comments. You may find many of the things you take to be self evident are false, and I would be very happy to work with you to edit the IQ and Race and IQ pages on wikipedia.

http://www.hirhome.com/rr/rrintro.htm

In any discussion that follows, I would appreciate it if you would refer to specfic claims in any refutation you may have, rather than making blanket statements. To do justice to the article, it would only be fair that any counterclaim you present must have documentation of some kind, as every claim does in the piece.

Thanks again

Ryan4 22:06, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Hey Ryan4, I understand your concern, but we've read many articles like Gil-White's before. His claim that racial groups can't be distinguished genetically should make anyone realize at the very least that he's a source very far to one side.[8] [9] [10] This is a minor point, but we treat 'no name-calling' as an axiom in this area (see the top of talk:race and intelligence).--Nectar 23:29, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

If your defenition of 'race' is subspecies, then to say that there exist human races is false. This is because the definition of subspecies means that there must be more genetic variability between individuals across subspecies than within one subspecies (otherwise what does it mean to have distinc categories?). In humans, there is more variation between individuals within one 'race' then there is across different races, with something like 85% of all the human genetic variation contained within the African continent alone. Thus, the phenotypic markers that we are so atuned to, such as skin colour, are (1) a minuscule fraction of total variation, and more importantly (2) have been shown to have no correlation with traits such as athletic ability or intelligence.

Again, rather than simply saying that he is biased, why don't you actually refute the specific claims contained within the article. My working assumption is you haven't actually read the article and are assuming what he's going to say without actually reading it. The man is a Professor of Psychology at UPenn, has conducted years of field research in cultural anthropology and has taught many courses on population biology and genetics. Ryan4 05:02, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Ryan4, I edited most of the material now found in the race article. I'm very famaliar with the deep subtleties of the relationships between race and genetics. You should read the article, and get to know the science better. Thanks for suggesting the article, but I won't have time to read it for now. --Rikurzhen 05:11, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Your refusal to read the article indicates to me that your interest is in preserving the status quo rather than actually discovering the real 'subtelties of the relationships between race and genetics'. To anyone, whether well versed in psychology or genetics or not, it should ring alarm bells when the man who actually created the IQ test, Binet, went out of his way to make the point that his tests were only supposed to test stuff learned and was not supposed to measure anything innate. It should ring alarm bells that the intellectual father of eugenics, Galton, and those who followed him have spent so much time trying to prove both that different races have genetically different IQ levels, and that intelligence is something that is innate and has nothing to do with culture. Only this way could such movements as the American Eugenics movement and Hitler's final solution be supported - to protect society from 'stupid genes' - get rid of the stupid people. And what do you know, the stupid people just happened to be black, jewish, or immigrants. You of all people should know this.

[edit] help?

There is a simmering edit war at Natural Selection which is as much about lucid English style as it is about providing an accurate account of the idea. Could you look at the recent history and comment? Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 11:45, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image Tagging Image:Mental-ability-age-iq.PNG

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[edit] MCPH1

The correlation of MCPH1 is surprisingly very high, isn't it? I would think such a high correlation should be mentioned at least in a footnote; what do you think? (Incidentally, is this high enough to in fact suggest a relationship?) --Nectar 03:12, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, that's an interesting article by Mayr. I remember seeing Jason Malloy's larger discussion of it on gnxp.[11] I'll add in reference to it.--Nectar 23:15, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Natural selection

User:Slrubenstein suggested to me that I should invite you to have a look at a new proposed version of the Natural selection page that we (User:Gleng and me) have been writing to replace the relative bad one that is currently around. The new version, for which we are inviting comments to improve it, can be found here: User:KimvdLinde/Natural_selection. Kim van der Linde at venus 23:01, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gone life

I just copied the newly developed version of the natural selection page to the main space after it was clear that most editors supported the new version over the current version. Kim van der Linde at venus 20:50, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Race and Intelligence

Hey Rikurzhen, thanks for bearing with me on the genetic explanations section. I've removed that particular paragraph for now, but I'd like to work on it with you to put it back in. We can continue on the Race and intelligence talk page, or work offline on our talk pages if you'd like. --JereKrischel 05:53, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Hey Rikurzhen, can you help me out with making the rationale clearer regarding the Lahn studies and how they would support a racial genetic explanation for IQ differences? I think I got kind of lost with Nectar, and need some help understanding. The article certainly needs a clearer connection than it has now, if in fact it isn't a brain size issue as you first explained. Thanks! --JereKrischel 05:30, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Hey Rikurzhen, your help on the R&I page is greatly appreciated - can you humor me and address my concerns individually before reverting everything at once? I understand that you've worked on that section carefully, and don't mean to seem like I'm personally criticizing you - the way that data is characterized and presented just seems jumbled and POV pushing. Can you work with me on them 1 by 1? Thanks! --JereKrischel 17:19, 21 June 2006 (UTC)


Re: Pinker.. No problem; nice to see we were both thinking of the new article. --Nectar 19:50, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Rikurzhen, I wonder if the data in Lynn's RDiI bears on R&I's discussion of black IQ in Britain: "Some reports indicate that the black–white gap is smaller in the UK than in the U.S.[12]" Jason Malloy summarizes RDiI's data: "In developed, predominately white countries, a second cluster of scores emerge for black Africans. African-Americans, of course, score about 85, while the median IQ from 20 studies of blacks in Britain is 86. Similarly, West Africans from the Dutch Antilles living in the Netherlands were found to have an IQ of 85."[13] Have any thoughts on this?--Nectar 04:24, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Just to make sure, your comment is referring to the studies presented in RDI, right?--Nectar 09:04, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for posting the data and excerpt. I suppose the size of the Mabey 1981 study counterpoints some of the studies that found higher means. .. I think readers won't necessarily be sure how the Gordon graph should be read. Are the curves averages of all the measures that fit (e.g. poverty, crime)?--Nectar 09:04, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
It looks interesting, but I probably won't be of much help in trying to boil it down for a caption.--Nectar 23:59, 1 July 2006 (UTC)


Yeah, that all sounds right. My understanding has been that Asian children exhibit slower rates of development and African children faster rates, and that it's already known that the gaps aren't detectable before age 3. From the genetic standpoint, this would probably be expected to operate along the same lines of Lynn's hypothesis that sex differences in intelligence are obscured in children because of differential rates of development.

I'm not sure where I'd read about differential rates, but I see the R&I genetic/cultural sub-page states "Lynn 1987,[14] argues that culture-only explanations cannot explain the pattern of IQ development in East Asian children where IQ development initially slower than Caucasians is followed by IQ development that later catches up to Caucasians." --Nectar 09:24, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Race science

Hi, I just came across the race science page and got the feeling that the term was a neologism, since no references are produced in the article to support the use of the term race science outside of wikipedia to refer to the topic. Then I noticed your note on the talk page saying that you were going to AfD the article unless someone had a good reason to keep. I didn't see one on the article's talk page, did someone come up with one? Pete.Hurd 03:14, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

it's on AfD now. Pete.Hurd 03:43, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Articles requested for more than a year

Hello, Rikurzhen. Right now, the collaborative maintenance project of the week is Articles requested for more than a year. A number of the items on the list are linked from only one Wikipedia page: your /biology scratch page. :-) I wonder if you could give us some assistance in creating articles for these topics, or tell us whether these articles are still required. Ordinary Person 23:43, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] John Ogbu

Started per request. Jokestress 05:13, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Free will

At 12:31, 18 August 2006 you tagged the "Biology and free will" section of the Free will page with Disputed-section tag. As the article is currently underFAR, can you help out? Can you explain either to my talk page, or on the article talk page, what you found disputable? Better yet, can you provide some references to the counterarguments you would make? We're working on getting things referenced, and improved, but the article clearly isn't what it was when it was promoted to FA. Any help is appreciated. Edhubbard 10:55, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hello

Hi, just noticed your stuff, it's pretty interesting, I guess I'll be doing more ethnic stuff, the crowd over in cars and airplanes is even more hostile than the anti-IQ bunch, just check out my talk page. --matador300 22:31, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Zen-master of puppets

Hopefully our friend will learn to participate constructively. I'm just as keen as you are to find common ground, and not let the extremists take over - if we're lucky, our good example could teach our puppet master the spirit of Wikipedia :). BTW, thanks a lot for all the help on R&I - I think with a few more passes, we'll both be satisfied enough with the result to remove all the disputed tags... Mahalo! --JereKrischel 06:26, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] You okay?

Hey Rikurzhen, I noticed you speedy deleted a couple of your own pages, and haven't been around the past couple of days. It seemed out of character for you - I hope everything is okay! Drop me a line on my talk page when you get a chance, me and Ramdrake were worried that your account might have been hacked. --JereKrischel 19:37, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] race

please police an anonymnous editors "summarizing" the Race article; I reverted once and want others to check it before I do it again. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:29, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

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[edit] About Race and Intelligence (explanations)

Rikurzhen, I'll take a look at the article today and start some editing of my own, and talk to JK as appropriate. However, I must say he has a point on one thing: we do need to find a way to reconcile those researchers who see a significant genetic component to intelligence (on the individual level) but don't see any kind of racial pattern to race groupings of intelligence. To me, it's clear there are many scientists in this category, and the article doesn't (in my view) do a good enough job at separating these two positions. However, I agree that the multiplication of the entries in the table may not be the best solution, and neither is the tit-for-tat refutation I saw in it yesterday morning. I'll start on something today.--Ramdrake 13:03, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

But then, that point being made in the first sentence of the article, one calls forth a whole slew of research that backs a genetic component without backing any racial differentiation, to prop up what for better or for worse looks like a racial-hereditarian proposition. If a study shows a hereditary component to IQ without addressing the race issue, I don't think it should be called forth to sustain the hereditarian view of the racial hypothesis. You are then simply applying findings outside of the range in which they were defined (i.e. extrapolating within-race to between-races), and extrapolation without supporting evidence is just that: extrapolation. Now, I know and I realize you're definitely not to blame for that, as this is exactly what the racialist-hereditarian researchers have been doing from the beginning. However, this is also exactly why some of their strongest critics are able to say their analyses are misconstrued, and their science should be considered pseudoscience (because much of it is unwarranted extrapolations -- with several other very major problems thrown in). Somehow, I feel we must do some more experimenting before finding an appropriately balanced approach. True, a lot of scientists think there is a genetic component to intelligence, and true several other support the cluster approach which allows the definition of "races" in the more classical sense. But from there to spin it so that you come away with the feeling that folks like Rushton, Lynn et al. actually represent the mainstream is a stretch a lot of people will refuse to make, and from my readings, it is clear that while some of the arguments they present do indeed belong in the mainstream, the theories and constructs they build out of them are actually closer to fringe than mainstream.--Ramdrake 20:57, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
It looks like we agree on several things. I'll admit it's my turn to be a bit fuzzy on the first part of your reply. Even though I have a science training (to a doctorate level), I haven't been practising in nearly 20 years, so my stats knowledge is admittedly rusty (but I'M sure you already knew that :) ). Even though you say that data like the IQatWoN national averages has wider acceptance than Rushton's or Lynn's theories, they are still far from a widespread acceptance, much further than say, entertaining the possibility of some genetic contribution to between-group IQ differences. Please go back and take a look at the suite of articles, and see how much space is dedicated to stuff being presented by say, just Lynn or Rushton; there's a lot of it. And since we seem to agree that their theories aren't exactly mainstream, it is possible that the amount of space dedicated to their arguments (the best and the least accepted confounded) leads to giving this article a pro-racialist, pro-hereditarian spin. You say in your latest reply that there is a relationship between WGH and BGH, but it is complex, and some of the variables are unknown. Nevertheless, this article looks like it casually invokes WGH arguments to support BGH as it jumping from one to the other was the most natural thing. It's not the most natural thing but it's not impossible either. However, the reasoning of how and why we can generalize from WGH to BGH I don't think is explained appropriately in the article suite; from what I understand, it might even warrant its own subarticle (and I'm definitely not the one who could write sucxh a beast). Beyond that even if we can get to BGH, there is no telling that a group classification by "race" is the most appropriate one. From what I gathered from the anthropological critics of Rushton, for example, this in and of itself casts serious doubts. So yes, saying that a lot of psychologists think there is some genetic component to the observed BW IQ gap is one thing; putting it next to Rushton's triarchic hypothesis as we did in the article may indeed attract controversy. I think part of the problem is not properly separating the hereditary from the racial, as I think JK is trying to say.--Ramdrake 22:04, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Race

There has been a good deal of reorganization of the Race article recently, and I don't think it is an improvement (although I am sure it was all done in good faith). Since you were a major architect of the previous organization (which I liked) I would like to know what you think. If you share my view I would not recommend just reverting to an earlier version, but just doing some strategic reconstruction... Slrubenstein | Talk 17:16, 11 November 2006 (UTC)