Talk:Institute for the Study of Academic Racism
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[edit] Notability?
ISAR and Barry Mehler seem borderline in terms of Wikipedia's notability guidelines. Google searches for "Barry Mehler" and "Institute for the Study of Academic Racism" yield 594 and 463 hits, respectively. Google Scholar searches yield 42 and 8 hits respectively, with most of the yields not having significant citation. I think nomination for AfD would be unproductive, but they don't seem to have much influence by these measures and this should be acknowledged in the articles.--Nectar 23:36, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
- He had enough influence to get Cattell's APA award postponed in 1997 (mentioned in the NYT) and prompted direct published responses from Roger Pearson, Glayde Whitney, and other Pioneer Fund recipients. It's of course kind of ironic that we're discussing quantifying his worth via constructed metrics in order to rate him against others. Jokestress 17:09, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
- Re: ironic Ha. In defense of citation analysis, though, it is a pretty standard gauge of the presence of a topic in the academic literature. It seems in some contexts it's worth comparing figures' academic citations for a broad picture. Gottfredson, for example, who's much-maligned by Mehler, has on the order of 100 times his citations (1000 vs. 10 on ISI). (It's relevant to how much weight someone's opinion carries in the academic community.)--Nectar 06:01, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
- However, the kind of criticism he does is of an entire academic field. This kind of criticism is rarely popular among people in the field, so the kind of credentialism valued by academics (especially those who believe in things like psychometrics) is a symptom of the kind of bias he criticizes. Hope that's clearer. At any rate, the question of notability seems clearly established. Jokestress 07:43, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
- The numbers above aren't just for psychometrics, but for the entire academic community. If the rest of academia hasn't taken significant note of an academic's work that's taken in citation analysis to mean low academic notability. My point is that Mehler's position in the academic hierarchy is relevant to considerations of prominence and undue prominence (per WP:NPOV) when comparing his opinion to the opinion of academics on the highest tiers (e.g. Eysenck, who was the most cited living psychologist at the time of his death and W. D. Hamilton, who has far more citations than any of the prominent scientists in the human sciences that I've looked at).--Nectar 08:09, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
- However, the kind of criticism he does is of an entire academic field. This kind of criticism is rarely popular among people in the field, so the kind of credentialism valued by academics (especially those who believe in things like psychometrics) is a symptom of the kind of bias he criticizes. Hope that's clearer. At any rate, the question of notability seems clearly established. Jokestress 07:43, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
- Re: ironic Ha. In defense of citation analysis, though, it is a pretty standard gauge of the presence of a topic in the academic literature. It seems in some contexts it's worth comparing figures' academic citations for a broad picture. Gottfredson, for example, who's much-maligned by Mehler, has on the order of 100 times his citations (1000 vs. 10 on ISI). (It's relevant to how much weight someone's opinion carries in the academic community.)--Nectar 06:01, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
