Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 17

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test

Along those lines, we should add something about this:

The racial gap in academic achievement appears very early in life—a fact that we have not touched upon in earlier chapters… But clear racial differences in intellectual development are evident by the time children first set foot in school… For example, black five- and six-year olds in the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth … scored a full standard deviation below their white peers on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, a standard gauge of intellectual development for children before the age at which they can read… [O]nly one-sixth of African Americans performed as well as or better than the average white child.

Thernstrom S, Thernstrom A. No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, p. 130-132 Simon & Schuster ISBN: 0743204468

I hadn't heard of this non-written test before. Jokestress 08:54, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Some refs to early age testing made it into the culture/genetic sub-article. Have you read the Thernstrom&Thernstrom book? --Rikurzhen 22:25, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I haven't, but it seems they make a case for aspects of the hereditarian hypothesis from articles I have read. They also make a strong case for amount of television watched correlating with test scores, so their argument has an environmental angle as well. The group that watches the most television also has the lowest group score, and vice versa. Jokestress 23:00, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Intro length and significance of IQ variance

The intro is starting to get a little long again. I just moved this here:

In the case of a 3 point IQ increase from 100 (the overall population average) to 103, it's estimated poverty rates would fall 25%, high school drop-out rates would fall 28%, and similar decreases would occur in crime rates and other outcomes.

I have two reasons: 1. It needs a citation. 2. It might be better to have this in the body of the article.

I'd like to keep the beginning as short and sweet as possible while still summarizing the facts and issues. Jokestress 09:38, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

This sentence and the one that preceded it were meant to summarize the #Significance_of_group_IQ_differences section, where this issue is currently discussed (in the #Within societies subsection). I think the sentence addresses why group differences in IQ (and thus the article itself) matter. Also, the sentence that preceded it becomes somewhat abstract without it. Regarding the header length, it seems like most readers aren't going to read too far past it, so I think completeness may be even more important than conciseness/briefness. If it stays, the footnote could be: "Herrnstein_and_Murray 1994. Discussed further in the Within societies section." --Nectar T 10:55, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I agree to put it back, the article is already overly vague as it is. I'm not sure if a citation is needed since the source is already referenced. --Scandum 16:58, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
It's my understanding we have adopted summary style for all sections and are giving citations with page numbers for all data per cite your sources policy. Because the article (not just the intro) is getting very long, the summary style is by necessity an overview, but the main article on that specific topic should have as many facts as necessary to explain the issue. This page (especially the three-paragraph summary) is supposed to be painted with a fairly broad brush. Jokestress 17:52, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
We could probably rewrite the sentence without the numbers -- journalism style ;) -- and append "for example" on it. Something like for example, a small increase in average IQ would produce substantial decreases in poverty and high school drop out rates. --Rikurzhen 19:26, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
If we are going to get journalistic (something I always advocate), the word would means we would need to source the assertion in some way: statistical models predict, some IQ experts speculate, something like that, because I am not certain that assertion is a unanimous POV or is supported by all data. Jokestress 21:09, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
I believe it's commonly accepted that the lack of education causes an IQ drop in Africa which in turn is linked to an increase in crime and poverty. I'm not aware of any research that indicates it's caused by Africans being genetically lazy and prone to crime. I guess it's only POV when it's placed in a genetic context, and not when western governments are spending millions to help Africans build schools? But if you have a better theory with possibly some sources I'd love to hear it. --Scandum 09:59, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Critics argue that the validity and fairness of IQ testing is best exemplified by attempts to tabulate IQ scores in Africa as laid out in books like IQ and the Wealth of Nations. The race and crime article suggests the genetic component you mention has merit, but again, critics object to methodologies and conclusions in many of those studies. I think you misunderstand my interest in editing Wikipedia. I do not have any theories about this (I actually know very little about this topic), but I am aware of several criticisms of race and intelligence research that are not acknowledged in this and ancillary articles. That is why I am going through this sentence by sentence from the top down and working with editors to make this more NPOV. The intro is for all intents and purposes there as far as I am concerned, but the rest of the article needs to have the overarching criticisms discussed, not just the point-by-point refutations and counter-refutations. This work raises some interesting philosophy of science issues which are not yet covered. Jokestress 17:00, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
I'd say the race and crime article indicates IQ is linked to crime. According to Murray criticism of race and intelligence research generally ignores research while focussing on rhetoric and character assassinations: The Inequality Taboo. Anyways, I'd say an encyclopedia should focus more on facts than interpretations, something where this article fails imo. --Scandum 00:19, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
One of the major criticisms of this research is the set of interpretations which must occur in order to produce the knowledge presented here. I feel this is explained fairly well in the intro via the debated assumptions added since it was NPOV tagged, but this is where the rest of the article fails imo. Jokestress 00:30, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Scandum, be careful to distinguish the questions of differences within versus between nations/societies. That will make a great deal of difference as to what kind of interpretations can be drawn from the available data. --Rikurzhen 00:47, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
I think some mention of the concrete numbers may go a long way, especially for readers who don't read abstract science material as often. What about something that's midway:
  • Still, even small variance in average IQ at the group level would theoretically have large effects on social outcomes. For example, a 3 point IQ difference from 100 to 103 would in theory cause poverty rates to fall 25%, with similar substantial decreases in high school drop-out rates, crime rates, and other outcomes.
I think the correlation with crime here is more notable than some of the other correlations (for example, children born to single mothers or longevity). Including "and other outcomes" seems to address that these decreases would occur across the board.--Nectar T 21:02, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
Nectar, that's cool. Jokestress, I don't know of any objections wrt poverty/graduation/IQ. I'm pretty sure those studies were confirmed with siblings, such that sibling pairs with IQs of 100 v. 103 have those benefits. --Rikurzhen 22:08, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

If there's data, then for example, twin studies (or whatever the studies are) show a small increase in average IQ produces substantial decreases in poverty and high school drop out rates. Then the citation. Gets rid of the extrapolation/future predicting issue raised by "would." Jokestress 22:49, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

You're right that the sentence (and its source paragraph) are intended to be on the effects of IQ difference between groups, rather than on a group average actually changing. I think this clarification can be made in the above sentence proposal by substituting IQ difference for IQ increase:
  • Still, even small variance in average IQ at the group level would theoretically have large effects on social outcomes. For example, a 3 point IQ difference from 100 to 103 would, in theory cause poverty rates to fall 25%, with similar substantial decreases in high school drop-out rates, crime rates, and other outcomes.[1]
As long as the figures are uncontroversial among intelligence researchers, I think "in theory" may be enough without explaining that the methodological source for the theory is sibling studies.
Regarding the other elements of this sentence proposal, I think (copied from above) some mention of the concrete numbers may go a long way, especially for readers who don't read abstract science material as often. Also, I think the correlation with crime here is more notable than some of the other correlations of IQ (for example, children born to single mothers or longevity). Including "and other outcomes" seems to address that these decreases would occur across the board.--Nectar T 05:46, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
The issue isn't what you call it, it is the speculation implied in "would." You can't state something "would" be this or that as a fact. You have to cite the source and page number, e.g.:
  • Some intelligence researchers state that even small variance in average IQ at the group level would theoretically have large effects on social outcomes. For example, the authors of The Bell Curve claim raising IQ from 100 to 103 would cause poverty rates to fall 25%, with similar substantial decreases in high school drop-out rates, crime rates, and other outcomes. (citation, page __)
Otherwise this violates NOR and NPOV. Jokestress 17:42, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
I think you're right, but my statement above was *as long as* the figures are uncontroversial among intelligence researchers, I think "in theory" may be enough. The corollary would be if the figures *are* controversial among intelligence researchers, "in theory" would not be enough. The sentence's reference to in theory is an abbreviation of commonly excepted theory/statistical models among intelligence researchers, though we can look at whether or not either of those is adequate. An alternative sentence construction without "would" might be:
  • For example, in Herrnstein and Murray's calculations based on sibling studies, a group with an average IQ of 103 compared to a group with an average IQ of 100 would have poverty rates 25% lower, with similar substantial decreases in [...] other outcomes.
So I think the question we're at now is: would the figures be controversial or uncontroversial among intelligence researchers?--Nectar T 20:22, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
Note: in TBC H&M did not look at siblings. This was subsequently suggested as a better way to look at their data, and Murray did the analysis (Hernstein was dead). Murray found the sibling data gave essentially the same results as the unpaired data.[2] --Rikurzhen 00:10, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't think it matters whether it is controversial as long as it is sourced with a page number. I might add a sourced comment criticizing scientists who dictate social policy on the basis of their own findings as a rejoinder. --Jokestress
That does sound like an interesting angle, but does the header (or the section #Within societies) mention policy? Regarding controversiality or uncontroversiality, if a statement is representative of expert opinion, we would want to present it that way, rather than present it as being the opinion of just one source. For example, the header states without attribution: most variation in IQ in the U.S. occurs within individual families, not between races. I agree on the benefit of including page numbers when we have them. I think the greater editorial transparency we have, the more trustworthy the article can be regarded as in the following years (b/c anybody can check for themselves editorial decisions we made).
Rikurzhen, do you know offhand, is this calculation as simple as: individuals with IQs of 103 compared with individuals (or siblings) with IQs of 100 statistically drop out of high school 28% less often? If it is, maybe we can just cite the original data, or cite it along the lines of "Herrnstein and Murray note that [etc.]."--Nectar T 06:50, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
TBC ch.15 pp.364-368 w/ a graph on p.368. Their study population had an average IQ of 100. They re-sampled that from population to bias for a mean IQ of 97 or 103 by not counting all of the people above or below 100. They did that at least twice to avoid error from their 'random' selection. So it's not a comparison of people with IQs of 100 vs 103, but rather a random subset of the 100 with a mean of 103 has that difference. --Rikurzhen 07:10, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

[Restart indentation] Thanks for the detailed reference. After looking over the chapter, I've tried to clean up some of the wording here:

  • For example, a group with an average IQ of 103 compared to a group with an average IQ of 100 would statistically be associated with poverty rates 25% lower, with similar substantial decreases in [...] other outcomes.[3]
  • ^ For this calculation, Herrnstein and Murray alter the mean IQ (100) of the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth's population sample by randomly deleting individuals below an IQ of 103 until the population mean reaches 103. This calculation was conducted twice and averaged together to avoid error from the random selection.(Herrnstein_and_Murray 1994, pp. 364-368) Discussed further in the section #Significance of group IQ differences #Within societies.

Now that I know this is just a sub-sample of the NLSY, I don't think it's necessary to give more detail in the header sentence about where the calculation is coming from, rather than letting the footnote do this. What do you guys think? (BTW, this Bell Curve chapter is viewable online at Amazon; search inside for page numbers)--Nectar T 23:16, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

"Statistically associated" seems unclear, and the footnote needs to explain what is meant by "poverty rate." Does that mean below the poverty line, or some other income inequality metric? Jokestress 23:48, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
OK, I think we can just replace it with "would statistically have a poverty rate 25% lower..." (note the wiki-link)--Nectar T 03:17, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Sounds fine... "statistically" could be replaced with "most likely", but I don't actually recommend that substitution. --Rikurzhen 05:11, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Sounds fine to me too (an I prefer "statistically" as well), as long as the findings are in fact about 25% lower rate of people below the poverty line, versus 25% lower household income or some other measure. Jokestress 07:21, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

These two sentences should be rewritten to remove the implication of causation. Something like:
According to some statistical studies, lower IQ rates are associated with higher levels of poverty and crime, as well as higher highschool drop-out rates.(Herrnstein and Murray)
Kaldari 16:21, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Lulu's edit seems be a definite improvement. We need to tread carefully when discussing causation as opposed to correlation, as fallacious logic in this area abounds. Kaldari 16:53, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

It's just stating the outcome of research, there is nothing fuzzy about it. Lulu's edit is only muddying the results of very clear statistics. --Scandum 23:20, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
The study that data is drawn from is the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which is not a small or partisan study, if that was the concern.--Nectar T 00:01, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

1. I think maybe there's some confusion about which comment is directed a which edit. If anyone needs it explained, I think I know the series of events. 2. Nectar hits it on the head. No one doubts the data collection, because it was done by an independent party. --Rikurzhen 00:09, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Genetic engineering

The conclusions of this article are false (I don’t care about neutrality of point of view, which is meaningless). Sentences like : « Finally, genetic engineering may one day be able to directly change any genetic determinants found to influence intelligence, racial traits (like skin color) or both. This change may make the genetic component of intelligence and/or racial characteristics a matter of voluntary parental (or enforced governmental) decision. In principle, such advancements would make the current concept and discussion of race and intelligence obsolete. » are revealing of the misconceptions of the author, which are « since ethnic groups share genetic features, and since IQ is partly determined genetically, then there are some race specific genes that are reponsible for the observed differences in mean IQ ». There is no scientific basis for such a conclusion. Rather, the main result of these studies is that, if one can classify one individual in a racial group by his physical aspect or by genetic testing, one cannot do it by looking at his IQ test. It is not possible to make any other extrapolation from the data. I think that such a debate does not bring anything to the question of the definition of race nor to the genetics of IQ.

Hear, hear. That is one of the sentences I'd like to see go. Unless it's a cited comment in a published source, that kind of stuff has no place in the article. Lots of other things to deal with, but I welcome you to take a crack at that. I am starting from the top and moving down, but that sentence does stand out as one of the reasons I marked this NPOV. Jokestress 10:07, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Anon's comment on the excerpt seems to be that in order for there to be racial variance in genetic influence on IQ, one needs to be able to classify an individual's race by looking at his or her IQ. The article addresses up front that there's substantial overlap, not rigid boundaries, between the IQ distributions, and that the disparity only refers to group averages.
I think the genetic engineering point is germane. People seem to tend to take essentialist stances on "race," viewing these groups as being static and unchanging forever. (I think we should be able to find a good citation for the point) --Nectar T 11:39, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
I took me a second to realize that this quote « since ethnic groups share genetic features, and since IQ is partly determined genetically, then there are some race specific genes that are reponsible for the observed differences in mean IQ » is made up by anon and not part of the article. This is good, because the anon is wrong (and right!) -- that's not a valid inference and the genetic engineering quote has nothing to do with that.
The anon has it backwards wrt truth v. NPOV: the quote is true but may not stand up to WP standards. Ultramarine wrote the sentence about genetic engineering (GE). I didn't fuss because it's obviously true, but it may or may not be acceptable (NOR and NPOV etc). The reason it's obviously true is as Nectar pointed out: people exist from all races with have higher IQs than the average of any race. In fact, I personally know such people, so I can attest to their existence. A GE society could endow all children with alleles for super high IQ w/o affecting most of the rest of their genome that has an imprint of their ancestry. Or it could change the alleles for physical traits linked with race (e.g. skin color) such that ancestry and skin color would be fully independent. All of this rests on the hypothetical power of germline genetic engineering, and so it is essentially reasoned speculation. I suspect someone has made this point in the past, maybe even Jim Watson. --Rikurzhen 17:40, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
A futher note... in contrast, there might not be a straighward GE approach to elmininating sex differences in (non-g) stratum II cognitive abilities. We don't know enough about their heritability and association with sex hormones to say whether that's plausible. --Rikurzhen 20:39, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

agitating for more numbers

I'm not inclined to put more numbers on the top graph. It would be inappropriate for a WP-editor drawn figure to give the impression of too much precision, which is what I think would happen if we wrote more numbers on that graph. But for those that are agitating for numbers, here are a few:

The 2000 census counted:

  • 211,460,626 people as White
  • 34,658,190 people as Black

Based on a White mean=100,sd=15 and a Black mean=85,sd=15:

  • There are 33,549,339 Whites with IQs below 85 (the mean of Black people), compared to 17,329,095 Blacks with IQs below 85 (i.e. approx. twice as many Whites as Blacks)
  • There are 5,498,704 Blacks with IQs above 100 (the White mean)

Acutal numbers will of course vary because those 100,15/85,15 values are rough approximations. --Rikurzhen 03:17, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

If I am interpreting that right, does that mean that about 1 in 2 Whites has an IQ above 100, where about 1 in 6 Blacks does? If so, then conversely, about 1 in 6 Whites has below 85 IQ, where about 1 in 2 Blacks does. Yes?
If this is correct, that might be more easily comprehensible for a non-expert reader for inclusion in the lower part of the article, but we'd obviously need to source all that. Jokestress 04:17, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Yes! That is correct. Actually, if you say it without the numbers (i.e. substitute "White mean" for "100" and "Black mean" for 85), then it is the definition of a 1 standard deviation difference (note the 1 sd IQ difference is more certain than any particular IQ numbers, which may vary). If -- for example -- the difference in height between men and women were 1 standard deviation, then ~1 in 6 men are shorter than the female mean and ~1 in 6 women are taller than the male mean. --Rikurzhen 04:25, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

but also there was some talk about having numbers on the graph or scaling it to fit u.s. demographics, which i said would be incomprehensible. it is...

  • Image:Iq-us-demographic-2000census-sketch.png

that's white (red), black (blue), asian (green) from the 2000 census --Rikurzhen 06:51, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

another chart that might be helpful for explaining the overlap/signficance question:

  • Image:Population-iq-outcome-model-sketch.png

you read the chart like this: if 16% of whites have IQs below 85, that corresponds to 50% of blacks below 85 Gordon (1997) pulled out a ton of sociological and survey data and found that lots of variables fall onto this curve. --Rikurzhen 08:19, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree about the first chart, but the second one is confusing for different reasons. It seems as if there must be a better/simpler way to label that. I am also trying to think of a way to take the earlier citation and make a comparison of the 1/2:1/6, like "Blacks are three times more likely than whites to have an IQ under 100" (or I guess 85 for that matter). I worry that something like that makes it easier for people to get confused about group vs. individual differences. Jokestress 07:36, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh, I'm not sure either chart is helpful for the article. I was posting them to prove a point the anon's who were asking for the graphs to have more precise numbers. We probably shouldn't characterize it as "three times more likely", because (while true) this does blur the distinction between group and individual level evaluations. When I have some time, I'll try to think of another way to describe the 1 SD effect. --Rikurzhen 16:49, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Does it help to describe the distrubtions in terms of percentile? Half of Black Americans score below the 16th percentile, and 84% of Black Americans score below the 50th percentile. --Rikurzhen 00:43, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

New York Mag on Cochran & Harpending

New York Magazine''s Oct. 2005 issue has a 7 1/2 page cover story, "Are Jews Smarter?" covering Cochran & Harpending's "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence". They mention Wikipedia's article on it.

Excerpt:

During the past year, the taboos surrounding the genetics of race and ethnicity have been significantly eroded, in no small part because of the efforts of Risch. A population geneticist at the University of California at San Francisco, a fiercely independent thinker, a fun gossip, and a liberal Jew, he published a paper in the American Journal of Human Genetics in February that rather boldly claimed that the races we claimed to be almost always corresponded with our continents of ancestry. It seemed to represent the consensus view that’s slowly emerging among geneticists. Many have now stopped quarreling with the same vigor about whether race is or is not a genetic fact.
“I am not sure that most geneticists have agreed to ‘races’ per se,” says [NYU Professor] Ostrer. “But continental groups or clusters, yes.” To deny these clusters, he says, would be folly; it tells us to willfully ignore what all of us can see—that people look different all over the world. [...] In fact, [David Goldstein, director of the Center for Population Genomics and Pharmacogenetics at Duke University], seems to rather appreciate [the paper's] Zeitgeist. “Until recently, most human geneticists almost . . . disallowed discussion about genetic differences among racial and ethnic groups,” he says. “Really. So many awful things had been done with genetic research in this last century that they developed a policy of ‘Just say no.’ But there’s actually a lot of difference between groups, when you consider there are 10 million polymorphic sites on the genome. So it’s not scientifically sound to rule out the possibility of differences corresponding to our geographic and ethnic heritages. It overlooks the basic point: The genome is just a huge place.”
[However] “Race, in this context, should always be used as an interim measure to see us through a period of ignorance,” agrees Goldstein [(and Ostrer)]. “Once we know the underlying genetic or environmental factors that influence individual responses, you consider those directly and ignore race.”
[...]
Maimonides came to the [...] conclusion: It’s “great exertion” that makes us who we are. To attribute it to anything in our blood would trivialize our own agency, our hard work, our humanity.
[...]

And just a reminder of how important these kinds of caveats are in the header:

[According to Leon Wieseltier,] "the idea that it explains intellectuality seems empirically and philosophically spurious. The world is riddled—riddled!—with dumb Ashkenazi Jews, so it’s empirically false."

--Nectar T 22:53, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

95% of people don't understand the idea of a probability distribution ;) --Rikurzhen 01:55, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Correlation vs causation

The following section is fallacious (cum hoc ergo propter hoc):

  • "Still, even small variance in average IQ at the group level would theoretically have large effects on social outcomes. For example, a group with an average IQ of 103 compared with a group with an average IQ of 100 would statistically have a poverty rate 25% lower, with similar substantial decreases in high school drop-out rates, crime rates, and other outcomes.(Herrnstein and Murray)"

Herrnstein and Murray's study shows correlation, not causation. Thus the use of the word "effects" and the general implication that raising a group's IQ reduces poverty, crime, etc. cannot accurately be drawn from this source. From the cited study, it is just as likely that poverty causes a lower IQ rather than the other way around. Please rewrite this paragraph to emphasize correlation rather than causation, or delete it. Kaldari 15:33, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Cause and effect would be a problem if the data from The Bell Curve stood alone as the way of answering that question. (I recall this was an early and well founded criticism.) However, there is more data. For example, in a 1998 paper Murray re-analyzed the outcome-IQ question on the sets of siblings within their data set. By looking at siblings, family environment (i.e. poverty) is controlled for. They find the same correlations. Thus, the environments reflected in their study are not the cause of the IQ differences. Complementary outside data is that the effect of shared environment on IQ from twin studies goes to zero in adults. I haven't seen any refutations of these follow-up and twin studies, which is why the section was written as it was. --Rikurzhen 16:46, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
What are the "twin studies" you mention? Those would probably be useful to cite somewhere.Kaldari 17:16, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
see Intelligence_quotient#Genetics_vs_environment --Rikurzhen 17:17, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

NPOV-section tags

Probably no one thinks more strongly than I that the Hernstein/Murray nonsense is crap science. So I'm certainly not defending the overly generous (and POV) presenetation of their claims.

However, the "accuracy" and "npov" tags should be used more sparingly, and with corresponding followup here on the talk page. In particular, I strongly urge editors to used "npov-section" for the specific areas that are thought a problem, rather than globally tagging the whole article (the latter provides little guidance for improvement). Put specific concerns here. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 16:15, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

When I tagged the article last summer, the intro was hopelessly POV. Since there is no other way to tag an intro, it seemed appropriate at the time. I believe it is pretty much NPOV now, thanks to the great work of a lot of editors responding to challenges. I feel we are probably at a time when we can remove the global tag, but the sections haven't really been gone over in any detail. Several stand out as POV problems, so I will look through each section and see whether POV may apply.
As we have discussed in other threads, the crux of the NPOV is that many do not consider this a legitimate field of inquiry based on the loose operating definitions of "race" and "intelligence." This article makes it much clearer now that this is about IQ scores, which may or may not measure intelligence. The other major issue is the hereditarian hypothesis. I would argue that the data as presented and their interpretations set up false dichotomies and POV forks to make points and bolster POVs. There is still a lot to do one this, but it is much better than it was, if you ask me. Jokestress 00:54, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
Correction: looking back, I see it was 172 who tagged this. I thought it was me, because I couldn't believe this was a FAC at the time. That was they day I started on this, too. Jokestress 01:04, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

image problem

Try for gallery image. Gallery does not accept png images.

try for png image

Range of the two genera (Hadronyche and Atrax) of venomous Australian funnel-web spiders.

Latrodectus mactans Very dangerous Spiders of the genus Latrodectus typically avoid contact

End gallery. Try for image in 200 pixel size. It will show up, eventually. Try for image in "thumb" format. A box will show up, but no image. "Thumb" does not like png.



Clicking on the box intended for the thumb images takes you to the file upload area, indicating that wiki software is not interpreting the filename correctly when it contains a png extension. Let's replace the png image name with a jpg after copying the above;

I used the same black widow image that I used in the gallery format above. P0M 21:10, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

why doesn't this show up? the full size image does. --Rikurzhen 07:08, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I think it's the same known bug affecting the image on the eugenics article on some browsers. Jokestress 07:34, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
I thought that might have been it, but I also thought that was linked to Adblock (a firefox plugin) but I still don't see it in IE. So, I was guessing it had to do with the new image upload policy, but I haven't found a work around. --Rikurzhen 07:41, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

The image was deleted. There is an appeal process to get images back. Typically images get deleted when they do not have a proper notice indicating that the image creator puts it in public domain or gives one of several other kinds of release. P0M 15:23, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

That's what I thought at first, but check this out: --Rikurzhen 17:37, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

That's totally weird. I remember double-clicking on the space for the image up above and not ending up where I got to by double-clicking on the lower image. I replaced "thumb" with "200px", and the image above. Now I have copied that line and changed back to "thumb" in the second instance. I did this because sometimes a non-printing character ends up somewhere and creates problems. That's not the problem. The problem is with the 'thumb' not working the way it is supposed to. Maybe 'thumb' only works with JPG images, or maybe it's just broken. I've also tried the new gallery tag. It doesn't work either. Hmmm. Now I've added some other images, JPEGs, and they're ok. I think you may need to convert the PNG to JPG. I can do that if you need help. P0M 20:15, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

i replaced it with a smaller png file. seems to have fixed the talk page version. --Rikurzhen 23:45, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

causality

which of these sentences attributes causation:

  • For example, a group of people with an average IQ of 103 has a poverty rate 25% lower than a group with an average IQ of 100.
  • For example, a randomly selected group of Americans with an average IQ of 103 had a poverty rate 25% lower than a group with an average IQ of 100.

I believe the answer is neither. --Rikurzhen 17:59, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't read either as making a causal link, but I think the second one makes it more clear that none is intended. The first might be a bit ambiguous. --Ryan Delaney talk 18:50, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
That's a fine reason for making the change, although we don't want to clutter the intro. I just want to get everyone on the same page wrt that sentence. --Rikurzhen 20:11, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
I felt the first sentence had several problems. It lacks context about which "groups" we are referring to. Yeah, they are ones with the particular IQ averages; but that's nebulous: what if one is the group of Tibeten women, and the other is the group of Nigerian men? It floats too much as to who is meant.
But specifically because of the implied universality ("any group with...") it suggests a causation--or at least a uniformity--which may not (and probably does not) exist. For example, if we had a society that provided every person with a guaranteed minimum income above the poverty line, the percentages below that line would be 0%, regardless of IQ or how it might effect income.
By stating the true fact that this result was found by studying a particular group of people (Americans), selected according to a specific methodology (by particular researchers, given in footnot), we can see the exact extent of the factual claim. Using the concrete past tense (when the particular study was done), rather than a narrative present also concretizes context. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 22:19, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
That's fine with me. I just wanted to make sure that the problem really is solved. --Rikurzhen 00:07, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
I think it's better to asume that the findings will remain as is untill proven different. So I'd suggest using:
  • For example, a randomly selected group of Americans with an average IQ of 103 currently has a poverty rate 25% lower than a group with an average IQ of 100.
Otherwise you misrepresent the findings. --Scandum 10:11, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

npov dispute

In my intrepretation this article has many neutrality problems,

  1. the first is presenting or describing the IQ test results disparity primarily in racial terms, which includes the title of the article. Other problems include but are not limited to:
  2. the two listed "controversial assumptions" in the intro should have caveats within each sentence (the "several controversial assumptions" pre caveat is insufficient),
  3. a chart and graph on nutrition vs IQ test results is needed at the top for balance,
  4. "... and practical consequences of racial and ethnic group differences..."; who exactly is claiming there are "practical consequences" and what does that mean?,
  5. the article should not exclusively use "intelligence research" nomenclature such as "concordant" to present this subject (should use plain, simple, direct language),
  6. much more info and details of the controversies surrounding this area of research should be mentioned in the intro and at greater length in the article overall,
  7. the article/intro should state exactly what critics of the field allege about the motives of the various studies authors (scientific racism), IQ testing and other measures of cognitave ability are highly disputed, etc. zen master T 05:30, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm not convinced by any of Zen-master's non-neutrality claims. As I've made clear on this talk page, that is hardly because I think the actual research is any good; but even the most noxious topics can be presented neutrally—which this article generally does.

  1. This article talks abount IQ in racial terms: Well, yeah! That's the title of the article. And the belief that there is a connnection is widely held (even if false in reality). A different article can address some other topic.
  2. Calling the assumptions that race==genetics and that Spearman's G exists "controversial" is plenty of caveat. Yeah, I think both assumptions are wrong, but the article allows for that as-is.
  3. The hypothetical nutrition/IQ chart might fit later in the article (or in a different article), but it is really not above-the-fold material for this article.

Whether this article should use the word "concordant" or other scientific words is by no stretch of the imagination a NPOV concern (the word is hardly researved for IQ research). Sure, you could argue either side of more-plain-but-less-precise usages, but that's a stylistic issue (FWIW, I tend towards: "Use the scientific terms, but wikify them).

Absent someone else coming forward to agree with Zen-master, I'm going to remove the NPOV tag in a day or so. As I wrote above, NPOV-section is much more specific, and usually preferable (if relevant, of course). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 05:44, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Your point that the article suffers from bias because it "presents IQ test results is racial terms" is baffling. That's what the article is about. You might as well complain that George Washington suffers from bias because it doesn't contain enough information about Eminem. Everyone here is tired of going around in circles on this. If you think some particular parts of the article need references, feel free to add them. But tagging the article with {{npov}} is not accomplishing anything at this point. --Ryan Delaney talk 05:46, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
There is not sufficient scientific consensus to present IQ test results data solely in racial terms especially considering there are a myriad of other equally valid ways of correlating the same test results data. What about my other concerns? What do you mean by "practical consequences"? How can consideration of "consequences" begin until a cause or causes for the disparity have been determined to an extreme degree of scientific consensus? Do you acknolwedge the need to disassociate between description of a disparity and potential cause(s) for that disparity? zen master T 06:10, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
I think you're confusing my comments and those by Lulu. But to answer your question: No I don't acknowledge the "need" to disassociate between description of disparity and potential causes of the disparity. Looking for the causes of natural phenomena is a perfectly reasonable scientific exercise, and your hightened sense of moral indignation about that be damned. --Ryan Delaney talk 06:21, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
What do you mean "natural phenomenon"? IQ tests are man made. Describing an abstract disparity primarily one way is analogous to putting the cart before the horse, it's a violation of the scientific method as far as presentation is concerned. Presenting the abstract issue as "race and intelligence" presents the subject as if you already know the conclusion which is in fact highly disputed. If the disparity is some day determined to be 100% because of nutrition would you at that point support renaming and rewritting this article to nutrition and intelligence? Given that "race" has not been established with anywhere near 100% scientific consensus as the cause of the abstract disparity why is this issue presented primarily in terms of "race"? I am not arguing that determining the cause(s) for the abstract disparity shouldn't be undertaken, I am merely pointing out that the scientific method is apparently not being utilized within this ongoing investigation (at a fundamental presentation/thought process level). zen master T 06:42, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
ZM, that's your personal/novel/original hypothesis. original research, of course, is forbidden. --Rikurzhen 06:53, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, that's a good point. I think this whole discussion is an attempt by Zen-Master to counteract the POV of the referenced views in this article with his own unreferenced, unpublished view. This conversation can serve no further useful purpose, and I don't intend to reply again. --Ryan Delaney talk 07:02, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Are you arguing we should simply continue with a method of presentation that violates the scientific method? Is it possible "intelligence researchers" are tainted because they've confused one (among many) ways of describing an issue with causality for that issue? The criticism citations I provided long ago are basically arguing exactly the same point I am. Doesn't the scientific method start with observation, why not use unambiguous language to describe an abstract disparity? zen master T 07:07, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, and WP:V are the house rules, and they are quite explicit. Articles should contain only material that has been published by reputable or credible sources, regardless of whether individual editors regard that material to be true or false. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. Even if we all agreed with you, we couldn't write such an article. --Rikurzhen 07:19, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
All the critical citations I presented were verifiable, doesn't "consensus", especially in the context of science, mean including all viewpoints? And I actually think we can write such an article, here is what we do: when there is a fundamental presentation neutrality dispute we should fall back a level and signify in the title where the dispute begins, which is why I've previously proposed IQ test results controversy. A consensus of scientists would have to all agree that IQ test results are an objective measure of "intelligence" before it even makes sense to correlate them with various sorts of information about the test taker, right? IQ tests by themselves are in fact highly disputed (not to mention the fact that the validity and method of correlations with test takers are separately disputed). zen master T 07:34, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
ZM, I don't have the time for a WP talk page discussion about why that is not a sound research proposal. Suffice it to say -- it's a research proposal. --Rikurzhen 07:42, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
How is striving to describe the issue and the nature of the disputes while giving preference to neither side an unsound research proposal? Isn't that the essence of neutrality? zen master T 07:48, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
Like I said -- no time to play this game with you ZM. --Rikurzhen 07:56, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
It is your right to choose not to respond to my challenge to justify what I interpret to be a fundamentally biasing and unscientific method of presentation. zen master T 11:13, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

What WP is not

Suppose, per Zen-master, that in the future scientific consensus becomes that IQ differences are entirely correlated with nutition. I think that's unlikely (as I do that authentic "racial" differences actually exist), but sure, let's stipulate it. In that case, WP should have an independent article Nutrition and intelligence (maybe it should already, seems like a reasonable topic). But even then, Race and intelligence would continue to be a valuable article about an historical scientific theory. Obviously, in this future world, the text of this article would need to be changed to reflect to-be-current knowledge. In any case, this future is pure speculation, and we can deal with it if it comes about, in a couple decades.

As a good analogy, there is an article on Phrenology. While scientific consensus is currently against phrenology having legitimate results, there was a time when it was otherwise. By all means, I support the scientific work necessary to confine Jensen and Murray to the same scientific dustbin as Gall and Lavater. But until the scientific consensus actually changes, we at WP must report the actual state of scientific belief, not do original research here as to what will eventually be believed. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 17:32, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes --Rikurzhen 20:39, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Section NPOV Tag -- False dichotomy

Now that we have the intro fairly neutral (except the caption on the graph), I have marked this section NPOV and will re-mark the main article it points to as NPOV because it does not cover all the explanations. It only covers the weak one hereditarians wish to debate (culture-only). The larger issue and the larger opinion among experts is that an interpretation cannot be made based on available data. Those who argue this entire line of inquiry is without scientific merit would object to leaping to "explanations," especially narrowing it to only two explanations, since they would say the data cannot support either. This hereditarian vs. straw man is an inaccurate description of the scientific thinking on this. Jokestress 07:48, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

The intro and method of presentation the article utilizes is not neutral in my interpretation. Please comment in the discussion above. zen master T 07:51, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
Citation/quotation are of course needed to support that claim. I doubt you'll find support for that claim -- if for no other reason than that Ultramarine and I vetted this article pretty thoroughly, and approaching it with very different personal POVs we each concluded that it was approximately accruate, neutral and balanced. --Rikurzhen 07:55, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps you're reading "The data are insufficient to support any reasonable opinion" as "The question is malformed". I'm quite certain this is not what is meant -- rather it describes the simpler case that the researcher cannot choose between the two options based on the available data, but if more data were available s/he could. --Rikurzhen 08:11, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
Jokestress, we can try to continue at this point in the thread. --Rikurzhen 16:59, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
As an analogy, let's say this article were about the correlation between foot type and optimism. Obviously the formation of your foot is largely hereditary, but organizing the world's feet into four or six or thirty types would be a cultural construct. Same with a definition of optimism. In some cultures, it is optimistic to think of the "end times" as a good thing, where in others that would be considered not optimistic. Optimism is a trait in the way intelligence is a trait: poorly defined and hard to measure. Someone could create a standardized test measuring optimism (if they haven't already).
Where the argument goes off the rails in a scientific sense is the point at which someone would say "Is the correlation between foot type and optimism environment-only or partially genetic?" As you note, it is not only a malformed question, but it's not a question that can be answered until foot type and optimism are scientifically defined. The observed phenomena do not validate the existence of the categories. That is reification and confirmation bias.
However, this talk page is not really the place for debating, but rather about shaping the article so casual readers understand the larger issues that make these assertions controversial. Jokestress 17:47, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
Sure. But there doesn't (presently) seem to be any substantial (scholarly) disagreement about the content of that section's intro Race_and_intelligence#Introduction: The consensus among intelligence researchers is that IQ differences among individuals of the same race reflect (1) real, (2) functionally/socially significant, and (3) substantially genetic differences in the general intelligence factor. A consensus also exists for the view that average IQ differences among races reflect (1) real and (2) significant differences in the same g factor. In order for someone to find the question to be malformed, they would have to disagree with (at least one of) these points, right? If they did disagree with one of those points, they would be talking about material that's covered in an earlier section of the article, and not this section, no? --Rikurzhen 18:01, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Spearman G

As you know, the two opposing theories of intelligence are the "one general intelligence" school of thought and the "multiple intelligences" school of thought. There is no consensus on general intelligence factor, so (3) in the first set of assumptions is inaccurate, and (2) in the second set is inaccurate. There is certainly consensus among those who signed the Gottfredson WSJ statement, but that was not produced by consensus and did not seek input from opposing viewpoints. The half who did sign it were rubber-stamping it, not crafting it from consensus. Gottfredson likes to make that political move when presenting her POV (see her widely-cited Scientific American editorial for another example).

So, we can say something like this: the general intelligence proponents believe that there is one factor from which all intelligence is derived; the multiple intelligences proponents believe that there are different kinds of intelligence. Each theory has merit and evidence to support its claims.

Then we lay out the POVs as regards "race." Jokestress 02:21, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

What's the definition of consensus? "General agreement or accord". Not unanimity. Other theories of intelligence exist, but the g theory is by far the mostly widely accepted. This was all discussed with DAD when we wrote the intro assumption: "intelligence is measurable (see psychometrics) and is dominated by a unitary general cognitive ability." (What was the point of writing this if not the make it clear that arguments about g theory were not a part of this story?) All three of the consensus statements (APA, WSJ and Snyderman & Rothman's survey) agree that the g theory is the predominant theory and the other theories have little support. The recent review in Nature Neuroscience by Thompson & Gray on intelligence talks of g and nothing else, saying that they "Intelligence in this sense is not at all controversial"[4]. Even Sternberg (one of the APA authors) does not dispute the importance of g, only it's preeminance over all other factors.
Each theory has merit and evidence to support its claims. That's called giving equal validity, and it's not allowed by WP:NPOV. --Rikurzhen 03:04, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
I do not believe g is nearly as close to consensus as Rikurzhen thinks. In fact, the general intelligence factor article describes the dispute around it. I believe tempering its assertion is important to resolving the NPOV-section concern raised by several editors. I had proposed the sentence: However, many psychologists doubt the meaningful existence of any uniform Spearman-style general intelligence. I am not too attached to that particular phrasing, but I think something along those lines is needed for the "Culture-only or partially genetic explanation?" section. Can you come up with a phrase you would be happy with, Rikurzhen?
Obviously, there are some philosophical issues around the meaning of g. For an nominalist (which I kinda am), it's enough to say that it exists because it can be measured, and that's all there is to say. But for a realist (as I assume most editors are), its ontological depth is highly unlikely. For example, height (of humans or any organism) is a straightforwardly measurable quantity; but it's highly improbable to think that there is one single mechanism or influence that creates an organism of a given height. Both many genes and many environmental factors are at play in height as a phenotypic trait. Similarly, if you just flatfootedly insist that "G is whatever IQ tests measure", then there is such a thing; but as a deeply meaningful feature of human being, it's far less likely. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 03:30, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
Lulu, I concur with your characterization of the ontological considerations of g. However, I do not agree that there is support for the notion that people believe the ontological considerations are salient to the causal hypotheses. (It may bug them, but it doesn't seem to affect their thinking about this question.) The reason is that the many correlates of g are taken as evidence that g is functionally significant. So whether g is directly related to a brain property, or whether it is a more rarified abstraction--like (for example) the consumer price index--is an important debate, but not obviously a point that needs mention. Let me check some papers on this point and get back to you. I'll also try to think of an appropriate phrase to describe the concerns. --Rikurzhen 03:58, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm pleased by Rikurzhen's version of the caveat (yeah, I like mine better, but it's a fine compromise). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 18:45, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
"Each theory has merit and evidence to support its claims. That's called giving equal validity, and it's not allowed by WP:NPOV." -- I was quoting a paper here. That site does a good job debunking the POV that this consensus is "settled." This is the most contentious issue in this entire field of inquiry, as much as Gottfredson and others would like to assert it is settled.
What really needs to happen is for us to go back and do some NPOV editing on race and intelligence to show how wobbly the assertions and assumptions necessary to produce this knowledge really are. (edit conflict. bye!) Jokestress 04:04, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
Dead link? Clearly it is more than Gottfredson's claim that the g nexus is established as the dominant/super-majority view of intelligence. A review paper in Nature is saying it, the APA task force on intelligence is saying it, and a survey of IQ experts is saying it. --Rikurzhen 08:06, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
the two opposing theories of intelligence are the "one general intelligence" school of thought and the "multiple intelligences" school of thought. -- this is, ironically, a false dichotomy. there is no monolithic "multiple intelligences" school of thought, but rather a loose collection of challenges to g, and because g is unitary these challenges happen to involve more than one "intelligence". however, that's about as much as these theories have in common. counting all "multiple intelligences" theories together would sort of be like counting all "non-McDonald's" fast food resturants together and saying that the fast food industry has two major players. --Rikurzhen 17:37, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

some citations and quotations

From the APA task force report:

". . . This brief survey has revealed a wide range of contemporary conceptions of intelligence and of how it should be measured. The psychometric approach is the oldest and best established . . ." ". . . the g-based factor hierarchy is the most widely accepted current view of the structure of abilities . . ." [5]

Other sources on the predominance of g

  • Encyclopedia of Human Intelligence
  • Handbook of Intelligence
  • John Carroll's survey Human Cognitive Abilities : A Survey of Factor-Analytic Studies [6]

--Rikurzhen 08:45, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Balanced with this from the same report:
-- [ w/ comments by rikurzhen ] --Rikurzhen 19:27, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
  • [of intelligence models] none commands universal assent.
-- of course not 100%, but more like >85%
  • When two dozen prominent theorists were recently asked to define intelligence, they gave two dozen somewhat different definitions
-- somewhat different but largely the same
  • Other points of view deserve serious consideration.
-- sure, when you're writing a lengthly literature survey, any non-fringe pov deserves consideration
  • Many of the most widely used tests are not intended to measure intelligence itself but some closely related construct.
-- they measure g, and most of what people think of as intelligence is g, but they do not measure the multidimensional folk concept of intelligence directly
  • But there is no full agreement on what g actually means: it has been described as a mere statistical regularity (Thomson, 1939), a kind of mental energy (Spearman, 1927), a generalized abstract reasoning ability (Gustafsson, 1984), or an index measure of neural processing speed (Reed & Jensen, 1992).
-- the ontological status of g is indeed an area of active research, as i and lulu were discussing
  • There have been many disputes over the utility of IQ and g.
-- in the past there were, but they were resolved
  • While some psychologists today still regard g as the most fundamental measure of intelligence (e.g., Jensen, 1980), others prefer to emphasize the distinctive profile of strengths and weaknesses present in each person's performance.
-- some prefer to emphasize strenghts and weaknesses, but not necessarily on the question of racial differences in IQ, although such differences do exist (Jensen 1998)
  • A recently published review identifies over 70 different abilities that can be distinguished by currently available tests (Carroll, 1993). One way to represent this structure is in terms of a hierarchical arrangement with a general intelligence factor at the apex and various more specialized abilities arrayed below it. Such a summary merely acknowledges that performance levels on different tests are correlated; it is consistent with, but does not prove, the hypothesis that a common factor such as g underlies those correlations.
-- nothing in science is ever proven, but carroll's work is now the consensus view
  • Thus while the g-based factor hierarchy is the most widely accepted current view of the structure of abilities, some theorists regard it as misleading (Ceci, 1990). (without Rikurzhen's selective quoting)
-- you can find some people in any field, but the vast majority do not feel this way
I believe we can all agree that the APA document is by far the most thorough and balanced overview, and it's the only document that sought consensus input from representatives in the entire field of intelligence research. This article should reflect that overview. Jokestress 18:50, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
That's fine, but none of those caveats contradict the generalizations that g theory is far and away the consensus view. (If you dig into any science you will find caveats, but that just a sign of good/active science.) Those would be great material for the article on intelligence or g, but now were down to a summary section of an article on race and intelligence -- so generalizations are all we have time for in a few sentences. --Rikurzhen 19:20, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
The only response above I am going to comment on is your ongoing claims that this or that is settled or resolved. This field is in the throes of a paradigm shift, so claims that this or that is settled or resolved are going to need to be backed with citations, then I'll cite the people who claim the opposite. Jokestress 20:42, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
So a few hours ago the 1996 APA was an authoritative source on this question and now we're in the throws of a paradigm shift? Not as far as I can tell. As late as 2004, that Nature review paper is stating that g is not controversial. Unless you're talking about something in press, I don't think we have evidence of anything like an over-throw of g. --Rikurzhen 21:24, 29 October 2005 (UTC)


An even stronger claim than the article is making -- Virtually all present day researchers in psychometrics now accept as a well established fact that individual differences in all complex mental tests are positively correlated, and that a hierarchical factor model, consisting of a number of group factors dominated by g at the apex (or the highest level of generality), is the best representation of the correlational structure of mental abilities. [7] --Rikurzhen 21:37, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

That's a good quote, and very close to the ideals of WP. Jokestress, would you agree that this is an honest description of the situation within psychometrics? (It goes without saying that we also need to mention alternative models within psychometrics and the strong criticism of g in other scientific disciplines, as well as in the public debate.) Arbor 08:24, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Policy discussion

There are more than two available options. zen master T 08:25, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Neutrality requires considering and presenting all in good faith arguments that you may be wrong. In this case numerous in good faith arguments exist. Also, "race and intelligence" is a biasing presentation at a fundamental thought process level, it may errantly trick people into triggering their gut reaction instinctual response that "race" is the cause for the IQ disparity when that isn't the case. To put it simply, mentally framing the issue exclusively as "race and intelligence" decreases the chances you will ever truly think about and fairly consider potential causes for the abstract disparity other than "race". Instead of spending mental energy unconsciously defending what may be an errant instinctual response triggered by ambiguous language, you should spend time analyzing the appropriateness of the language used and whether all possibilities are fairly and sufficiently considered. zen master T 08:07, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

you should spend time analyzing the appropriateness of the language used and whether all possibilities are fairly and sufficiently considered -- if it's meant to be added to WP, you shouldn't do any such analysis. that would be original research. --Rikurzhen 08:11, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
The actual wikipedia violation here is a method of presentation that gives undue weight to one side in what is in fact a highly disputed issue. You are not only preventing critical citations from being included but perpetuating what is a biasing method of presentation. There is no scientific consensus to even present the issue your way. zen master T 08:25, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
This article at it's core observes a correlation between two traits (IQ and racial group membership). If the cause of this correlation were determined to be 100% environmental, it would still be scientifically useful to observe the correlation, just as it's useful to observe the correlation between years of education and racial group membership.
However, if it's true that observing the correlation begs the question that race is hereditarily causative, I think the solution (just to be aware of what courses of action we're debating) would be along the lines of inserting a clarifying sentence following the first sentence, such as "Scientists debate whether the cause is entirely environmental or partially hereditary."--Nectar T 10:06, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
If scientists debate something then there isn't consensus to present it a certain way and we should seek neutral or more generic alternative ways of persenting it. Your caveat sentence is woefully insufficient in my interpretation. The article at it's core gives a biased presentation of what is an abstract subject, why can't the article present the subject more generically (especially necessary given the various points in dispute)? What is wrong with IQ test results controversy, your beloved exclusive data correlation between two "traits" can only mean something if IQ tests objectively measure "intelligence" which is highly disputed and undefined (not to mention all the other points in dispute). zen master T 11:11, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
Even if IQ tests weren't measuring intelligence correctly (they benefit blacks compared to more g loaded tests) it would still indicate a racial difference in the way the brain works, otherwise the test results would be exactly the same. So basicly that leads still to a genetic and/or environmental cause, regardless of the relevancy of IQ tests. I guess you could add links to articles claiming that race and IQ do not really exist, but that should be in a different section of the article, or maybe only in the articles about [race] and [IQ]. --Scandum 11:47, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
  • [Edit conflict]This article currently uses the terminology used by psychologists and geneticists. Your argument appears to be this article shouldn't use scientific point of view.
  • Re:"[the correlation] can only mean something if IQ tests objectively measure "intelligence"
No serious scientists argue IQ is completely meaningless, that is, that it doesn't measure anything. If that were true, it wouldn't be a good predictor of many life outcomes (which it is). When environmental factors such as inhaling certain chemicals or not breast-feeding children are shown to lower IQ, the argument that IQ doesn't exist suddenly becomes quiet.
That article already exists at IQ test controversy.--Nectar T 12:04, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Responding to Scandum, your argument doesn't make sense to me, differing IQ test results between different "races" can be explained by a combination of test bias and nutritional access differences. If lack of wealth impedes someone from getting proper nutrition should we call the disparity that ends up resulting the "wealth and intelligence" or "nutrition and intelligence" issue? The point is "race" nor genetics may not be a cause for the abstract disparity at all but this point is completely lost if you present the issue exclusively in terms of "race". How can nutrition ever be sufficiently contemplated as a possible cause if the issue is exclusively framed and mentally thought about as only "race" vs "intelligence"? Wouldn't a fair and neutral scientist want people to think about the causes for the issue in as many ways as possible?

Note this article doesn't draw conclusions about the differences being genetic, so what you are wishing for seems to be censorship of research results you do not like? --Scandum 08:38, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Nectar, there are numerous scientists that dispute this area of research in as fundamental a manner as I do, just because you refuse to accept their various criticisms doesn't mean their arguments are any less valid than mine. In fact, genome project geneticists have come out against the findings of "race and intelligence" researchers! Instead of spending mental energy trying to come up with arguments to defend what you already believe, please spend some mental energy considering the possibility your gut reaction on this issue is incorrect. Gut reaction mistakes are likely in situations when a subject is unscientifically presented using needlessly ambiguous and duplicitious language. Jokestress titled this section as "false dichotomy", what do you think that means? This or that thinking is flawed, please consider the plausibility of every possibily equally. zen master T 12:58, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

differing IQ test results between different "races" can be explained by a combination of test bias and nutritional access differences -- that may or may not be a sound hypothesis (I refuse to comment), but it's not one that you will find in the literature. thus, it's not appropriate material for discussion (WP:NOR).
genome project geneticists have come out against the findings of "race and intelligence" researchers -- what form did their arguments take? i know the answer, and it's already a covered POV in this article. --Rikurzhen 16:59, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
You have to look outside of and not unconsciously discount non "intelligence research" field sources. Almost no one inside the "intelligence research" community disputes the research, critics such as psychologists, sociologists, and geneticists etc dispute the field at a fundamental level from the outside looking in. I didn't construct the hypothesis above to try to prove something in the article, I constructed it as a helpful way of thinking about the issue generically and as it truly is: abstract. The POV of critics is not covered sufficiently because a highly biasing and unscientific method of presentation is being perpetuated because of literal/unconscious language confusion, it induces an errant presumption by utilizing a false dichotomy. If there is evidence companies with a history of scientific racism are the ones funding "race and intelligence" research is the field and research tainted to even the slightest degree perhaps? Who stands to gain if a subject is presented unscientifically? If someone wanted to create racism would they utilize duplicitous or plain/simple language? If a fair person was truly trying to prove, scientifically (leaving open the possibility they are wrong), that "race" is a cause of the IQ test results disparity would they use an ambiguous or unambiguous method of presentation? One among many possible data correlations should not hint at nor unconsciously imply causation. Doesn't "sugar and tooth decay" unconsciously imply sugar is the cause of tooth decay? Yes, but in the case of "race and intelligence" it is highly disputed that race is a cause so a neutral encyclopedia article can't say that. zen master T 19:50, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
ZM, the "intelligence research" community includes psychologists, sociologists, and geneticists with research interests relating to "intelligence". The opinions of psychologists are captured in part by the APA's 1996 report[8], which was authored by people from various backgrounds/fields within psychology. Their report suggests that more or less everything except the causal explanation of racial/ethnic group difference was well accepted and relatively non-controversial by 1996. Your opinion that the "intelligence research" community is somehow a fringe group with different views than their peers is not supported by any of the available evidence, and as Lulu explained above is not approprate for WP even if you could prove to us that you were correct. --Rikurzhen 20:37, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
My and others' interpretation is that the "intelligence research" community supports a highly unscientific and biasing method of presentation for yet undetermined reason(s). Why needlessly utilize a biasing method of presentation? Hypothetically, if the "race and intelligence" engineered dichotomy is indeed "false" what are some possible implications of this? zen master T 20:45, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
Michael Behe and others' interpretation is that the "evolution research" community supports a highly unscientific and biasing method of presentation for reasons of hating God. Why needless define science in such a way as to exclude the possibilty of supernatural explanations in science? --- That analogy should answer the question. -- We must describe research as it is described by researchers, not as we might wish it to be. That's clearly proscribed by WP policy on original research. --Rikurzhen 20:55, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
When an area of research is disputed we, as a neutral encyclopedia, have to search for a more generic of better (more neutral) way of presenting the subject. We must define/present research in a way that fairly and sufficiently signifies where the disputed points are/begin, choosing only "pro" sources and their method of one sided presentation can't possibly be fair/sufficient, right? Hypothetically, if the "race and intelligence" dichotomy is in reality non-obviously false, what are the implications? zen master T 21:04, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
We don't compromise the evolution article for the sake of creationism or for an editor's personal theory. There's no "hypothetically" in WP. There are only so many ways to say WP:NOR. --Rikurzhen 21:10, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Neutrality

I proposed the hypothetical as a thought expirement for the purpose of determining whether "race and intelligece" is a false dichotomy or not, the point is it could be. If "race and intelligence" is even possibly a false dichotomy then we should seek alternative more generic ways of presenting this subject to explicitly signify exactly where the points of dispute begin, right? If I found sources or a new source comes out that specificially argues "race and intelligence" is a false dichotomy would you change your position at that point? zen master T 21:33, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

If "race and intelligence" is even possibly a false dichotomy then we should seek alternative more generic ways of presenting this subject to explicitly signify exactly where the points of dispute begin, right? -- no: everything in science is possibly false. neutrality of POV doesn't mean POV from a neutral position, but rather neutrality with respect to which POV is correct. moreover, we cannot impose our own thoughts at that high of a level into the article. that's original research writ large. --Rikurzhen 21:50, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
If I found sources or a new source comes out that specificially argues "race and intelligence" is a false dichotomy would you change your position at that point? -- we would of course need to describe the scientific concensus and all major POVs as such. fringe POVs are excluded from WP. --Rikurzhen 21:50, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
Huh, "neutraility with respect to which POV is correct"? That is the anti-thesis of wikipedia's neutrality policies and the scientific method. You just said above that "everything in science is possibly false", that means the entire field of "intelligence research" could be false or exponentially misleading, right? In the context of presenting or describing a subject neutrally a false dichotomy is completely unjustified because it induces people to errantly assume (unscientifically) that race is a cause. Science should form conclusions based on a series of observed facts and logic, not through assumptions generated by misleading language. Why do "intelligence researchers" seemingly present their pet subject using duplicitious language rather than simple facts using clear unambiguous language? At a language/presentation level a false dichotomy such as "race and intelligence" can have the unconscious affect of tricking people into unconsciously believing something that isn't true, from that point on all mental energy is spent errantly defending what was an errant gut reaction. zen master T 22:14, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
this is what neutrality means -- Wikipedia requires that contributors observe a "neutral point of view" when writing, and not include original research. Neutral point of view, itself a "non-negotiable" policy,[15] articulates the encyclopedia's goal as "representing" disputes, "characterizing" them, rather than engaging in them."[16] If achieved, Wikipedia would not be written from a single "objective" point-of-view, but would fairly present all views on an issue, attributed to their adherents in a neutral way.
What conclusions are reasonable or not based on the available evidence is not up to us to decide -- and hence no original research. That's the beauty of the NPOV policy. Our only task is to report what other people have written about the subject.
But... Clearly this isn't being productive. Suffice it to say that we've made an attempt to explain that WP policy on this matter forbids us to employ your suggestions. --Rikurzhen 22:35, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
But at every opportunity you (perhaps unconsciously) deny the inclusion of criticial points of view, my only hope is to try to convince you that you aren't seeing the big picture. If a method of presentation is provably biasing/non neutral the burden of proof is upon you to find a reason to justify it, but what I really want you to see is that this article's method of presentation is so vastly and exponentially tainting and non-neutral it's almost incomprehensible. The method of presentation of this subject is clearly disputed, right? If so, don't wikipedia's neutrality policies suggest we try to find alternative ways of presenting this subject that are agreeable? In my intrepretation there is much more WP policy support to reframe this issue more generically using unambiguous and non-presumption inducing language. We simply have to say things like "intelligence researchers frame this abstract issue as a dichotomy between "race and intelligence" while critics point out there are other equally valid ways of looking at, thinking about, and correlating other data from the same sources", what do you think about that? "False dichotomy" doesn't sufficiently explain the problem with "race and intelligence", "exponentially misleading dichotomy" is closer. zen master T 23:04, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
Why are you trying to convince me that your personal POV about this topic is correct when that is immaterial to our function as WP editors? For reason that I have no desire to discuss, I personally believe that you are deeply mistaken in your position. However, that's irrelevant. --Rikurzhen 23:23, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
Our primary function as WP editors is to be neutral, right? If someone believes another editor has been tricked by needlessly duplicitouls language how would you recommend they go about correcting the situation? zen master T 00:19, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
C'mon, Zen-master, stop the dissimulation here. In contrast to Rikurzhen, I probably mostly agree with you on a personal level. But how I feel is every bit as irrelevant as how you or Rikurzhen feels. This article is to document a current set of scientific theories/studies, not to interject original research about the ultimate merit of those theories.
If you want to do something useful, find actual specific quotes or citations to actual scientists who critique Murray, Jensen, and the rest. There's some good stuff on Gould and Lewontin already in there, but it would be reasonable to include more, as long as it was written in a NPOV and verifiable manner. Editors here are not trying to push a specific conclusion, just document what researchers have done (including those researchers who are critical of the "race and intelligence" research program). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 01:22, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Critical sections

I've already provided numerous citations that were shot down arbitratrily, start with those in the archives. If an apparently exponentially biasing method of presentation is disputed by what justification does wikipedia choose sides? Except in this article's case wikipedia doesn't choose sides, we present where the controversy begins rather than allow anything to be errantly concluded improperly. The current critical sections of the article are woefully insufficient, it must be clear to readers that the criticisms of the field are fundamental and the fact that at least some of the companies funding "intelligence research" have a history of scientific racism is a key and very telling point, in my interpretation. zen master T 02:09, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

If the critical sections are weak, make them better! Simple. If material in archived talk is useful for that purpose, use it; otherwise, write something new. This is a Wiki, y'know. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters
So I can just go ahead and fix this list of things that I started with in this npov dispute? How should I go about fixing the first one, a highly biasing method of presentation?
  1. The first problem is presenting or describing the IQ test results disparity primarily in racial terms, which includes the title of the article.
  2. the two listed "controversial assumptions" in the intro should have caveats within each sentence (the "several controversial assumptions" pre caveat is insufficient),
  3. a chart and graph on nutrition vs IQ test results is needed at the top for balance,
  4. "... and practical consequences of racial and ethnic group differences..."; who exactly is claiming there are "practical consequences" and what does that mean?,
  5. the article should not exclusively use "intelligence research" nomenclature such as "concordant" to present this subject (should use plain, simple, direct language),
  6. much more info and details of the controversies surrounding this area of research should be mentioned in the intro and at greater length in the article overall,
  7. the article/intro should state exactly what critics of the field allege about the motives of the various studies authors (scientific racism)
  8. IQ testing and other measures of cognitave ability are highly disputed, etc. zen master T 04:08, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

in general: because those claims are not verifiable or reliable they cannot be put into the article. pages and pages of previous discussion has settled that. --Rikurzhen 08:03, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I feel that Zen-Master's editing on this talk page is disruptive. He seems to be acting in good faith, but he refuses to listen to reason, and the discussion with him is not working to improve the article. I believe it should be moved off-site, or discontinued. --Ryan Delaney talk 08:49, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

So, you two are arguing IQ testing isn't highly disputed? Look at tons of sources already in the article. Why are proponents of "intelligence research" the only ones you are allowing to interpret IQ test results data in this article? zen master T 15:37, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
IQ testing is not controversial among scholars. The APA task force report (linked in the article) confirms this. What you're reading on the internet is the remant of a smear campaign that was waged in the 70s and early 80s by a few public intellecutals to discredit IQ testing. Ironically, it was during this time that the scholarly opinion crystalized around the belief that IQ testing was reliable and valid for any English speaking person in the U.S. The disparity between public and scholarly opinion was stark by the time that APA report was written, and they say as much. --Rikurzhen 17:31, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
I think you are ignoring scholarly sources of criticism. A simple google search has yielded 312,000 hits here. Some specific citations:
  1. "Why IQ Measurements are worthless" [9]
  2. "...IQ tests do not measure intelligence the way a ruler measures height" [10] zen master T 19:03, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

(1) doesn't appear to be a scholarly publication (note the lack of references) and (2) is a wikipedia mirror, a lot of which i wrote. --Rikurzhen 19:10, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

(2) is a fundamental point and is a core criticism relating to my complaint that this article errantly presents this subject as if "intelligence" can be measured the same way a ruler measures height. zen master T 19:40, 29 October 2005 (UTC)


ZM, I wrote that sentence. Nonetheless, you can measure things in ways that are different than the way a ruler measures height -- for example a race may measure speed by the order of finishing (g is not on an ordinal scale, but rank order of g is knowable and an estimate of g can be made in the form of a "g-score"). Intelligence experts are well aware of this and it factors into their thinking. --Rikurzhen 20:17, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Comparison

It is an appauling misuse of statistics. It makes a deliberatly false comparison to misleed the untrained reader. Deliberately misleading informantion cannot be NPOV.

To quote:

The average IQ difference between two randomly paired people from the U.S. population, one Black and one White, is approximately 20 points. However, by the same method of calculation, the average difference between two random people is approximately 17 points, and the average difference between two siblings is 12 points.

This is such shameless drivel and such malicious mendacity that it almost defies rebuttal. The "error" is in deliberatly obfuscsting between-groups and within-group statistics. The results showed that on average there was a within group variability of 17 for "all groups" - a figure directly related to the standard deviation for that group - obviously this is based around a mean. The difference of 20 points between black and white is a modified comparison of means which tells us that a random black will have a score 20 points LOWER that the of a randomly selected white. Notice LOWER not DIFFERENT - when comparing between groups it is meaningfull (and imperative) to talk about lower/higher. That is the big lie here. Furthermore, it works because blacks form a minority of the general population therefore the mean difference can be 17 within a population, with the differences between a majority and minority subgroup being not much more even if the mean discrepancy is fairly large. This distortion would not be at all effective if an evenly racialy-mixed population was surveyed.

This is pure irredemable nonsense. It is POV. It is a lie. It may be topical, but frankly my dear, I don't give a shit.

Whenever I notice it has been replaced I WILL delete it.

jucifer 03:25, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Please have a look at Wikipedia:No original research. Wikipedia articles only report what referenced and peer-reviewed sources have reported. Your personal opinion about the misuse of statistics is inadmissible unless it can be cited from such a source. Also, please do not engage in edit warring or you may be blocked from editing under the three revert rule. --Ryan Delaney talk 03:32, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

It is not original research. It is absolutly self-evident to anyone with even the faintest grasp of statistics that is a falsification.

jucifer 04:02, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Then it should be easy to find a source that gives the opposing view. --Ryan Delaney talk 04:04, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

No, I sincerly doubt that that is printed in the book in that form at all. And if it was is does even merit a rebuttal in wikipedia. I would not be satisfied having it mentioned and then some evidence against it shown - that gives it far too much credence. Don't worry, I doubt I will ever check my watchlist more than twice a day.

jucifer 04:09, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

(1) You can check the reference, it is correct. (2) The threshold for inclusion in WP has nothing to do with the absolute truth value of a claim, only the verifiabilty, neturality of presentation, etc. (3) Lastly, you are misreading Jensen's claim. He's presenting those numbers as evidence that most variation in IQ occurs within groups not between them, such that the average deviation is only sligthly larger for between group comparisons than random comparisons (essentially a within group comparsion), and that most variation occurs within families (between siblings). (Note the first and second half of the paragraph are in agreement, not contradiction.) --Rikurzhen 05:18, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Also, I checked the math -- those numbers look correct to me. If they're somehow not explained clearly, that would be something to fix. Simple deletion of material is generally frowned upon Wikipedia:Avoiding_common_mistakes. --Rikurzhen 05:43, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Vandal with usable cites

Despite the vandalism of blanking and substituting the whole article, a recent anon did include a couple citations that I think we should incorporate. I put them here for safe keeping:

A Philidelphia study examined 3000 African Americans and found no link between the degree of white ancestory and IQ.
Scarr., S., Pakstis, S. Katz, H and Barker. (1977) "The abscense of a relationship between degree of white ancestory and intellectual skills within the Black population," Human Genetics, 39:69-86
A study conducted in the 1970's examined two samples of African Americans and found no correlation between degree of white ancestory and IQ. In fact in one study the correlation went in the "wrong" direction (ie. the more african ancestory the higher IQ).**
Loehlin, J.D., Vandenberg, SG and Osbourne, R.T (1973) "Blood-group genes and Negro-White ability differences" Behavioral Genetics 3: 263-77
In a study involving Carribean children showed that there was no genetic basis for the IQ gap between blacks and whites, rather it showed the black children to be considerably more intelligent. The IQ of the children at the Orphanage was: Blacks 108, Mixed 106, White 103.
Tizard, B., Cooperman, A and Tizard, J. (1972) "Enviromental effects on langauge development a study of young children in longstay residential nurseries." Child Development, 43: 342-3
In a study comparing the offspring of American GI's and German women, where the children where raised in Germany as Germans there was no correlation found between IQ and Race. Both the Biracial and German childredn had average IQ's of 97.
Flynn, JR, (1980) "Race, IQ, and Jensen." London Routledge and Kegan Paul.

These are not well written in the anon version, but I'd like to incoporate the underlying concepts and citations. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 13:24, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I believe you will find those studies are described in the sub-article Race and intelligence (Culture-only or partially-genetic explanation), with the possibile exception of the Tizard et al (1972) article, which I recall seeing at some point but I'm not sure of the context -- I think the problem was that no one could confirm the data. (FYI: we did a migration to Wikipedia:Summary Style some time ago.) --Rikurzhen 16:26, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Also, FYI -- you can't determine ancestry with a single-locus test, such as blood group typing, or a n~5 test like skin color -- this was the kind of data that Lewontin (1972) used to argue that race is not taxonomically valid. Instead, you need to test n~100 loci to infer ancestry. --Rikurzhen 16:45, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
I was just now reading through your anti-Lewontin rants higher up on this talk page. They certainly raise suspicion on some of your edits, to my mind. In any case, it's hard to see any relevance of number of heritance loci to any of the abovementioned studies (all of which seem to use self-identified race just as robustly or sloppily as any of the "pro-difference" studies do).
Of course, I recognize that the article uses summary style (though not particularly well just yet, lots of redundancy between main article and subsections, with awkward breaks and almost accidental organization). I think some mention of the studies producing the "wrong" conclusion should also be in the main article, but I need to read all the subarticles more carefully before I'll make any edits in that directions.
At this point, I'd just like to get rid of some of the exuberant excesses of rhetoric which claim everything recently speculated is "universally agreed beyond any shadow of doubt". Really, all we know is that there has a been a pretty large funding bias against the null hypothesis for a very short number of years (maybe a decade, tops). Phrenology was a lot more universally accepted for a lot more years, for example, than are the Rikurzhen-style "consensus" opinions. I'm certainly not proposing putting original research in a WP article, but neither do I think we should be quite so sanguine about a moderate consistency between a few scientific papers over a few years. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 17:07, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
This is largely beside the point right now, but I'm not sure you understand admixture estimation. In these studies, they started with self-identified African Americans (who as a group vary in degree of relative European and African ancestry). They studied their IQ and then tried to esimate the fraction of their ancestry that was African vs European. But they used blood group and skin color, which are not capable of doing that job. A fact which Lewontin rightly pointed out. Lewontin's "fallacy" was to assume that no amount of additional biological information would be helpful, about which he was wrong, but that's entirely unrelated.
Be careful about what you think is and is not disputed. I recommend you check the APA and WSJ statements for background -- or I'll just chime in like this, but that's not as easy for me ;) --Rikurzhen 17:15, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
On that note, your last change[11] is AFAIK not correct. Those particular points are now undisputed. They were once disputed, which led to further research and now the dispute is resolved. So if we want to write in terms of acceptance rather than dispute, we might say that "virually all intelligence researchers accept that..." --Rikurzhen 17:25, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
The more I look at the "back story" on this page (the FA nomination, the prior talk, edit history), the less good faith I find in your contributions. I started looking at this page recently, and came in with WP:FAITH, but it increasingly starts to look like an effort to advance a (well-written and subtle) POV. It's too bad, certainly editors like Zen-master are way over the edge on the other side, but this stuff is starting to look bad too.
To wit: you have repeated the mantra "virtually all intelligence researchers accept..." a whole bunch of times now. But that is a very poor group to hold as a standard. It's almost identical to saying "virtually all intelligent design researchers accept..." An "intelligence researcher" is almost by definition a psychologist (maybe a biologist) who belongs to a certain (minority) research program; not quite in the literal meaning of the words themselves, but in the politico-scientific reality of these things. Well, I guess I could be slightly more generous by making the comparison to "virtually all sociobiologists accept..." (yeah, I know, they renamed themselves as "evolutionary psychologists"). But by choosing a narrowly self-selected sub-specialty as the criterial group you drastically misrepresent scientific consensus.
The relevant group to speak of is probably "psychologists" (i.e. not only that sliver committed to a particular hypothesis and research program). Taking that group as a whole, even my edit is probably far too generous to the consensus status of the claims. I agree that something believed by "virtually all intelligence researchers" is thereby "widely believed by psychologists"; but to try to conjure more than that out of thin air and fallacies-of-four-terms is quite dishonest. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 18:07, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Ignoring the abuse, you should famaliarize yourself with the APA (American Psychological Assosication) report [12] and the WSJ statement [13] as a source of generalizations about this topic. "Intelligence researchers" can be as broad a group as you like -- any researcher who might use IQ tests, for example -- and those very simple conclusions will turn out to be largely beyond dispute (Snyderman & Rothman 1998 did opinion polling with that criteria). Other conclusions are not beyond dispute, but those simple conclusions are. --Rikurzhen 18:24, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps Jensen's exact phrase would be better "Virtually all present day researchers in psychometrics now accept as a well established fact that..." --Rikurzhen 18:26, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
To the end of further warning about drawing/writing generalizations from intuition or what you preceive as common knowledge, let me quote the first few sentences of the APA report. "In the fall of 1994, the publication of Hermstein and Murray's book The Bell Curve sparked a new round of debate about the meaning of intelligence test scores and the nature of intelligence. The debate was characterized by strong assertions as well as by strong feelings. Unfortunately, those assertions often revealed serious misunderstandings of what has (and has not) been demonstrated by scientific research in this field." --Rikurzhen 18:37, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Among the issues remaining with this article is use of the term "consensus." As Lulu notes, consensus can be manipulated by narrowing a larger field to its subsets. It stands to reason that those who devote their careers to issues around the intersection of "race" and "intelligence" feel it is a legitimate field of inquiry, and they are going to hold certain views in order to produce this knowledge. The APA document is in my opinion the only true "consensus" statement on these issues by intelligence researchers. The WSJ is a prepared statement with signatories. The Snyderman/Rothman poll is one attempt to gauge prevalence of opinion, but is by no means indicative that these matters are settled or resolved. This article has improved greatly through challenges from differing POVs, but several important issues still receive short shrift. I feel this article needs to note that this entire debate is largely an American/Anglo phenomenon and that several key concepts about race and intelligence are open to debate. Proceeding to the interpretation and POV forking criticisms have skewed the debate so much of this appears settled or resolved. Jokestress 18:54, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
(Edit conflict, so out of sync:) Lulu, I am sure that Rik (as well as many other editors on this page) would enthusiastically support a push towards more claims along the line of "Scientists agree that..." or "Psychologists agree that..." You are welcome to try to introduce such formulations yourself. We are right behind you. Also, you must assume Good Faith. Speculating about the motives of other editors gets us nowhere. Arbor 19:16, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

summary style check-up

Lulu wrote about the progress towards summary style -- though not particularly well just yet, lots of redundancy between main article and subsections, with awkward breaks and almost accidental organization -- Certainly something to discuss if/when people have time. --Rikurzhen 17:54, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

In the USA

The addition of this context is quite helpful. It's not simply a matter of indicating that this sub-field of psychological research is mostly limited to the USA (though it is; and the fact it is says a lot about political histories, not just "pure science"). There is also a very important matter of the particular "racial" distributions that are studied at all.

For example, Sweden or Japan (or even more so, Iceland) are nearly "racially" homogeneous. Without the underlying variation in group membership, the comparisons just wouldn't make sense. On the other hand, India is even more "racially" diverse as is the USA. But the racial/ethnic groups there are nearly disjoint from those in the USA. India also has a wholly different politico-economic history of race/caste than does the USA. There's no reason to think, a priori, that any similar (or even analogous) results would be found in India (if the studies were to be done, which they haven't been, and probably won't be).

It's only with the most extremely reductive hereditarian assumption that it is possible to say that the location of the researchers and the researched populations makes no difference. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 19:36, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Most of the evidence is collected in the USA. So the text is fine. But I don't think Arbor's objection was based on the belief that you ascribe to him. Rather, I think he objected because it the text connotes a lack of involvement of other countries which is not true, and although that involvement is more limited than the US involvement it would be unfair to imply that it was insignificant. I'll let him clear that up if he wants. --Rikurzhen 21:41, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Re:"India is even more "racially" diverse [than] the USA [...] There's no reason to think, a priori, that any similar (or even analogous) results would be found in India"
Keep in mind that the three racial groupings dealt with in this article correspond with the three branches of human genetic clustering (Mongoloid, Caucasoid, and Negroid), and in that sense are not merely arbitrarily selected racial groupings. (See Race#Ancestry_as_a_Way_of_Categorizing_People).--Nectar T 22:09, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm not convinced those are particularly good grouping of human genetics; but in any event, those three are well represented in Indian populations. Just not with the skin tones we think of in the USA; i.e. Dravidians are some of the darkest skinned people, with Caucasian facial and skeletal features.

be careful about speculating. it was very easy to find this paper studying the effects of inbreeding on IQ in an Indian population. [14] it's quite possible someone has done an IQ-caste study. --Rikurzhen 02:38, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I am quite happy this is brought up. I am not American and have been trying to get this article to be less "tacitly American" than it is all the time. However, insinuating that the entire topic, especially the science of it, pertains only the the US is grossly misleading. Indeed, the opposite seems to be true: The results that establish a race–intelligence correlation are universal. (Many are made in the U.S., which has a very "useful" popolation for doing this.) On the other hand, the public debate about topic, especially the controversy about the Black–White gap, is almost entirely concentrated to the anglosphere, probably because of the difficult history of racial oppression in the U.S. and colonialism in the U.K. In short, the scientific results in the area are universal and confirmed in many international studies. The controversy is mainly a U.S.–U.K. issue. Should we put this into the article? Arbor 09:07, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
(Later addition:) On a more general note, I would enthusiastically support a move toward the "global" perspective employed in the Jensen–Rushton survey from PPPL 2005. That article focusses on the international evidence for the Black–White–Asian gap, which is much more universally interesting and removes focus form the Black–White dichotomy in the U.S. (However, I suspect that such a change of perspective would be considered POV-pushing for exactly that reason... we'll see.) Lulu, I recommend you read that paper ([15], also linked from the main page.) Ideally, you and I would work together to make the article lose its U.S.-perspective in favour of the global perspective used in RJ (not meaning to copy its viewpoints—but the perspective is good). I wonder if there is a way to make the public controversy sections more international as well. I can write at length the opinions expressed in several other languages (I follow the debate in three other languages than English), but such a compilation would be close to Original Research. (Still—this would be fun.) Arbor 09:28, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Are you aware of any non-American collective or consensus statements on this, or any polls done outside the US? Jokestress 15:56, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

labels

maybe it would help to get the labels straight:

  1. psychologists are a subset of scientists
  2. psychometricians are a subset of intelligence researchers [correction -- psychometricians are a subset of psychologists and some but not all psychometricians are intelligence researchers] (as econometricians are a subset of economists)
  3. some (most?) but not all intelligence researchers are psychologists, and some are sociologists or biologists

correct?

so the definition of an intelligence researcher is anyone who has expert knowledge of the subject of "intelligence" or "IQ"? the set it is not limited to psychometricians, although they represent one of the most mathematically oriented groups therein, along with the behavior geneticists. --Rikurzhen 19:41, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Partially correct (I took the liberty of converting your bullets to numbers for reference).
(1) is quite true (well, "research psychologists"; not really "clinical psychologists" or psychotherapists").
(2) is mostly false. Many psychometricians study IQ; but many others study the quantification of other unrelated psychological traits.
(3) is true enough.
The summary you give is mostly untrue. An intelligence researcher is basically someone who believes in the deep ontological reality of 'g'; and who probably thinks it has significant hereditary mechanisms. I recognize that's not exactly what the words themselves would mean if they were invented de novo, but as the term has evolved historically, that's the meaning it carries. Similarly, I happen to be a Philosopher... but not just because I "love knowledge" generically (as the word itself says), but because I got a Ph.D. in an institutionalized discipline. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 20:05, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, you're right -- subset is not the right word. Some intelligence researchers are psychometrians, and some psychometricians are intelligence researhcers. My point was that we cannot use psychometricans or psychologists or scientists in place of intelligence researcher because that includes/excludes many relavant disciplines. But you're wrong about your characterization of intelligence researcher as having any particular commitment to certain facts or assumptions, as there are certainly people who call themselves intelligence researchers who do not resemble or intelligence researchers in their beliefs. For example, Gardner and Sternberg have at times been very ambivalent about g and nonetheless are researchers of "intelligence". As an operational defintion, anyone who might want to publish in the journal Intelligence or write entries for the encyclopedias on intelligence or attend conferences on intelligence would be intelligence researchers. What other term can substitute? --Rikurzhen 21:34, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
[Comment by User:211.42.253.42 removed, as per Wikipedia:No personal attacks ]
We welcome your participation, but you must avoid personal attacks (hence the strikethrough) and discuss changes on this page before making extensive unilateral changes. Thanks! Jokestress 20:44, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
First of all the article is extremely POV, it reflects the views of a tiny sliver of the academic community, and an extremely flaky group at that. You don't post an article that is extremely POV and then demand that others work with you, you have to create an article that is acceptable to all parties not the other way around.
[Personal attack by User:211.42.253.42 removed, as per Wikipedia:No personal attacks ]
Perhaps you missed this at the top: Please maintain professionalism in your posts, even on emotional topics like race and intelligence. Don't speculate on the motives of the other contributors to this article. If you want to volunteer at Wikipedia, follow the civility guidelines: See Wikipedia:avoid personal remarks. Continued attacks on editors will get you blocked. You have brought up some good points, but you must participate according to Wikipedia policies if you wish to help. Jokestress 21:09, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
I want to second Jokestress' comments. While I disagree with Rikurzhen on some specific wording issues, especially in defining scientific consensus, I recognize that Rikurzhen is a valuable and intelligent contributor to WP who edits in good faith. Personal attacks are simply not appropriate, and replacing the entire article with a semi-grammatical rant is just vandalism. Yes, parts can be improved, but do so by small steps, and accompanied by respectful discussion. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 21:19, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I had a point with this -- let's have some abbreviations to save time:

  • S - scientists
  • P - psychologists
  • M - psychometricans
  • I - intelligence researchers

There were four conclusions listed in the background section on cognitive ability:

  1. IQ scores measure many of the qualities that people mean by intelligent or smart
  2. IQ scores are generally stable over much of a person's life
  3. IQ tests are not demonstrably biased against social, economic, ethnic or racial groups
  4. cognitive ability is substantially heritable (between 40 and 80 percent)

Who would the be group responsible for (a) actually deciding these points versus

  1. anyone could make this judgement but generally P would be likely to form an opinion and I certainly would
  2. only M can answer this question
  3. only M can answer this question
  4. M cannot answer this question, but behavior geneticists, who are members of I, can

So, which group is the candidate for attributing claims about acceptance/dispute to? --Rikurzhen 21:59, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Without going too far into the Venn diagrams, I'd just say that each particular claim advanced should be attributed to the specific scientific discipline most relevant to it's examination: "Most psychologists believe that X"; "Some geneticists speculate that Y"; etc. Intelligence researchers cut across a few disciplines, but there's e.g. no reason a cognitive psychologist has any special expertise in gene drift or that an neurologist knows about extended family structures across socio-economic groups. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 02:33, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

4 points about cognitive abilty

the four conclusions about cognitive ability in the background section are equally fully believed. there is no reason to describe the test bias and heritability points as less certain. the apa report substantiates this. --Rikurzhen 17:15, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

No psychologist whom I know personally believes the second two points. Moreover, the last one (heritability percentage) is outright meaningless (as you well know) without much more context. Heritability is not a quality of a phenotypic trait by itself, but of the interaction of a genetic distribution in a population and a range of environments that population is exposed to. Changing either the genotypic range (i.e. looking at a different locale) or the enivonments organisms are exposed to ipso facto changes the heritability. You're a geneticist, for gosh sake, Rikurzhen!
I sort of have in mind trying to link readers to Norms of reaction. But that article needs work (I started it, but only just that). Understanding norms of reaction goes a long way towards remedying misunderstandings of the meaning of heritability, IMO. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 17:26, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Lulu, clearly the points were written for brevity and you'll find similiar abbreviated forms in the APA report. Of course the statement about heritability is referring to the popualtions being discussed in this article -- in developed nations. (The IQ article discusses this extensively, and this should just be a summary for those not intereted in reading the background.) But the solution to what you preceive as a lack of precision is not to make a false statement, but either to "fix" it (i.e., make it more precise) or leave it as it was.
Why would we leave out qualifiers? For brevity. Why put them in? For precision. Please use your own judgement about how much brevity vs. precision to include, but let's not just make things up. --Rikurzhen 17:34, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Indeed, let's not invent a non-existent consensus just because it would support your own opinions. Three or four extra words to aid accuracy is hardly overwhelmed by a desire for brevity. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 18:11, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Having read lots of secondary source discussions of this topic, I didn't find that formluation particularly misleading, but it's moot now. --Rikurzhen 23:52, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

shared family effects

the lack of shared family effect on IQ (and personality and many other traits) of adults is one of the most surprising results of behavior genetics, but it does play a role on the question of causation as discussed in the subarticle. --Rikurzhen 23:52, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Probably surprising because untrue. There does seem to be one or two studies that find this result, but it seems poorly verified and contentious, at best. Actually, it seems to be a single study that has turned into a meme. Well, maybe both Gottfredson (1998) and Plomin and Petrill (1997). Quick search:
Van IJzendoorn, M.H., Juffer, F., & Klein Poelhuis, C.W. (2005). Adoption and cognitive development: A meta-analytic comparison of adopted and non-adopted children's IQ and school performance. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 301-316.
Abstract: This meta-analysis of 62 studies (N = 17,767 adopted children) examined whether the cognitive development of adopted children differed from that of (a) children who remained in institutional care or in the birth family, and (b) their current (environmental) non-adopted siblings or peers. Adopted children scored higher on IQ tests than their non-adopted siblings or peers who stayed behind, and their school performance was better. Adopted children did not differ from their non-adopted environmental peers or siblings in IQ, but their school performance and language abilities lagged behind, and more adopted children developed learning problems. Taken together, the meta-analyses document the positive impact of adoption on the children’s cognitive development, their remarkably normal cognitive competence, but delayed school performance.

OK, that's not adults. Here's an interesting one for the norm-of-reaction issue:

http://www.people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Turkheimer%20psychological%20science.pdf

This is good too:

http://www.haworthpress.com/store/ArticleAbstract.asp?sid=KB682NXPSSQ79GAPERFXEXUBK9LB5U25&ID=26539

More relevant, this is an interesting discussion of the alleged effect:

http://www.ai.univie.ac.at/archives/Psycoloquy/2000.V11/0099.html

E.g.:

28. Mackintosh's (1998, Chapter 3) review of the heritability of IQ makes several points clear about this literature: many of the calculation models rest on assumptions that are at least questionable; often there are only five or fewer studies addressing a particular issue; and estimates of heritability from different approaches do not necessarily converge well. Mackintosh notes that many scholars have accepted the .50 estimate of heritability, although some believe it is higher. His own judgment is that: "The more reasonable conclusion... is that the broad heritability of IQ in modern industrialized societies is probably somewhere between 0.30 and 0.75, and that neither the data nor the models justify much greater precision" (p. 93).

Well... just a few notes for now; I am just putting this here to remind myself to look more closely later (or let others look at them).

This isn't a matter for debate. The literature is quite clear. For example, from the 1996 APA report:
If one simply combines all available correlations in a single analysis, the heritability (h2) works out to about .50 and the between-family variance (c2) to about .25 (e.g., Chipuer, Rovine, & Plomin, 1990; Loehlin, 1989). These overall figures are misleading, however, because most of the relevant studies have been done with children. We now know that the heritability of IQ changes with age: h2 goes up and c2 goes down from infancy to adulthood (McCartney, Harris, & Bernieri, 1990; McGue, Bouchard, Iacono, & Lykken, 1993). In childhood h2 and C2 for IQ are of the order of .45 and .35; by late adolescence h2 is around .75 and c2 is quite low (zero in some studies). Substantial environmental variance remains, but it primarily reflects within-family rather than between-family differences.
Plomin has written a series of review articles and books (2001, 2003, 2004) which all repeat these same values, and add emphasis on the zero correlation of adult adopted sibilings and the idential correlation of MZ twins raised together or apart as adults. --Rikurzhen 01:33, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Lulu, the fact that shared family effects are not detected in behavior genetics studies of IQ among adults (but not children) is a widely cited conclusion. Can you offer any reason to dillute that other than personal discomfort with the conclusion? --Rikurzhen 18:24, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

You're own evidence says: c2 is quite low (zero in some studies). Not zero in all studies. I think the APA almost certainly overstates the underlying fact; but you want to go quite a bit beyond what it says in your "summary". Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 19:01, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
You shouldn't substitute your own judgement about what the underly facts are. The APA is being cautions, but this was 1996. The current view put in textbooks with titles like Behavior Genetics is that shared family effects on IQ are not detected in adults for middle class households in developed countries. For example: Recent studies of adoptive siblings assessed after adolescence show an average correlation of zero... These results indicate that although shared environment affects intelligence in childhood, in the long run environmental influences on intelligence are nonshared.
I also note that you've dilluted the attribution to widely accepted. By this criteria there is no doubt that the zero figure is widely accept. --Rikurzhen 19:15, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
And lest you think this is some kind of evil seen only in IQ data, consider for example this paper: [16] "Influences of genes and shared family environment on adult body mass index assessed in an adoption study by a comprehensive path model." -- which finds No parameter indicating effects of shared familial environment either before or after adoption, assortative mating, or selective placement was significant. There was strong evidence for genetic effects, and no evidence for any effects related to the shared family environment--all familial resemblance in adults can be attributed to genetic influences. --Rikurzhen 19:29, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

admixture studies

the admixture studies are inappropriate for the main page. they cannot be simply stated without pointing out that no one believes them anymore. at which point the article is just confusing. currently, the environment/genetics section only summarizes kinds of data that experts cite. this is a much better policy as most studies require extensive explanation to flesh out their strenghts and weaknesses and various interpretations (as seen in the subarticle). --Rikurzhen 17:18, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

If admixture studies are inappropriate for the main page, any reference to those that apparently support Jensen must be removed also. Just presenting a selective sample of similar studies that advance a specific conclusion in contention is not remotely NPOV.
I disagree about the general inappropriateness for the main page: letting readers know that studies produce mixed results is worthwhile. But I could be persuaded that a general goal of refactoring to summary style would merit pulling out all reference to admixture studies from the main page (but not selectively pruning them to advance one position). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 17:30, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
The admixture studies don't produce any interpretation. In fact, no admixture study (that doesn't use 1st generation admixture) has ever really been done. That's why mentioning them is pointless. It only requires pointing out that they don't work. --Rikurzhen 17:40, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Wait... the text of that section already says that the interpretation of admixture studies is ambiguous (i.e. each side has claimed support). So why try to say this rather unexciting point twice? --Rikurzhen 17:49, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Most of these studies are rather old as well, some going back 70 years. Generally that's universily classified as pseudo-science nowadays when involving race, unless the results are right I guess. --Scandum 01:03, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

I remember now... Here's the text I removed:

Other studies on ancestry mixture(Scarr, Pakstis, Katz, Barker 1977,Loehlin, Vandenberg, Osbourne 1973,Flynn 1980) and nation migration produce either no result, or even results in the opposite direction to that proposed by Jensen.

That section was intended to describe the really hotly contested stuff. It was not supposed to be extra evidence that people generally agree might be support for the partly genetic hypothesis, but rather the stuff where there's very little agreement and fewer people arguging back and forth at one another. We don't need extra examples of it if we summarize is clearly.

But beyond that, this data is already summarized in the environment interpretation section:

They include studies on IQ and skin color, self-reported European ancestry, blood groups, children in postwar Germany born to black and white American soldiers, and mixed-race children born to either a Black or a White mother.

--Rikurzhen 18:01, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

OK, you're right. The countervailing admixture studies are inded mentioned in the prior section, so that's adequate. Perhaps the citation links should be provided though. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters

footnotes and inline cites

Footnote? --Rikurzhen 18:23, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, that should be fine. But the article seems to use many inline citation references, not just footnotes. I was just copying the style of the Jensen and Rushton cite in the prior para. Maybe I'm failing to appreciate an intended distinction for what gets inline cite and what gets footnote. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 18:27, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
we first tried switching to footnotes and then arbor invented the inline cite linking (but this requres some manual editing of the reference page, so it won't work automatically). in general, i think we were going for 100% footnotes. --Rikurzhen 18:30, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Lulu, no policy exist. But footnotes are impossible to maintain, as we quickly learned in this article. Inline citations survive moving the text around. Arbor 20:01, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't care what citation style is used, but named refs don't really get out of sync.[17][18]

More on notes

I might refer to the same note again.[19]

family environment

I'm not making it up. Common knowledge is not a reliable source for info on this and related topics. --Rikurzhen 18:20, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Seconded, I think most people who did a bit of reading on this subject are familiar with the finding that the influence of family environment decreases significantly upon adulthood. Possibly one "problem" is that research conducted on adults leans more toward the partial genetic explanation. --Scandum 00:52, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

lakatos

lulu, why did you remove the lakatos comment? i hope not simply because you decided they were wrong. --Rikurzhen 18:21, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

This is not an article about philosophy of science. Yes, they're wrong about Lakatos; but explaining why takes a lot of words, and is a completely different topic. And even if they were right about Lakatos, do you really think that most readers are worrying about Lakatos while reading this article? Actually, a subpage about the "philosophical issues" might be worthwhile (i.e. the ontological claim of 'g', the meaning of heritability, Occam's razor, etc.). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 18:25, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm not so concerned about the details of lakatos being described as their claim that their research program is progressive and the alternative is not. if that can be summarized, it would preserve their argument w/o the fuss. --Rikurzhen 18:26, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
But the only meaning that can have to most readers is some misunderstanding of what the word "progressive" means in Lakatos' technical sense. Most readers will think it means "politically progressive", or "advancing science" or something like that. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 18:28, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
I think that was the concern that got us to the point of mentioning/linking lakatos. --Rikurzhen 18:31, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Jensen refered to Lakatos for certain claims, hence I think it's extremely valid to be included wether his interpration is right or wrong, which is original research btw. I can't help but raise my eyebrows at various edits, I reverted this particular one while at it. --Scandum 00:46, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

source --Rikurzhen 19:26, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

If brevity insists that four extra words stating the degree of consensus around some particular claim is too much, why are some editors so insistent to spend a sentence on the completely irrelevant digression into Lakatos' philosophy of science?! I'm all for trimming fat where possible, and this is about as pure fat as one is likely to find in a WP article (yeah, Lakatos and phil.sci topics should have articles, but not this one). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 00:37, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

contentious interpretation

lulu, is there some way to verify that their interpretation is contentious? for example, do they employ an interpretation that is known to be contentious? --Rikurzhen 03:03, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Trying to wrap themselves in a scientific "inevitability" by flatly claiming their belief is "progressive" and scientific opponents are "degenerating" is more-or-less inherently contentious. It's just an ad hominem "meta-argument" that they must be right no matter what the specific research details. Just because two authors try to characterize themselves in such terms hardly makes it NPOV or consensus. There are exactly two people in the world who make the claim, after all, which doesn't exactly seem to make it worth covering in this article. It's hardly as if Lakatos or any other philosopher of science ever endorsed their claim. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 03:17, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
(1) So it's your opinion that their interpretation is contentious? Remember WP:V. (2) Because Jensen is such a prominent figure in this field, the way that he describes his own conclusions are certainly worth mentioning, and are NPOV to the extent that they are attributed to Jensen and Rushton. --Rikurzhen 03:26, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

From the editing history I get the idea that some kind of consensus is reached on keeping both the environment only and partial genetic sections slightly POVed to improve readability. They're both viewpoints based on inconclusive data anyways. --Scandum 11:31, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Please don't interpret silence from me as indifference. I liked many of your recent edits, and I was waiting to see what rationale you could offer to defend them. (But I didn't see the point of every one.) --Rikurzhen 17:12, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
I definitely don't support deliberately adding POV to any sections. For example, the crude insults against the culture-only explanations in this edit by Scandum were every bit as harmful (both POV and doggerel) as some of the vandals who blank the whole page and substitute some rant. I more-or-less expected to find something like "John Ogbu's momma is so fat..." in there. That said, most of Scandum's edits are reasonable, albeit more subtle efforts to introduce a pro-hereditarian POV.
I probably did get carried away slightly in my own characterization of the Lakatos claim as "contentious". Not that it is not so, but I found a more neutral way to nuance the context of the Jensen/Rushton claim. I got the feeling that Scandum was violating WP:POINT to "get even" for my edit. Maybe not, the timing could have been coincidental. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 17:53, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

References

^  Wikipedia has the cool named footnote template.

^  They let footnote numbers automatically re-number.

final paragraph - citation

has anyone come across a citation for our transhumanist final paragraph? Finally, genetic engineering may one day be able to directly change... --Rikurzhen 06:34, 3 November 2005 (UTC)


The Admixture studies will have their own section in this article

1. The Minnesota Interracial adoption study which was the smallest study out of all the studies done has it's own article, these studies that directly contradict the hereditarians claims need their own article.

1a. The studies are based on rock solid evidence, if you don't like it tough, you used the same evidence to justify calling race a legitimate category in previous discussions.

2. This page is incredibly POV and I am trying to get in contact with the higherups at this place.

2a. It examines a sociological, anthropological, historical, etc. phenomena from one perspective and it focuses on that one perspective. This issue needs to be discussed from all the major theories of intelligence, piaget, multiple intelligences, information processing, etc. It also needs to be discussed as a sociological phenomenon, and an anthropological one.

2b. This page also is framed in terms of IQ differences between "racial" groups instead of between ethnicities. Around the world there is a constant pattern of oppressed minorities having similarly lowered IQ scores. By framing it as a "racial" issue it gives the nature pov, more credibility then it deserves.

3. I will continue to fight to clean this article up and make it NPOV, if you don't like it tough. I've fought hard for accuracy in scientific articles before, it is what wikipedia needs to do if it is too be respected.

4. Claude Steele performed experiments where he proved that the sort of psuedoscientific crap that is spouted here (hey this the discussion page so I am as POV as I want to be), directly causes poorer scores. He performed an experiment with a group of African American Stanford students, one group was told of claims of Black intellectual inferiority and then asked to take a test, the other groups were told it was a psychological project and given the same test. The group of African Americans who were told of the claims about Black inferiority did worse then the control group.

It would be more than welcome if you manage to put more fact and less fluff into the environmental arguments without ending up spending most of your time and effort discrediting the hereditarian arguments. --Scandum 14:05, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
If you can restrict yourself to verifiable claims (i.e. not original research) written in an attributed way so as to make them NPOV, then I wish you well in improving the article. However, I think you'll have a hard time doing that while achieveing your four point plan. No time to discuss why -- just read up! --Rikurzhen 17:22, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
This text is certainly not NPOV, it's also disproportionate to it's importance in this debate (inappropriate for the main page of a summary style article), and it's covered already in another section. Really no time right now... --Rikurzhen 17:37, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
I just added some information on anon's point 4 (Claude Steele). The stereotype threat article could use some expansion. I added relevant articles from Steele on intelligence there. Anon, if there are other specific studies, please list them or add the articles yourself. Jokestress 00:36, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I suggest you write an article called Race and intelligence (Admixture studies) and link to it from the appropriate portion of this main article. --Rikurzhen 17:44, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

moved from article

The direct refutation of the Hereditarian Hypothesis

Others who do not hold their views have conducted research that disproves their conclusions, this research difinitively proves there is no link between race and intelligence (among blacks and whites). The cause of the gap in the United States has been firmly established as not genetic:

A Philadelphia study examined 3000 African Americans and found no link between the degree of white ancestry and IQ.*

A study conducted in the 1970's examined two samples of African Americans and found no correlation between degree of white ancestry and IQ. In fact in one study the correlation went in the "wrong" direction (i.e. the more African ancestry the higher IQ).**

In a study involving Caribbean children showed that there was no genetic basis for the IQ gap between blacks and whites, rather it showed the black children to be considerably more intelligent. The IQ of the children at the Orphanage was: Blacks 108, Mixed 106, and White 103.***

In a study comparing the offspring of American GI's and German women, where the children where raised in Germany as Germans there was no correlation found between IQ and Race. Both the Biracial and German children had average IQ's of 97.****

Many "G" theorists maintain that the gap in white and Black IQ scores in the US (they claim it to be 15 points) reflects differences in innate cognitive ability, scientists who are not "g" theorists (the vast majority) contest this. The hereditarians have never conducted any serious research to prove their case.

  • Scarr., S., Pakstis, S. Katz, H and Barker. (1977) "The abscense of a relationship between degree of white ancestory and intellectual skills within the Black population," Human Genetics, 39:69-86
    • Loehlin, J.D., Vandenberg, SG and Osbourne, R.T (1973) "Blood-group genes and Negro-White ability differences" Behavioral Genetics 3: 263-77
      • Tizard, B., Cooperman, A and Tizard, J. (1972) "Enviromental effects on langauge development a study of young children in longstay residential nurseries." Child Development, 43: 342-3
        • Flynn, JR, (1980) "Race, IQ, and Jensen." London Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Refrences:

IQ in Question, The truth about Intelligence by Micheal J. Howe (Book)

The Intelligence Controversy, HJ Eysneck vs. Leon Kamin (Book)

Inequality by Design (Book)

--Anon

RE: Offspring of American GI's and German women

Re:"In a study comparing the offspring of American GI's and German women, where the children where raised in Germany as Germans there was no correlation found between IQ and Race. Both the Biracial and German children had average IQ's of 97."
Keep in mind that science is complicated.
Razib at GNXP summarizes Jensen's review of this study in The G Factor :
  • "The fathers' IQs are not accounted for, and it could be that both groups of servicemen, black & white, were not representations of the mean in their parent populations. Jensen notes that 30% of blacks vs. 3% of whites were rejected during preinduction because they failed mental tests.
  • Factors that influenced assortive mating were not tracked. For instance, low SES German women might have had equal preferences for high IQ black officers and low IQ white privates because intelligence could have overcome racial bias in the former case while there was a preference for the latter because they understood that their children might be less ostracized by society if they were not racial minorities.
  • The tests were taken during pre-adolescent years when correlation between IQ scores and genotype is lower than in later years.
  • Heterosis, or hybrid vigor, could have bridged some of the gap."[20]
When the US military has enough recruits, they "virtually [stop] accepting new enlistees below the 30th percentile (IQs below 92, which is about half a standard deviation above the African-American median). Since the end of the Cold War, only 1% of new enlistees have scored below the 30th percentile [...] because of documented trouble in training and accident prevention [in low IQ soldiers]" -Steve Sailer[21]
The authors of this study failed to do their basic homework, but their results have been widely circulated because of their positive message.--Nectar T 23:50, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I myself referred to this result for many years in discussions. It is extremely well known, and the "debunking" you give above is impossible to find for a layman. (A back-of the envelope calculation actually predicts this study: American GIs would have mean IQ ninety-something, German women would have mean IQ 100, so their offspring is expected to have IQ 95-100. Very naive, of course, but the result actually confirms the hereditary hypothesis, instead of rejecting it.) But I don't think there is a good way to put this into WP, which in some sense is at the heart of the problem. Much of the public debate is based on bad science (in both camps). We editors should make a sterling effort of exposing these things (in both camps), but WP isn't really good as that. (It's good at representing viewpoints; bad at arbitrating the truth.) What I would love is a section of the form Common misconceptions. Under this headline we could debunk lots of primitive claims that haunt this debate (I am also thinking of "Whites are smarter than Asians", or "all Whites are smarter than Blacks" and a gazillion other misconceptions of the hereditarian argument.) One could source these claims easily (so verifiability is not a problem), but I cannot see how we can explain "why they are wrong" without violating WP:NPOV. Arbor 09:40, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
Well, we can do the easy thing (which is what we've currently done) and mention the existence of studies which purport to examine admixture and say that side X claims support from them and side Y claims they are inconclusive or actually support Y not X (this is more or less what we've written now). The easy thing saves space (we're already 2X larger than recommended for a single article page), but it is less informative. Perhaps greater depth of detail can be added to the subarticle on causal theories or even futher sub-articles? Certainly not the most compelling solution, but it does have the merit of being worked out already. Also, I agree that a common misconceptions list would be both good and difficult for the reasons you mention. --Rikurzhen 09:53, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
A significiant IQ difference in children has been measured as well in a study where the mother is white with a black father, opposed to the mother being black with a white father. Environmental forces at work. --Scandum 10:16, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

International Society for Intelligence Research

anyone interested in the latest intelligence research can check out the abstract book for the 2005 International Society for Intelligence Research meeting - PDF. i see at least two papers on causal theories of race differences. --Rikurzhen 20:42, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Biased

This page is biased and implies that these so-called "studies" are true - it does also present very little of the argument agaist it. If we must have an article on this subject, we should at least remove the average scores text and images - I find it extremely offensive, and it implies that this is a well-known scientific fact. These studies even violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." -- Hexagon1 09:52, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

family environment

lulu, you've reverted the text on family environment numerous times now. initally you refused to accept the conclusion was made and now you are claiming that because it is cited as evidence for the partly genetic position that it would be biased to mention it as background. neither reason is acceptable.

(1) the conclusion is clear

Two good references are:

  • McGue, M., Bouchard, T. J. Jr., Iacono, W. G., & Lykken, D. T. (1993). Behavioral genetics of cognitive ability: A life-span perspective. In R. Plomin & G. E. McClearn (Eds.), Nature, nurture, and psychology (pp. 59-76). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
  • Plomin, R., DeFries, J. C., McClearn, G. E., & McGuffin, P. (2001). Behavioral genetics (4th ed.). New York: Freeman.

both of which describe the whole of the available research as failing to detect shared family effects on the IQ of adults (in the conditions tested), indicating that detectable environmental effects on IQ are only of the kind that make siblings different from one another.

(2) a rule that material which appears to lend support to one position or another cannot be provided as background is not workable or desirable. the within group heritabilty of IQ lends support to the partly genetic hypothesis, as does the stability of IQ over a lifetime and etc. these are the facts that provide the context of the contemporary debate. keep in mind this is a scientific debate, not a political or philosophical one. one side or another can't/doesn't/shouldn't resort to ignoring data that is inconvient to their conclusions, and in general they do not. scientitists who believe that the cause is 100% environmental do so knowing the facts about shared family environment (for example, any of the factor X hypotheses can easily accept that within group effects do not include shared family effects) -- their position should be described as such. --Rikurzhen 19:40, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

p.s. one possible reply is to find a more recent meta-analysis which does detect shared family effects on adults. then we could state that as the conclusion. --Rikurzhen 19:47, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, that extra clause looks worse every time I look at it. It is not remotely "background", but rather a somewhat supported, but certainly non-consensus, claim that is a wordy digression into a barely-related issue. It fails on article flow. It misleads readers in trying to conflate socio-economic status generally with family-specific environment. It overstates by quite a bit what the APA committee conclusion you yourself provide says. There is simply no meaningful content added to the background section by putting in the extra clause that is not already covered by "largely heritable". It's just a blatent effort to skew the article towards a particular hereditarian POV.
OTOH, if you wish to provide more of the reference material you give here into a later section or sub-article, I have no objection to that. It's just not right to put the conclusions of one side of a controversial issue into the "background" of the topic (and in deceptive terms too). Leave it out, and I'll be happy to leave out all the strikingly relevant connection of Jensen et alia to a long, discredited and disgraceful history of "scientific racism" (which comes a lot closer to being "background"). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 21:36, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
You persist in your claim that this is a disputed finding, but you have not provided any reason for me to believe this. You've also added a confusing bit about socioeconomic background -- family environment includes SES, parenting style, etc (at least in the range of those variable examined in this study). You also claim this is is unrelated to heritabilty but subsumed by it -- this is not true. First, shared family environment is detected with the same experiments that detect genetic effects. Second, note that they are detected in children by mysteriously disappear by adulthood. This is certainly surprising, but not impossible to accept and AFAIK not disputed.
Also, I don't understand what you're getting at with the paragraph that begins OTOH, but I don't think you should be implying that we would fail to report something as some kind of compromise. My reading of the article is that there is more than ample description of the allegations of racism associated with this research. Let's be sure there's also ample description of the research findings with appropraite descriptions of what is and is not disputed. --Rikurzhen 21:58, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
At the very least, the result that family background creates a correlation in childhood but not in adulthood is a very serious anomoly in a Kuhnian sense. It directly contradicts the other "widely accepted" bullet point about the unchangeability (or limited changeability) of IQ over a lifetime. Putting something so iffy and weird in the "background" is just not appropriate. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 22:54, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
Except that the stability over a lifetime is less for childhood to adulthood measurements of IQ than for one adulthood testing to another. But on that point I would remind you that we should not interject our own judgement about whether a conclusion like this is reasonable or not, but rather report what is out there. If you think the oddity of this observation is also crucial, there are ways to write the sentence to make this clear without using an adjective like odd. We could for example, write that the effects of family environment on IQ is observed in children, but by adulthood the only environmental effects detected are those that make sibiling dissimilar. Put that way, I think the oddity is clear but so is the implication for environmental effects on within group differences. --Rikurzhen 23:04, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
It might say something about the IQ tests used for children aged 7-8 which oftenly cannot be compared to those used on adults which are the more definitive tests. That's not the issue however, what you are doing is censorship of research that isn't to your liking. --Scandum 23:10, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
<sarcasm>Right; moving a digression to a more appropriate section is "censorship"</sarcasm>. Yeah, that's the ticket. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 01:44, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Quick poll on "undectable adulthood effect"

Unfortunately, Scandum has insisted on reverting a phrase that I find both inappropriate for the background section, and quite POV. Let's see if the phrase has support by more than two editors.

Should the following bullet item be presented as a consensus position in the "background" section?"

  • For people living in the prevailing conditions of the developed world, cognitive ability is substantially heritable, and by adulthood the influence of family environment on IQ is undetectable.

Oppose

  1. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 01:41, 5 November 2005 (UTC). To the extent it is evidenced, it is not consensus; and even if a thousand unassailable citations were provided, the extra digression would not belong in that section (it breaks flow). Brevity and all.
  2. Jokestress 17:07, 5 November 2005 (UTC) "Undetectable" is inaccurate and misleading, and these polls are always going to fall in the favor of the hereditarians who camp out here. "Family environment" could mean access to nutrition, which is clearly linked to cognitive ability, and a host of other issues.
  3. AnonNot only is it irrelevant but the claim itself is highly questionable, IIRC, as the Minnesota twin study and Burt's shady research is all the evidence we have of Identical twins raised apart.
  4. Danny Yee 08:58, 6 November 2005 (UTC) "substantially heritable" maybe, but "influence of family environment undectable" is just way over the top. Environmental effects of various kinds on adult IQ are well-substantiated. Surely no one here is arguing some "entirely genetic" strawman?

Support

  1. Rikurzhen 02:11, 5 November 2005 (UTC) -- (a) lulu, you've yet to present any citation to support your claim that it is not, whereas i've given citations which say it is. you're reasoning so far has been merely to claim personal incredulity that this could be largely accepted. (b) the cause of within group variation in IQ, including the kind of environmental causes of variation (i.e. individual but not family effects) is salient background for a discussion of between group differences.
  2. Scandum 13:17, 5 November 2005 (UTC) -- Removing facts isn't going to benefit the article.
  3. Arbor 15:36, 5 November 2005 (UTC) -- The claim is relevant and verifiable. (Moreover, I'm sure it's the truth, which is even better!) Rik's alternative formulation (above) is good. (On a side note, I don't like polls. Wikipedia is not a democracy.)

Rikurzhen's current edit is unobjectionable in terms of accuracy. It has a set of caveats and qualifications that make it true enough. However, it still goes off on a tangent that is entirely unimportant to the basic summary point. More words to make a point that has no need for being made at that part of the article. The simplest thing would be just to state the underlying idea, and leave it there:

  • For people living in the prevailing conditions of the developed world, cognitive ability is substantially heritable.

Rather than:

  • For people living in the prevailing conditions of the developed world, cognitive ability is substantially heritable, and while the impact of family environment on the IQ of children is substantial, after adolescence these effects do not appear to be important.

However, I'll stop complaining about the digression for now. While it lacks in melifluousness or section relevance, it is at least solid factually. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 04:15, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

This might be a better question for a quick poll. Now that we can agree on an accurate formulation, the relevance of the point is a point that warrants multiple inputs. --Rikurzhen 05:43, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

comments

You guys are actually going to argue that IQ is 0% enviroment *ROFLMFAO

That's certainly not what that bullet means, nor are we arguing it's true only that it's a verifiable claim that's salient to this article. this article may help explain it. Also, you should sign your commnets. --Rikurzhen 17:34, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

"Undetectable" is inaccurate and misleading -- undetectable is accurate, the metaanalyses find no effects when they look at large sets of data; and is more accurate than saying the effect is zero because a small effect could exist which was simply not detected "Family environment" could mean access to nutrition -- apparently the nutritional differences that exist between the bulk of families in developed countries do not affect IQ into adulthood. only severe and long lasting starvation has been shown to lower IQ. as the anon seems to have misunderstood above -- finding no effect of families among the predominant conditions of developed countries is much less of a claim than finding no effect under any possible condition. [more] another source of iq variation by nutrition is that at low frequencies some individuals have larger micronutrient requirements than most, and these usually undetected nutrient deficiences can be found with test, supplemented, and this will raise a lowered IQ, but the effects are genetic/individual, not family effects. --Rikurzhen 17:54, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

These results are so obviously inaccurate representations of the underlying mechanisms that the only possible question is "what methodological or sample bias was undetected in the experimental design?" That's exactly what an "anomoly" is in Kuhn's sense (well, not the whole of it, but an important part). Let's just do a Gedanken experiment: If the MZ twins are raised apart, one among the (non-literate) Masai and the other in the home of two American Harvard professors, do you really believe there will be no IQ correlation with their adopted siblings?! If so, that's just plain insane. If not, it shows that the existing studies miss detection of some in-principle effect (but even there, they find the effect small, not undetectable as the extreme hereditarians keep pretending). I can imagine lots of reasons for the experimental/measurement bias; but the only thing that there is rough majority opinion around is that it is interesting that a small set of studies fails to detect something that self-evidently exists.
On a whole different WP page, I had an interesting discussion with another scientists (an ethologist/biologist) about a different pre-environmental phenomena with political histories and weightiness. I know there are about a million other possible analogies in science, so I'm not pretending this one is uniquely close, just that it struck me recently. Take a look over at Digit ratio; here's a quick synopsis: fetal exposure to androgens is strongly correlated with the comparative lengths of fingers. That much is well accepted; some scientists further speculate that the fetal androgens are correlated with various other (more politically charged) traits: sexual orientation, gender identity, etc. It turns out that a number of studies find a correlation between digit ratio and sexual orientation. Some folks of a biological determinist bent get all hot-and-bothered over this result, and are certain that they've found the "cause" of sexual orientation. Here's the wrinkle: published studies (i.e. bias against null hypothesis) all find a correlation. But in America, the gay guys have longer ring fingers, while in Europe, the gay guys ahve longer index fingers. In both sets of studies, a correlation is affirmed. But it is an opposite correlation in the two cases. What's the moral of this? I don't know, exactly—I'm not saying what the real underlying fact is. But there are cases where the raw fact that some study found something cannot be taken at a simplistic reductionist level (in fact, all cases for us versed in Duhem-Quine). And publication bias may be even more important than experimental design bias for politically charged topics. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 18:54, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
Really busy with work now, but a quick note. You're not taking the sentence as a whole literally enough. It is a conclusion that is restricted the set environmental variation found in the predominant conditions of developed countries, not a statement about all possible environmental variations. Specially, we know lots of environmental variables that can harm IQ, it just happens that those are not prevalent in the conditions that most people enjoy in developed countries -- or that those conditions, such as accidents, tend to strike individuals not families. That's why the heritabilty and shared environment claim go together -- they come from the same studies. No doubt the hertiability of IQ is lower when environmental conditions are more variable and no doubt that would show a family effect -- such as your Masai/Harvard thought experiment. Also, please find us a metaanalysis which claims the shared family effect on adults is (over all available data) small rather than undetectable. (For example, if it is detected in 1 study by not in 5 others, then the metaanalysis will conclude the overall it is undetectable; but if it can be reliably detected I would love to know about it and would support fixing the text to say that.) As for bias in design/reporting -- that's clearly original research unless you can find a published account to substiate the claim that that is a concern with these conclusions. --Rikurzhen 19:39, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
Lulu, I believe that in Block 1995, you will find an exposition of some of the problems with heritability you mention. (Actually, it's been a while since I read that paper, so maybe I'm wrong... Anyway, I linked to a online version in the references a while ago. Have a look.) I suggest you try to work some of those arguments into our little article here. Even better, improve Heritability. (Personally, I think Block makes a silly argument—so please don't take this as a professional endorsement of his POV.) Arbor 20:12, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
Let me put it this way Rikurzhen: You are a geneticist, and you only manage to characterize the precise technical claim correctly about half the time you refer to it on the talk pages. The number of general readers who would actually understand the claim to mean precisely what it does in a somewhat obscure and technical sense is maybe 0.5% (yeah, it's a bogus invented statistic, meaning "small" :-)). You know perfectly well that by putting in something that is minimally (and contentiously) true in some special technical sense, you are really trying to get general readers to misread the claim as something much more broad and general. It's not honest, and it's definitely not good writing. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 20:02, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
It may not be obvious, but being a "geneticist" is about as specific as being a "philosopher". I don't do behavior genetics. Nonetheless, I don't think it takes specialized knowledge to understand that For people living in the prevailing conditions of the developed world excludes most people/conditions found on Earth today. If there's some way to describe this better, for example my suggested construction above that Arbor approved of, then by all means introduce it. I don't comprehend a deletionist stance on half a sentence that is obviously salient background for understanding the context of this topic. --Rikurzhen 20:17, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
Right, but I'd expect any philosopher to know what the fallacy of four terms is; knowing what heritability is is approximately as narrow as that. In any case, the adoption studies are on a much narrower population than even "prevailing conditions of the developed world. It's a small subset of people in the developed world who are adopteded children, or who are adopting parents. A lot of selection bias has room to come into play. And given the tiny sliver studied, mostly by researchers hoping to find a specific hereditarian conclusion (bias against null hypothesis), in a tiny number of studies... well, there's no way your broad claim is a fair characterization of consensus. Heck, even your second Nature quotation (like your prior APA one) fails to state anything nearly as strong as you wish to put in the article. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 20:53, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
WRT heritability -- do you have a point or are you just trying to jibe me with personal attacks? I feel comfortable that I understand heritability. WRT the nature paper -- it's my belief that the phrase I wrote and the nature paper say the same thing. If you can rewrite the bullet point to fit with [your reading of] the nature paper, please do so. WRT bias -- WP:NOR. --Rikurzhen 21:12, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
No, no. Not a personal attack or jibe. I am 100% certain that you understand heritability, Rikurzhen. Partially because you are a geneticist (hence the reference to your profession), but also because of the intelligence you've shown in these discussions. But it's a subtle enough question that even someone like you who really does understand it can easily "misspeak" when not being very careful (something like with a fallcy-of-four-terms in my profession). I do not believe that most readers (i.e. 99%+) will read the clause you want in its most narrow and technical meaning (nor that it is quite accurate even in that narrowest sense), but rather read a much broader claim as implied. That is not desirable; and given that the specific claim you want included is so very far afield of the main point of the background section, the clause just should not be there. Yes... explicated in more precision and detail in other sections or sub-articles; just not in the "background" summary. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 01:56, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
Lulu, you've presented several arguments. The only argument I find compelling is that this material can be introduced at the point in the article where it is needed. However, the counter point to that argument is that in a section giving background it is important to give a heads up about what the people described in the article take for granted. I believe there should be a single sentence which describes what is known about the genetic and environmental factors which cause differences in cognitve ability among individuals of the same race. I also believe we can find a way to write it such that both the significance and the limits of that conclusion are relatively clear. I suspect that we can collectively manage that task. If it does turn out to be too difficult to describe briefly, then we can probably manage a less informative sentence that says only that this topic has been studied. --Rikurzhen 02:57, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
This finding basicly discredits research on children. On second thought it's probably better to give it it's own section for that reason? --Scandum 22:23, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

A quotation from this nature review has a good formulation of the findings:

It is often not appreciated that genetically sensitive designs, such as twin and adoption studies, that recognize the importance of both nature and nurture are uniquely well suited to the investigation of environmental influences. Indeed, one of the most important discoveries about environmental influences on g has come from such genetic research. The 'nurture assumption'16 — that the home is the most important part of the child's environment — implies that children growing up in the same home should be similar to one another because they share these environmental influences. When genetic resemblance is taken into account, such shared environmental influences that contribute to the resemblance of family members for g are important in childhood, accounting for about a quarter of the variance, but they are not important after adolescence. In other words, non-shared environmental factors that make children in the same family different (such as differences in parental treatment, differences in school experiences and different experiences with peers) provide the long-term consequences of environmental influence for g. This finding coincides with similar findings for other quantitative traits and indicates the need to re-examine the nurture assumption16.

--Rikurzhen 20:25, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Good quote. The fact that these matters are mentioned in pretty much every review article on cognitive ability also should be viewed as a challenge to those (like Jokestress or Lulu) who question their relevance. Not only are the details of heritability verifiable, their relevance to the debate is verifiable as well. I can see very few mechanisms in WP that could be used to exclude this information. (And Lulu's speculation that this information, while true, appropriate, and accurately portrayed, should be removed because the unwashed masses might misunderstand them, is not an accepted ground for exclusion. Maybe WP should have such a policy, but on a talk page we need to argue from accepted policies.) Arbor 11:10, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

wsj statement on individual differences within groups

maybe this text will be a source of inspiriation for better ways to describe the conclusions: --Rikurzhen 03:05, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Source and Stability of Within-Group Differences

14. Individuals differ in intelligence due to differences in both their environments and genetic heritage. Heritability estimates range from 0.4 to 0.8 (on a scale from 0 to 1), most thereby indicating that genetics plays a bigger role than does environment in creating IQ differences among individuals. (Heritability is the squared correlation of phenotype with genotype.) If all environments were to become equal for everyone, heritability would rise to 100% because all remaining differences in IQ would necessarily be genetic in origin.

15. Members of the same family also tend to differ substantially in intelligence (by an average of about 12 IQ points) for both genetic and environmental reasons. They differ genetically because biological brothers and sisters share exactly half their genes with each parent and, on the average, only half with each other. They also differ in IQ because they experience different environments within the same family.

16. That IQ may be highly heritable does not mean that it is not affected by the environment. Individuals are not born with fixed, unchangeable levels of intelligence (no one claims they are). IQs do gradually stabilize during childhood, however, and generally change little thereafter.

17. Although the environment is important in creating IQ differences, we do not know yet how to manipulate it to raise low IQs permanently. Whether recent attempts show promise is still a matter of considerable scientific debate.

18. Genetically caused differences are not necessarily irremediable (consider diabetes, poor vision, and phenalketonuria), nor are environmentally caused ones necessarily remediable (consider injuries, poisons, severe neglect, and some diseases). Both may be preventable to some extent.

Re: German women Black GI's

Your math is way off, even if we accept that a larger number of low IQ blacks were rejected from service, and this raised the average IQ of Black service men, the average IQ would still be well below the white average IQ. We also have to remember that a fair number of whites are also rejected based on low IQ scores. I will work out the numbers tommorow but your explanation is simply wrong.

The other problem is that you assume that the Blacks who did have sex had higher IQ's, I see no reason to assume this. After all much of the writing of the Bell Curve and social darwinism in general emphasizes the so-called dysgenic effects, ie, lower IQ people have more children.

The scores could also be interprated as showing blacks have more natural ability at IQ tests. Black privates would only have access to less disirable German women, ie poor, ie low IQ, and hence would be mating with German women with worse genes. Also their children have a good chance of suffering discrimination, stereotyping, more social austricism, etc. then the children of White GI's. Despite these disadvantages they still achieve the same IQ score, if you are a strict hereditarian you must then think this means Blacks are more intelligent then whites.

The children were all raised by white mothers, the tests were performed on children instead of adults, the fathers didn't represent the average afro american population due to rejection from the service of low IQ blacks. Including full environmental influences which you are supporting, especially during those days, the blacks passing the tests would have been likely to have a higher genetic IQ than whites passing the tests. You also forget that European countries in general have no racist culture toward blacks whatsoever since there weren't any blacks in Europe until the second half of the 20th century, so your theory falls in that department. Since racism is correlated with lower intelligence one could actually asume that the white mothers had above average intelligence. --Scandum 13:35, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

1. Even after eliminating the low IQ blacks and whites the average IQ of the black GI's would still be lower. 2. Racism against blacks was big in Europe and Germany, though not as severe as the US. The Germans allmost whiped out the Hottentots in East Africa around the turn of the century. 3. If there was no anti-black racism in Germany (as you argued) then it could not be correlated with low IQ.....

Debating whether a POV is true or not is pointless.See WP:NOT,WP:NPOV.--Rikurzhen 17:37, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Fine then lets present this study and allow the reader to make up their mind, that was my position I want a more balanced account of the data. The other point was that Scandum was arguing that the data was flawed, and his argument why made no sense, hence this evidence should be presented along with the Minnesota study.

It would help if you sign your comments for clarity. I'm just responding to your assumptions, and making up assumptions in response. While possibly pointless, these discussions indicate in what light and detail the data could, and possibly should be presented so the readers can make up their own minds. Things that come to mind would be the amount of children to know if the study was representative and the age of the children when the tests were taken. --Scandum 21:54, 5 November 2005 (UTC)


BTW, if anyone wants to do it, I think it would be very appropriate to add Jensen's response in The G Factor (summarized in the earlier posting) to where this study is discussed in the Culture only or partially genetic explanation? subpage. Currently the study is presented there as if it's uncontroversial. --Nectar T

The admixture studies

You still haven't explained why you reject the admixture studies. Looking at 10 polymorphisms is not 100 percent accurate for determining someones heritage. However on average, those with the fewer "african" polymorphisms will be whiter, and those with more "african" polymorphisms will be Blacker. This connection is even stronger when you look at groups of people, 100 polymorphisms will predict the african ancestry of a group of 10 people as well as 100 polymorphisms will predict the ancestry of one person.

Once again the results could also be read as suggesting a slight black advantage over whites, despite greater discrimination, stereotype vulnerability, etc. Blacker blacks do just as well or better on IQ tests as whiter Blacks. To paraphrase Leon Kamin, 'who knows how well Whites and Blacks would do given the same enviroment it could just as likely be that Blacks did better then Whites, as the reverse.' (Not sure of the exact quote)

The results are discussed in brief on this page and (if I remember correctly) get a treatment on the sub-article. That's all the space that they deserve if this page is to remain small enough to be readable. Also, note that there have been no studies that looked at anything more determinative of African ancestry than skin color, which according to a paper by Rick Kittles from around 2000, is not determinative of African ancestry amongst African Americans. --Rikurzhen 17:42, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

The Philadelphia study and the others looked at polymorphisms, which while they wouldn't be able to predict ancestory 100 percent of the time should be highly correlated. Also those who are critical of Jensen, frequently site these studies.

You also quote the Scarr study which is small and in my mind a bit dubious because of selection bias, but ignore studies that contradict your and Jensens views.

I honestly don't know what study that is. Citation? --Rikurzhen 22:38, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

And one more thing: Cultural Bias

Mental functioning is not entirely measured by IQ, it is also assessed by ones ability to function in everyday life. Sociologists and psychologists have noticed many american Blacks and Hispanics despite low IQ's are able to handle their daily affairs with little difficulty, and in day to day matters can resolve problems in quite a sophisticated manner. The Bell Curve would define around 15 percent of Blacks/Mexicans as mentally retarded, and only about 2 percent of whites. However the actual data indicates that the number of Blacks with mental retardation is 10 per 1000, the number for whites is about 6 per 1000, and the number for Hispanics is 5 per 1000.

If IQ tests accurately measured cognitive functioning across cultures then their would be far more mentally retarded Blacks and Hispanics, instead Hispanics come out on top!!!! The Bell curve and similair sources overestimate Black mental retardation by 15x, and Hispanic mental retardation by almost 30x!!!! Open link in new window:

http://www.epa.gov/envirohealth/children/child_illness/d7.htm

But why are their more blacks with mental retardation, then whites? Well look to the figure on the right, poverty is correlated with mental retardation, and more Blacks are poor then whites. And it is also true that mental retardation in most cases is caused by enviromental factors not genetic ones. One of these enviromental factors is neglect, poor Blacks and poor Whites do not have the strong family structures that Hispanics do, so more children end up getting neglected. Feral children who do not have contact with humans after a certain age cannot ever learn to speak, it would be impossible to assess these childrens true genetic capability.

The other factors that impact low IQ also disproportionately effect Blacks and Hispanics, lead poisoning, fetal alcohol syndrome, exposure to toxic chemicals, poor nutrition, etc.

Finally it is also worth noting that African Americans have a higher rate of Schitzophrenia then whites do, most psychologists/sociologists believe that this is not caused by genetic factors but is caused by enviromental factors. More people have the genetic possibility for Schitzophrenia then develop it, this is because Schitzophrenia is triggered by enviromental factors such as......poverty, stress, drug use, etc.

For this and a multitude of other reasons I think that we can finally close the book on the genetic explanation......

This is wonderful, but it's predominately original research. However, you find find most of it discussed by Jensen (1998). In fact, if you read the article and the causation subarticle in full, I think you will find that some of the best data and theories in support of a non-genetic cause of the B-W gap comes from Jensen regarding non-genetic biological factors. --Rikurzhen 17:46, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

It is hardly original research I got the figures on Mental Retardation from the Epas website, I also can go back and find info on diagnosis of mental retardation. The IQ tests vastly overpredict Black and Hispanic mental retardation.......

The data is not original, but AFAIK your interpretation is not published. (As I pointed out Jensen has commented on the same data.) Also, please sign up for a user name if you plan to contribute. That will allow you to sign your comments. --Rikurzhen 01:29, 6 November 2005 (UTC)