Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 18

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quick poll for family effects

Two alternative bullet points for the background section on cognitive ability are being proposed.

  1. For people living in the prevailing conditions of the developed world, cognitive ability is substantially heritable.
  2. 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.
  3. 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 this effect becomes difficult to detect.

Which do you prefer?

Number 1 -- shorter

Number 2 -- longer

  1. Salient background material --Rikurzhen 05:46, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
  2. I would vote for even longer. At least let's add “see Heritability#Cognitive ability” (which doesn't exist) or “see IQ#Genetics vs environment”. The latter section exists, but doesn't mention the point Lulu raises, it would benefit from an overhaul: Of course there is a strong environmental effect on IQ, but in the largely homogenous conditions of the developed world minimises the environmental effect, to the point of IQ being highly heritable for that population. The current state of the linked section at IQ does not make that clear. Later: actually, there is a short third paragraph about detrimental environmental effects. That should probably be moved up I have moved it up, hope I got it right. See you on Talk:IQ. Even later: 3 is fine as well. Arbor 10:58, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Number 3 -- longer

  1. Detect is still being the better definition, family environment isn't plural which will cause confusion. When measured for specific or extreme family environments one is very likely to find detectable differences as well, so I suggest to not stress this too much. --Scandum 11:18, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
  2. Number 2 & 3 illustrate the theoretical extent of family and hereditary influences (a central topic in this article). A footnote seems like a good option to explain what is and what is not meant by family environment, and maybe what is not included in prevailing conditions. Also, it would be made even clearer with the actual average percentage estimate (if we have it) in parentheses following family environment. --Nectar T 11:36, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
  3. Well, this is "tactical voting". Scandum writing #3 made the clause much better than it is in #2. I still think the whole second clause is superfluous for the background section, but if we are to have a run-on, better this one. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 17:04, 6 November 2005 (TC)
  4. that works. good suggestions among the comments. --Rikurzhen 22:29, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

2

Please don't start this up again! In the quick poll, we got a vote of 5:0 (well, maybe 4.5:.5, depending on how you could Arbor's "later") for the compromise language. Then today someone inserted something that was longer, more contentious, less relevant, less accurate, and less well written than anything that had been in the bullet before. This is a bullet point not a whole article section, for g*d sake. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 05:44, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Adding numbers was brought up in the above discussion. The first part of the argument against adding the numbers seems to be that the heritability of IQ is not relevant enough. It seems, though, that the relative influences of environment and heredity are foundational (not tangential) to the investigation into the roots of the group disparity. (If IQ wasn't considered a substantially heritable trait, the genetic argument for group IQ differences would be much less prominent.)
Regarding the length of the presentation in the article, the small influence of family environment and the large influence of heredity on adult IQ is a very counter-intuitive point for most readers. Accordingly, it will probably be understood better by seeing the actual estimates given in genetics textbooks (such as the one cited) instead of summarizing them (writing substantially heritable instead of 80%).--Nectar T 06:54, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Not the length of the article overall: the length of a "consensus" bullet point in the "background" section. Don't turn a bullet-point into a whole section. And, BTW, no misleading readers into a wrong understanding of the technical term "heritable" is not helpful. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 07:03, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, my statement was regarding the length of the point under discussion. The background section's function is to cover the basic concepts this article is built on. If the point is too long for bullet point form, than it isn't a problem to present it another way (though it seems fine in bullet form to me). Can you point out how the wording under question can be less misleading? Perhaps you mean it would be better with the attribution "according to geneticists?" You didn't respond to my argument above (the extent of heritability is foundational and probably needs to be explained clearly; numbers help).--Nectar T 07:39, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
The long stuff on heritability percentages and methodologies would make sense in the Jensen pro-genetic section. Ideally accompanied by an explanation of the concept "heritability", which is perhaps one of the most misunderstood concepts in popular consciousness (I haven't looked at its article, maybe that provides a good explanation). The digression still isn't "background", but rather "plunging into the details of one argument". Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 08:18, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

flynn effect - primary sources

we're light on references (essentially none) for the flynn effect discussion in the the causation section and associated sub-article. does anyone know the primary sources for the claim that the flynn effect might have implications for the cause of the IQ gap? i've only seen it mentioned w/o references in 2ndary sources. --Rikurzhen 22:35, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Rewrite "scores" as "results"?

In my interpretation it is more scientifically accurate to say "IQ test results" instead of "IQ scores" as IQ testing is generally and fundamentally disputed. Just because someone wrote a test claiming to measure "intelligence" doesn't mean they succeeded. It is also important to note for readers that the correlation with the disputed categorization of "race" is made against nothing more than test results data (not with an objective measure of "intelligence" or "intelligence quotient"). There are a great deal of other things in this article that require caveatting too, like "intelligence", apparent scientific racism and the way fundamental criticisms of the field are mischaracterized but I'll get to those later. zen master T 19:40, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Only 3 people have voted, if more folks don't vote it may be time to rewrite the article. Though what I really want if for someone to come up with a logical argument that defends the word "score" against charges of being biased/presumptive. zen master T 22:37, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
There aren't any more people voting or commenting in this section, why not? Clearly the word "score" is disputed, can some proponents of the article please try to defend it rather than ignoring this criticism? This is the main/recent reason I've been trying to add the {npov} or {totallydisputed} template to this article (among many other fundamental criticisms of this article). zen master T 02:37, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Vote "results"

  1. "IQ test results" is more scientifically accurate given the lack of consensus/merit for "IQ" testing. zen master T 19:40, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Vote neutral

  1. (Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 20:24, 7 November 2005 (UTC)) I may have unleashed a daemon with this "quick poll" style :-). Certainly I know that "Wikipedia is not a democracy"; I simply find polls sometimes worthwhile to see if there is a consensus on something (or more often to prove that an alleged consensus is not such). In any case, even though I know Zen-master made some disruptive edits before, I think s/he is right on this narrow point. We should assume good faith. "Result" seems more neutral (and especially more positivistic, it doesn't ontologize the experimental procedure). I.e.:
    result: a phenomenon that follows and is caused by some previous phenomenon (numeric result from administering a test)
    score: a number or letter indicating quality; the facts about an actual situation.
    That said, I think the change is of little importance overall.

Vote "scores"

  1. A "score" is literally a mark made in taking a talley. As such, "score" is descriptive of what happens when one grades a multiple choice exam or an exam such as an essay exam that requires active reading of the response. P0M 05:08, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
    • In an exam that has a "right answer" then yes, but in a test that is fundamentally disputed no. The word "results" is a much more neutral and accurate way of describing controversial data. zen master T 05:27, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
  1. if this substitution were the only change ZM made in his last edit, I think it would have been overlooked. "score" to "result" is a mostly harmless change. nonetheless, i'll put in a vote for "score" on principle. in my experience a score is a specific kind of result, usually numerical, from some kind of test or assay. for example, I may "score" the phenotype of various mutants on a scale. the scores that come from IQ tests are in no way a matter of dispute. that is, the tests are highly reliable (they give similar scores to the same person over and over again). so changing score to result is pointless. but moreover, the tests are also highly valid -- in that they measure what they puport to measure -- various skills that are considered indicative of intelligence. in fact, when administered with care, they do it equally well for all people from the culture for which the test was devised (e.g. all English speaking Americans). --Rikurzhen 20:54, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I think you may be missing a fundamental point of criticism, namely, that IQ tests do not objectively measure "intelligence". Given that there is no consensus that "IQ" tests mean anything or conclusively have any merit this article should not errantly use a meritous word like "score". "results" is much more NPOV, isn't it? Also note this vote is only on rewritting "score" to "result", as I said above I will follow up on my other points of criticism (as exemplified by my recent [reverted] chage) separately. zen master T 21:03, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
    • IQ tests do not objectively measure "intelligence" -- no one claims that they are a 1 to 1 measure of "intelligence", but that doesn't make the result of an IQ test not a "score".
    • there is no consensus that "IQ" tests mean anything or conclusively have any merit -- no, rather the consensus is that they measure reasoning ability, problem solving and other skills, and that they have merit as predictors success in academics, work, and other valued life outcomes. --Rikurzhen 21:15, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
      • Are you purposely not acknowledging the fact that critics specifically dispute your contention that IQ tests "measure reasoning ability, problem solving and other skills"? Since this point is disputed shouldn't we acknowledge that and seek neutral alternative phrasing? How can a test be stated as an objective "score" of anything if there are allegations it is tainted and/or biased? "Score" errantly and unscientifically implies all the superior vs inferior connotations. zen master T 21:33, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
        • ZM, the contemporary scholarly literature on this subject does not support the claims that you are making. This is a fact that you've refused to acknowledge for many many months now, but the situation has not changed. Please check the APA report or the various freely accessible papers in the external links section if you want to learn more about expert opinion on intelligence. --Rikurzhen 21:52, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
          • Are you including critical sources in your research? Do you interpret them or just mindlessly discount them? Do you deny that IQ testing is disputed? I can provide various critical sources and citations again if need be. Though regardless of sources isn't "result" more neutral than "score"? What is wrong with "result" specifically? zen master T 22:07, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
            • I treat critical sources as a scientist should -- as the APA generally did in 1996. Neither "result" nor "score" is better or worse WRT NPOV, but score is more precise. Do you deny that IQ testing is disputed? By scholars on the basis of evidence my answer is "yes -- I deny that", by non-experts without a basis on evidence "no -- you can find anyone to deny anything but they don't warrant equal time". My reply would be the same for the questions of "do you deny that evolution is disputed?" or "do you deny that global warming is disputed?" and yet I would demand that the scientific consensus be given the appropriate weight in those articles too. But moreover, I would not pretend to be able to edit the article on globlal warming because I don't know nearly enough about the data to understand the science, as I suspect most people don't understand psychometrics. --Rikurzhen 22:23, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
              • How is "score" more precise? Which of the following would be more acceptable in the article: "race and intelligence" researchers correlate racial categorizations with 1) "objective measurements of intelligence", or with 2) "IQ test result data"? A correlation takes place with data, right? Has anyone scientifically proved this data means anything (to the point of consensus)? Don't "race and intelligece" researchers seem to imply conclusions just by the way they choose to present data? If the same data is presented a different way there is no evidence for their conclusions. Do global warming or evolutionary scientists deny the existance of controversy or utilize presumption inducing dichotomies? zen master T 22:34, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
                • I looked up "score" on answer.com and I didn't see "objective measure" anywhere in the defintion. The score on my 12th grade history midterm was not an objective measure of my knowledge of history, but was nonetheless better described as a score than a result. A score is a kind of result, so of course "score" is a more precise term. Presupmtion-inducing dichotomies is historically where I leave this conversation. --Rikurzhen 22:41, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
                  • Your analogy is a good one but here is a key difference, no one is disputing the methods of your history techer and the applicability of his/her specific test that has "right" or "wrong" answers, but in the case of "race and intelligence" research and "IQ" testing numerous scientists fundamentally dispute exactly that and more. Given that many critics argue IQ testing is worthless we can't use a word like "score", it implies validity which hasn't been established with sufficient consensus. In fact, the word "score" itself may be a cause of the disparity in a negative feedback sense, if people receive a low result on a biased "IQ" test they may errantly aim low in life. Do you agree that is possible at least? zen master T 00:59, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
                    • Somebody pinch me, are we really having this discussion? Just like "don't put dogs in your microwave" is a silly thing to put in a manual, the same goes for what you are trying to do here. I'm sure you can find many people who claim that "IQ" and "race" are worthless and or invalid concepts, this doesn't change a thing. If either of the concepts are officially declared bogus this article will automagically be degraded with it, and it will only have some historical or comic value. Till then the only comic value I find is on the talk page. It's an encyclopedia, not a state funded indoctrination program. --Scandum 01:52, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
                      • You fail to acknowledge that "IQ" and "race" are fundamentally disputed (research methods disputed, misleading dichotomy, racism inducing, unscientific presentation, mischaracterization of critical sources, ignore all fundamental criticism, etc) the article should reflect this criticism. Since IQ test results are disputed it makes sense to use a more neutral word than "score", the word "results" seems more neutral to me but I am open to other suggestions. zen master T 15:39, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
  1. A google test of "IQ scores" (300,000) has 15 times the number of hits as "IQ results" (20,000). It is easy to see which of these terms is the mainstream POV and which is a minority POV.--Nectar T 03:26, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
    • As I stated in this section already, the criteria here isn't which word is more notable, the criteria here is which word gives a neutral presentation. NPOV trumps notability. I am also open to alternatives other than "results" specifically, so please try if you can to defend "scores" from a charge of being biased in this article? zen master T 03:48, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
      • (1)There is standard usage by professionals. (2) There is minority dissent. (3) Encyclopedia articles use the terminology that would be most acceptable to the professionals.--Nectar T 03:58, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
        • Wikipedia's neutrality policy trumps notability. If the majority always won then the {npov} template would never be added to an article, but it is except in this article. And this is not minority dissent, this is trying to present the subject matter in the most neutral way possible given controversy, wikipedia doesn't just regurgitate the "professional" view, especially for fundamentally disputed subjects. zen master T 04:03, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
          • No; encyclopedia articles do have a commitment to represent the accepted scientific point of view on scientific subjects.--Nectar T 04:12, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
            • Your position goes against basic NPOV policy, if a subject matter is disputed wikipedia can't simply regurgitate the "mainstream" view, we are required to signify exactly where the controversy begins and neutrally describe the disputed points. zen master T 04:15, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
              • NPOV means representing the mainstream and any germane minority views accurately. This article gives caveats regarding IQ and regarding "race" in the first few lines and dedicates the background section to dealing with these two concepts and their criticisms.--Nectar T 04:45, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
                • The article currently does a woefully insufficient job of describing what points are disputed. IQ testing is fundamentally disputed so you can't possibly argue "score" is appropriate after a detailed analysis. It is almsot as if a gang of folks have conspired to control all "research" and interpretation of criticism on this subject to advance a beyond racist agenda of some sort. These "researchers" obviously utilize unsound methodologies, the only thing they appear to be experts in is the psychologically tricky effect of language and how the mind will errantly think about and perceive a subject if exclusively framed a certain way. zen master T 04:54, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Sources for claim IQ testing is biased and/or disputed

  1. "Racial Bias Built into Tests" [1]
  2. "... the data demonstrates that socio-economic background has a greater affect upon test scores [results] than racial background." [2]
  3. "reliance on IQ tests that have known cultural bias" [3]


ZM, this has absolutely been settled since the early 1980s. Every review article, including the consensus reports, are unequivocal on that point. --Rikurzhen 22:53, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

from the APA report -- I'll paste it here if you can't be bothered to read it:

Test Bias. It is often argued that the lower mean scores of African Americans reflect a bias in the intelligence tests themselves. This argument is right in one sense of "bias" but wrong in another. To see the first of these, consider how the term is used in probability theory. When a coin comes up heads consistently for any reason it is said to be 'biased," regardless of any consequences that the outcome may or may"not have. In this sense the Black/White score differential is ipso facto evidence of what may be called "outcome bias." African Americans are subject to outcome bias not only with respect to tests but along many dimensions of American life. They have the short end of nearly every stick: average income, representation in high-level occupations, health and health care, death rate, confrontations with the legal system, and so on. With this situation in mind, some critics regard the test score differential as just another example of a pervasive outcome bias that characterizes our society as a whole (Jackson, 1975; Mercer, 1984). Although there is a sense in which they are right, this critique ignores the particular social purpose that tests are designed to serve.
From an educational point of view, the chief function of mental tests is as predictors (Section 2). Intelligence tests predict school performance fairly well, at least in American schools as they are now constituted. Similarly, achievement tests are fairly good predictors of performance in college and postgraduate settings. Considered in this light, the relevant question is whether the tests have a "predictive bias" against Blacks, Such a bias would exist if African-American performance on the criterion variables (school achievement, college GPA, etc.) were systematically higher than the same subjects' test scores would predict. This is not the case. The actual regression lines (which show the mean criterion performance for individuals who got various scores on the predictor) for Blacks do not lie above those for Whites; there is even a slight tendency in the other direction (Jensen, 1980; Reynolds &:Brown, 1984). Considered as predictors of future performance, the tests do not seem to be biased against African Americans.
Characteristics of Tests. It has been suggested that various aspects of the way tests are formulated and administered may put African Americans at an disadvantage. The language of testing is a standard form of English with which some Blacks may not be familiar; specific vocabulary items are often unfamiliar to Black children; the tests are often given by White examiners rather than by more familiar Black teachers; African Americans may not be motivated to work hard on tests that so clearly reflect White values; the time demands of some tests may be alien to Black culture. (Similar suggestions have been made in connection with the test performance of Hispanic Americans, e.g., Rodriguez, 1992.) Many of these suggestions are plausible, and such mechanisms may play a role in particular cases. Controlled studies have shown, however, that none of them contributes substantially to the Black/White differential under discussion here (Jensen, 1980; Reynolds 82 Brown, 1984; for a different view see Helms, 1992). Moreover, efforts to devise reliable and valid tests that would minimize disadvantages of this kind have been unsuccessful.
So this APA report magically makes critical sources disappear? Shouldn't we include all sources? Given that the sources disagree shouldn't we find a neutral way of presenting this issue? Have you considered the possibility IQ tests were designed for the purpose of perpetuating racism/classism/IQ-ism? The article should note that critics argue IQ testing is fundamentally biased and unscientific. The sources I cited above are much more recent that most of the citations in this apparently ancient APA report. zen master T 00:50, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
ZM, have you considered that these critics are not reputable and thus they are not taken serious by scholars? The links you offered include two anonymous articles and a paper written by a school superintendent. At least Bjørn Lomborg and Michael Behe have PhDs. What are the odds that those papers were peer reviewed? Ever published anywhere but online? Simply made up? If I used your criteria for judging whether a scientific topic were disputed, I would have to state that the quantum mechanics, evolution, and the germ theory of disease were disputed. --Rikurzhen 01:17, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
I would suggest he visits christianity and islam and changes heaven to 'the highly disputed phenomenon of afterlive', the virgin maria to 'the technically impossible virgin maria', and mohammed to 'a slightly schizophrenic guy who is asumed to have heard voices'. Feel free to keep me informed when you've cleansed these fundamentally biased and unscientific articles. --Scandum 02:03, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
None of the other controversial articles you cite utilize a false dichotomy and aren't alleged to be "scientific" research as race and intelligence is... zen master T 02:57, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
Maybe it's a better idea if you introduce your fascinating ideas regarding intelligence in the IQ article first. If you get your fellow editors there to change 'IQ scores' to 'IQ test results' the logical next step would be to implement the change in related articles, not the other way around. --Scandum 09:51, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

ZM... did you even read those web pages you linked? i just skimmed them: the first and second seem to be complaining only about outcome bias (as the APA text I pasted above calls it), and the third merely quotes some report which claims there is bias. this is why we need to rely on the scholarly/peer-reviewed sources and the consensus statements when possible. moreover, the methods of determining test bias are not something that is subject to improving experimental techniques with time. some of the IQ tests used today were invented in the 1930s. it was a simple matter to test for bias, and unless the tests have become biased since the 80s and 90s, they are still not biased. --Rikurzhen 05:27, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Your interpretation of the above critical sources is inaccurate. Why do you keep referring to the APA report? Please address any issues you have with fundamentally critical sources directly. Are you saying we should rely on "scholarly/peer-reviewed sources" to the exclusion of all other critical sources? That is not NPOV. Please note that the critical sources above are actually scholarly and wikipedia has no peer reviewed exclusivity requirement. Wikipedia's standard is pretty much "cited". Anyway, the issue in this section here is "score" vs "result", the word "score" errantly implies some sort of worthiness or value about the test and can have the effect of negatively influencing the test taker that receives a low test result. It's very suspicious the way the intro uses the word "score" to subtly hint that those that receive a low test result are somehow unworthy. zen master T 07:22, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
Well this discussion is now clearly just a waste of time. --Rikurzhen 07:56, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
Advanced befuddlement and misinformation tactics, nice algorithmic propaganda perfection Rikurzhen. You have almost errantly portrayed a discussion on the exclusion of critical sources as a "waste of time". The fact that you never debate at the core "what is the issue level" gives your misdirection tactics away. For those playing the wikipedia game at home: the issue is the non neutral and unscientific presentation of this article and subject. zen master T 08:28, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
I got the feeling we were back at this point again. Suffice it to say that just about every WP policy forbids the kind if changes you want to make. --Rikurzhen 14:49, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
Huh? "score" violates various wikipedia neutrality policies, it errantly implies test merit which is disputed. The quality of IQ tests have not been established to a sufficient degree within the scientific community. "Result" is the best (most neutral) way of describing controversial data. zen master T 15:32, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

A google test of "IQ scores" (300,000) has 15 times the number of hits as "IQ results" (20,000). In order for there to be significant dispute within the scientific community, there needs to be a visible amount of reputable scholars in that field who dispute the mainstream opinion. Sources need to have greater scientific credibility than merely being anonymous or unpublished papers that sound scholarly.

Anybody who doubts the predictive ability of IQ tests might find it interesting to look at the kinds of questions used on IQ tests and consider if it's really a credible argument that there is no difference in performance between someone who can and someone who can't answer those questions. See, for example, web.tickle.com's online IQ test, though keep in mind that online tests give very inaccurate results.[4]--Nectar T 04:08, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

The proper criteria here isn't notability level, it is which word gives the more neutral presentation. I dare say NPOV trumps notability. How plausible is it that some average joe non politically motivated random researcher would want people to accept that there should be "practical consequences for racial and group based differences in intelligence"? [5] The only answer I can come up with is these "researchers" want to induce racism in others so as to manufacture a society based on "IQ" classism. Though maybe they've been eating their own dog food for so long they've turned into dogs perhaps as well. Just because they call their test an "intelligence quotient" test doesn't mean it accurately judges anything, they seem to be trying to trick people into accepting their literal words as the truth unquestioningly. The word "score" has the same problem, it has the psychological effect of creating a superiority or inferiority complex in people based solely on a high or low result on a test they designed... zen master T 06:21, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Changing the standard terminology used in scientific fields under discussion goes beyond description (an encyclopedia's goal) into activism (the goal of some other forms of writing). Most of us probably feel an absence of hereditary advantages and disadvantages would be ideal, but that idealism shouldn't bear on science.--Nectar T 07:40, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Given that the fields themselves are heavily and fundamentally disputed we should not simply accept and regurgitate their nomenclature, especially considering their words seem to have been designed to trick people and are obviously not neutral. You've put the cart before the horse, nowhere has it been established there are any "hereditary advantages". A "scientist" would not utilize a racism inducing dichotomy to present even their pet subject nor unscientifically imply using tricky language their test has merit when that has not been established. In fact, the article's use of the suggestive word "score" enhances the false dichotomy. How do you know nutrition isn't 100% the cause of the disparity if you only ever frame the issue around "race"? Why isn't nutrition as the cause ever described in terms of nutrition? How the issue is described is primarily how the mind will think about it which gives undue weight to "race" as the cause; this seems to me to be someone's plan. Data plotted on a "race vs intelligence" scale is one among many possible data correlations from the same test results data. Nutrition vs intelligence plots show similar disparities, which pretty much proves minority "races" generally have lower nutrition. zen master T 16:20, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
RE:"nowhere has it been established there are any "hereditary advantages". Zen-master, the heritability of IQ and the practical significance of IQ cannot be disputed in that way, and you should really be familiar with that by now. Your claims have already been discussed comprehensively by editors on both sides of the issue.--Nectar T 23:51, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Why can't it be disputed in this way? If nutrition is the cause of the disparity then that proves access to nutrition is inherited, but in the same way that money is inherited. "Discussed" is indeed the operative word, my challenge is still open for anyone to explain the extremely biasing and unscientific method of presentation this article and subject matter utilize. zen master T 06:31, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Comment

  1. I don't care either way. To me, result seems much more definite than score, so I fear Zen is going to achieve the opposite of what he tries to do. My dictionary has: "result [...] 4. a list pf scores [...]". I fear the semantic details of this issue are beyond my grasp of the English language. (And I still detest polls on Wikipedia) Arbor 19:00, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
The notion that the result of an IQ test might be something other than a score doesn't make sense to me, but likewise the change would be harmless ... if not for the basis that motivates it. --Rikurzhen 14:58, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
The issue is not the definiteness of the word, the issue is neutral presentation. "Score" errantly implies merit to something that has not been sufficiently scientifically established as having merit or meaning anything. "Result" is a much more neutral way of describing controversial data. zen master T 15:42, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Bias in tests Continued

What your ignoring is that the test are statistically biased. Yes the tests are correlated with academic success for both whites and minorites, but they are not predictive of actual mental functioning. Flynn points to an all Black town in Georgia where the average IQ is 63.5, that would have the town classified as retarded, yet the town functions as a normal everyday town.

Even within the dominant culture the tests are not predictive of success, as Flynn points out Asians should score over 120 points based on their actual socio-economic status/success, yet asians only score slightly better than whites. The tests are culturally biased and the only people who refuse to admit this are psychometrists working within the tradition of IQ. The issue of cultural bias definitely needs to be pointed out and discussed.Anon

I think differences in IQ between groups can be best explained with familiarity with the culture, customs and language of the test makers. I took an aboriginal IQ test, a test involving IQ like puzzles but refrencing knowledge of Aboriginal Culture and performed abysmally.

Okay folk. These references can be treated as top standards for conclusions in the field. There are others, but these two are available freely online. This is a complicated topic and what may seem prima facie like evidence for one conclusion can turn out to be easily explained by another piece of data. That's why we have to rely on published conclusions, and the more authors on them the better we can trust the results:

--Rikurzhen 17:20, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

^^Same old stuff. More attempts to shut down debate and censor the opposition by using appeals to authority. Anon
Lovely prose, but appeal to authority is the only basis for writing an WP encyclopedia article within the confines of WP:NPOV, WP:NOR and WP:V. WP is NOT a debating forum -- it's an encyclopedia. --Rikurzhen 19:20, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
The talk page is the debate forum, well, it is suppose to be. zen master T 19:00, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
The talk page is not a debate forum. The talk page is a place to discuss edits to the article. --Ryan Delaney talk 22:47, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
The talk page is for honestly debating controversial subjects, not for practicing disinformation tactics and censorship. zen master T 02:31, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Whom are you accusing of doing this? --Ryan Delaney talk 11:10, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Primarily Rikurzhen and buddies as they have repeatedly and systematically downplayed to the point of oblivion all fundamentally critical sources. zen master T 16:23, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

For some perspective, I just flipped through The Handbook of Intelligence, which is a textbook/encyclopedia/scholarly reference book on intelligence written by dozens of authors and edited by Robert Sternberg. On the issue of test bias, the text has a lot to mention historically, but when it comes down to the final answer they quote the WSJ mainstream statement and then the APA report and then Jensen's book Bias in mental testing. Having covered bias within societies, they move on to the possibility of bias between societies, such as using U.S. IQ tests in other countries. ... The point is that you can't have a debate on the talk page about how to present something in a WP article when the published expert consensus statements, textbooks, and academic monographs all say the same thing. --Rikurzhen 03:21, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

There is no "final answer" until controversy and dispute is ended, it remains. What you call "consensus statements" are not consensus in the wikipedia sense, on wikipedia we (usually) signify all points that are in dispute. Just because a handful of researchers that are perhaps tainted with the possibility of scientific racism got together and issued a "consensus statement" doesn't mean that is in anyway binding here, especially considering there exists numerous fundamental criticisms of the area of research and its apparently racism inducing methodologies. One group's "consensus statement" means nothing when a myriad of other groups dispute their conclusions and methodologies. Where was it even established these folks really did succeed in objectively comming up with an accurate and unbiased "Handbook of Intelligence" anyway? Just because their book is titled conclusively means nothing, in fact, it is further evidence of their unscientific methogologies. The only conclusion I can come up that explains this exponentially biasing area of research is some people want racism and IQ based classism to exist in the world for some political reason. Could just be the standard divide and conquer technique taken to an incomprehensibly evil and vast degree. zen master T 03:34, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
And maybe other scientists are christians with zipcodes straight out of the core of the bible belt with strong desires to prove that god created all men equal. I think, no I demand, this theory I just came up with gets equal footage in the article. Some people want everyone equal for religious reasons, you know, divide and convert! --Scandum 08:52, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Zen, two points. 1. As you say, the existence of a consensus statement about Claim X proves nothing. I could produce a Creationist Tract and get it signed by 100 researchers with Ph.D.s by tomorrow and claim this is "Mainstream Science on Transubstantiation". It proves, as you say, nothing. What is crucial is the absence of any claim to the contrary. The lack of a consensus statement that in any significant way goes against the WSJ or APA statements is the interesting data point. 2. Don't speculate about people's motivations. (It's a rule at WP. It's there for a reason. Follow it.) But to put it around: My neighbour (an MD) does research in the genetics of a heritable diseases (some type of cancer). Do you think she does this because she wants to help insurance companies ask higher rates off certain populations? Or could there be some other reason? Arbor 12:57, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
You are mischaracterizing the issue again. This article does not reflect the fact that there exists numerous fundamental criticisms of the field as it utilizes a presumption inducing method of presentation, doing so is exponentially unscientific. Why do you want to trick people into mindlessly accepting the apparently racist or racism inducing dichotomoy that is "race and intelligence"? Someone engineered the "race and intelligence" dichotomy for a reason. zen master T 16:01, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Interdisciplinary field (continued)

Intelligence research seems to be by far the most accurate category for this research, and is more helpful to the reader than interdisciplinary field. Rikurzhen catalogued the different kinds of specialists that contribute to this field in the above section,Talk:Race_and_intelligence/Archive_17#labels. We discussed this very briefly in Archive_16#Interdisciplinary_field. If we're especially concerned about clarifying what intelligence research means, we could include a footnote along the lines of: researchers contributing to this area include psychologists, psychometricians, geneticists, and sociologists. Thoughts? --Nectar T 00:43, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Good plan. --Rikurzhen 03:16, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
This is not just intelligence research. It's "race" research, too. In fact, to reduce it to intelligence research is one of the fundamental problems in the conceptualization of this article. We need to remember all the disciplines that consider issues of race: anthropology, etc. In addition, there are disciplines like statistics, philosophy of science, neurology, etc. whose disciplines come into play. Just because intelligence researchers want to play up their role in this does not mean this is exclusively their purview. This is one of the more interdisciplinary fields of inquiry out there by nature of the overlap involved in race and intelligence. Jokestress 18:03, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
I repeat my concern that this is like saying "evolution shouldn't be reduced to biology", just because there are lots of other sciences that are concerned with evolution as well (computer science, theology, ...).To be more concrete. (1) The philosophy of science angle you can take up with pretty much every aspect of human inquiry. By that argument, every field is multi-disciplinary. Also, you should take up with Lulu, who has argued against using Lakatos' classification. (I think it's very appropriate. But it doesn't make the field multi-disciplinary.) (2) As an almost-statistician I can safely say that there is no statistics research involved. It's all first-year stuff. Pretty much every exact science uses such things. That doesn't make it multidisciplinary. (3) Neurology etc. is indeed part of "intelligence research", under which headline I would also group subfields of cognitive science, psychology, neurology, etc. (4) Anthropology is a indeed very important, originally the entire topic was a subfield of anthropology. I would like something like: ‘Race and intelligence is an area of anthropology and intelligence research...’ or something like that. That statement is correct and informative. Would I be correct in guessing that this would cover 90% of the published primary research literature? Arbor 16:26, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

entirely environmental

the entirely environmental hypothesis is certainly prominent despite lulu's claim to the contrary. for example, Nisbett (2005) argues "the evidence most relevant to the question indicates that the genetic contribution to the Black-White IQ gap is nil." --Rikurzhen 06:22, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I have to concur with Rikurzhen. First of all, the culture-only camp admits that the racial IQ differences are heritable. And they actually are arguing for the 0% genetic argument. Also, if you look at the results of Snyderman and Rothman (1987), you will see that the two major results of the poll were partially genetic and zero percent genetic. Dd2 06:30, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

The two major results were partly genetic and insufficient data. Jokestress 00:34, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
I counted the results and Dd2 is right. The low amount of people chosing genetic-only is also an indication that people are strongly biased toward cultural explanations. As has been pointed out as well, officially there is no such thing as a 'slightly genetic' camp. --Scandum 10:26, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Also, note that the APA statement says "It is sometimes suggested that the Black/ White differential in psychometric intelligence is partly due to genetic differences (Jensen, 1972). There is not much direct evidence on this point, but what little there is fails to support the genetic hypothesis." Dd2 19:56, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Cherry picking

I'm aware that a number of editors here are folks who work in "hereditarian reductionist" fields, and tend to read selectively. But this article really reads a lot like an advocacy essay for specific contended conclusion. We should try for "encyclopedia" rather than "tract" here, IMO.

An article I noted mentioned on Nectarflowed user page, interestingly, highlighted the selection bias in my mind. A very few very recent studies showing something very limited are repeatedly put forth as evidence of uniform consensus opinions for a much broaders conclusions. I don't really think it's bad faith so much as tunnel-vision that is involved... but there are certainly cases where it's pretty darn clear that some editors are being dissimulative in pretending they don't choose phrases to bias conclusions (even where those phrases are not in some strict and technical sense false).

Very recently, I tried to address the extremely biased section headings "culture-only" versus "partly genetic". Obviously, that's a very false dichotomy that sets up a straw man to tear down. No one mentioned or cited anywhere here has ever put forth an argument for 0% heritability of "intelligence" (which isn't at all the same thing as raising questions about IQ tests or racial classifiers, of course). It would be very novel to locate any source that propounded the "0% heritability" claim, probably original research. Of course, it's easier to knock down a straw man than it is a real, widely held, scientific position (Gould for example, even from his grave, is not so flimsy as the strawman that is set up).

More than this specific edit, I really implore a number of the very intelligent editors who are pushing the heritarian POV to please tone it down. WP:NPOV is here for a reason, and Cherry picking isn't the way to arrive at a good encyclopedia article, even if it is a sometimes effective way to "win" an argument. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 06:31, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Lulu, maybe you'd like to do some more reading on this subject outside of the material written for public consumption (i.e. Gould). For example, the external links section has a good selection of review papers. I think that's the only kind of response that's appropriate to your comment. --Rikurzhen 06:43, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
There only seems to be one "review" paper that is not written by the main hereditarian advocates, , i.e. Suziki and Aaronson. It says things like:
Even admitting the possibility of racially based differences in intelligence, there appears to be considerable research supporting environmental/cultural justification for race differences—enough at least to make one question a steadfast belief in a biological explanation.
Or this one locating the source of the misleading article headings:
[Rushton and Jenson's] report gives little mention to findings that point to the impact of environment and race (i.e., race as a social construction) on intellectual development or performance—what they term the culture-only perspective.
Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 07:00, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
First, are they not arguing for a ~0% genetic contribution to the IQ gap? Second, there were three envioronment only reviews accompanying the June 2005 issue of PPPL, which are found in the external links section. --Rikurzhen 07:05, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
We are not among the culture-only adherents as characterized by Rushton and Jensen. (Suzuki & Aaronson)
Neither are we (Everyone else in the world).
I don't care what name we call it Lulu, but you began this discussion by saying that the view that the genetic contribution to the IQ gap is ~0 was a straw man. First, we need to agree that this is a non-trivial POV. --Rikurzhen 07:16, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Reynolds (2000) suggest that we define the so called "culture-only" hypothesis as genetics <= 20%. Under that scheme, the hereditarian hypothesis might be something like 50 ± 30%. --Rikurzhen 07:52, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Not just a straw man, but a straw man term invented by Jensen and Rushton (and endorsed by none of their opponents). Well, depending on what you think that squiggle means for approximate. The prior section title excluded approximately zero, and insisted on exactly zero.
The survey referenced of percentages of experts who believe various opinions was very badly designed... bordering on a push poll. Certainly none of the prominent critics of Jensen and gang ever advanced the 0% heritable variation notion (certainly not, e.g. one of the main founders of mathematical population genetics). To advance that 0% notion would be to claim that every gene possibly related to intelligence is distributed in exactly the same proportion in every "racial" group—no one thinks that; at the least, genetic diseases with varying geographic frequencies can often affect IQ indirectly.
I thought my initial edit of calling the position "predominantly environmental" was pretty accurate here, my second try was trying to be a compromise. I wouldn't mind citing Reynolds to indicate that "predominantly" means genetics<20% (nor indicating the Jensen uses the misleading characterization "environment-only") for this type of "predominantly environmental" position. -Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 08:18, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
If you parse them carefully, I believe you will find that Suziki and Aaronson are trying to echo Flynn's argument that small environmental differences cause a feedback to have large phenotypic effects on IQ. In that scheme the gap is not caused by genetic differences.--Rikurzhen 07:35, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Reynolds (2000) suggest that we define the so called "culture-only" hypothesis as genetics <= 20%. Under that scheme, the hereditarian hypothesis might be something like 50 ± 30%. --Rikurzhen 07:52, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
I reckon, butterfly wings and typhoons, or something. --Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 08:18, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Lulu, everyone here does recognize that the more rigorous this article's NPOV, the more authoritative it will be, which is the end goal. If there are examples of subtly biasing language, that would be useful to discuss them specifically. The 0% genetic position, however, is the standard position in most fields (at least in public statements). The APA's report on the issue, for example, stated that genetics did not appear to be involved in the disparity. This is in line with other positions that are common, such as that IQ is "not meaningful [at all]" and that "race doesn't exist biologically,"[6] i.e. race is ~0% biological. I agree, though, that Reynold's less than 20% works better than what we have.--Nectar T 09:03, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Maybe we can take Lulu's incredulity over the fact that there are people who support the culture-only hypothesis as a welcome challenge to document that fact. It certainly isn't a straw man. (The genetics-only POV is a straw man.) Lulu, are you really saying that the idea that there should be a genetic component (however small) to the racial IQ-gap is widely accepted? In that case we can put it in the introduction. (Yeah, let's have a poll about it!) Here, for example, is the conclusion of the "Race" and intelligence article in Encyclopedia Britannica: " Experts thus argued that such tests are culture-bound—that is, they reflect and measure the cultural experiences and knowledge of those who take the tests and their levels of education and training. " Here is the Skeptic's dictionary: " If you want to find out why Asians are over-represented in California's universities while blacks and Hispanics are underrepresented, you will probably search in vain for a genetic answer. Those who are interested in such things would do better to look at family structure, ethnic traditions, and social conditions.". I am sure there are many more. Would be fun to compile them. Arbor 09:21, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
The 0% genetic difference argument when it comes to intelligence is so widely supported that it's almost laughable to say it isn't. I agree it's a strawman, but removing it would be POV and not reflect reality. Besides, we'll likely get lots of angry editors who state we're pushing the partly genetic POV because only a few "racist" researchers publicly state that the differences in IQ scores have a genetic basis. --Scandum 11:18, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
To use a caricature term invented by one of the main proponents of the opposite position is not anywhere close to NPOV. This is simply absurdly biased. There is absolutely no way this is remotely acceptable language to use in section titles. This isn't something for a vote/quick poll, since NPOV "wins" over a majority of editors on a page: it's not an option to decline NPOV on WP.
FWIW, the EB and Skeptics Dictionary quotes look reasonable engouh; strikingly, neither of them contains the slant that the Jensen strawman phrase does. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 17:12, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
I guess you missed by quote from above: Nisbett (2005) argues "the evidence most relevant to the question indicates that the genetic contribution to the Black-White IQ gap is nil." That straw man is flesh and blood. --Rikurzhen 18:07, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Range of systematic genetic positions: 0%; 0%→(a little bit); a lot

Okay, let's start clean with what we've just learned. I hope we agree that the ~0% (meaning statistically indistingusihable from zero) genetic hypothesis is not a straw man. We also seem to agree that claiming strong evidence for 0 instead of near 0 is really dumb. Reyonolds (2000) gives us a way out with this 20/80 genetic/environment deal. So it should be straightforward at this point to write something like: the environmental hypothesis claims that the genetic contribution to the IQ gap is zero or very small (<20%) and that ...blah blah. --Rikurzhen 17:33, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Are there more sources for this? The official viewpoint (especially in Europe) is culture-only, so it'd be odd if we'd claim otherwise. Researchers have gone to great lengths to exclude genetic alternatives. --Scandum 18:21, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Reynolds (2000), which was linked from the Suzuki & Aaronson (2005) review was the first and only time I'd seen the conceit that it might be slightly genetic. Otherwise, everyone says certainly not genetic, which has always sounded to me like certinaly 0% genetic. --Rikurzhen 18:26, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't read "certainly not genetic" as meaning 0%. I read it like "Cow farts are certainly not the cause of global warming". See below. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 20:07, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

(outdenting for readability) Hm... I am confident that most people grouped by R&J under the "environment only" label actually believe in a "environment much more important (though genes may have a wee effect)" kind of model. So I understand Lulu's viewpoint. I am also sure the general debate (and this article) would benefit vastly from using Reynold's classification (instead of Rushton–Jensen). The problem is that the "mostly culture" people don't say it like that. They consistently use rhetoric that is compatible with the "culture-only" label. And I can see no WP mechanism by which we could effectively re-label all these people as somebody who actually don't reject a tiny genetic influence. That would be a gross misrepresentation. So I am afraid Rikurzhen's idea doesn't work. I also begin to warm to Lulu's argument that "culture-only" is a problematic term—the "culture-only" camp doesn't quite use it (though there is textual evidence for it), or at least doesn't want to be labelled by it. I have no good solution to this (yet). Am I right in identifying two groups?

  1. Culture-only is certainly a model used in the public debate a lot. The mere idea that there should be any genetic differences, let alone genetic differences in measured intelligence between races is taboo.
  2. In the scientific debate I have the feeling that many "predominantly environmental" arguments accept the possibility of a genetic influence (however small), even though they claim there is insufficient evidence for such a conclusion.

Is this a fair description of two POVs that this article currently confuses? Both come to the same conclusion (namely, we should focus our attention on explaining the IQ gap in terms of environmental influences). Arbor 16:49, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm glad the Arbor has warmed to my point (even if I admittedly put things a bit starkly in rhetoric). I agree that some of the source in the "genetics not very important" camp get a little carried away in saying things like "nil" for their own rhetorical effect. But nonetheless, even when they get carried away, I haven't seen them get as carried away as to fit into the Jensen/Rushton caricature of them.
I think the middle way for the article is to label the "culture-oriented" or "predominantly envirnomental" inclinations as such (maybe "environment" more broadly than simply "culture" is better for the section title). Within that section, we could have a sentence or two that distinguishes the "ontological" from the "positivistic" meanings. That is:
  • Ontological: Races are factually identical in all gene distributions that have an effect upon IQ.
  • Positivistic: We know enough to know that the most relevant facts for explaining IQ distributions are environmental differences that emerge from the history of race.
It might be good to find some quotation making that sort of distinction, but I don't think it is entirely necessary to do so (I'll see if I can dig something out of a Lewontin book or the like).
Just to push another analogy to illustrate the point (the Newtonian/relativistic one is still good). The difference between ontologically zero, and "not important to talk about" is often politically loaded; even if statisticians sometimes narrowly say <5% is the same as zero in terms of confidence interfals (or whatever the details). Does anyone remember back in the 1980s when Reagan wanted to dismiss concern about industrial hydrocarbon emissions (and hence regulatory control) by mentioning bovine flatulence as a source. A lot of us would say "Cow farts are not causing global warming". But if pressed on the ontological point, of course we recognize that cows really do emit some methane. The difference between "not important" and "absolutely zero" gets political play. Moreover, if some anti-regulation ideologues start listing "cow farts" on every bullet chart of "sources of emission" (as they did), environmentalist would rightly object to the inclusion of an unimportant (but non-zero) factor among the actually important ones.
Well, likewise for the "predominantly environmental influences" IQ people. Of course they/we recognize that gene distributions exist in some logical sense. But to talk about "genetic determination" on every bullet list blurs the agenda of addressing actual social inequalities that affect IQ results of racial/ethnic/national groups. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 17:48, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
Sources are what we need right now. A friend pointed me to a 1980 book titled Race, IQ and Jensen which was written by Flynn before he discovered the Flynn effect. (And a year before Gould.) I'm told he acknowledges that there could be genetic differences and then argues the positivist/epistemological point that the data (he examines the twin study admixture stuff predominantly) points towards not genetics. Of course, this is 25 years old now, so it's approaching anachronistic (no MTRAS data for example and he probably doesn't realize the limitations of single locus genetic data), but it does coincide with Reynolds' description of what these researchers may privately believe. On that point, we can at least write that Reynolds (2000) claims that the contemporary debate is ... blah blah. About Lulu's suggestions of "x-oriented" I would argue that this is bordering on neologism. The easiest thing to do is to just title the sections environment and genetics. But also keep in mind this is supposed to be a summary section supported by a very large sub-article. --Rikurzhen 18:45, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm fine with the generic headings "environment" and "genetics". The parent heading should probably say something like "Theories of causation" or "Causal explanations". Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 19:21, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
I was going to make that change, but then I realized that "causal" might be esoteric. --Rikurzhen 19:35, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

A thought experiment on "exclusive explanation"

The Jensenite caricatures that have permeated this article are really quite bad. Most specifically, the strawman he sets up, and this article repeats in numerous places, that anyone disagreeing with him advocates "culture-only" causation.

First an analogy from a different field. I might, reasonably enough, say "Newtonian classical mechanics suffices to explain the orbit of Pluto". Someone might come along and twist my comment into the strawman: "Rejectors of relativity", and proceed in a tract about how LotLE rejects the existence of relativistic gravitational effects. But in fact, LotLE's claim is about the most fruitful line of explanation, not some ontological absolute as caricatured.

Second, let's do a Gedanken experiment on the "genetic determination > 0%" statement. First, we need to be clear that critics who say "IQ falsely ontologizes intelligences" do not doubt that it is a measurable feature of humans (at least at a point in time). Anything with a procedure and a scale is measurable. But this is entirely unrelated to the matter of "racial" differences in IQ, despite the tendency of many hereditarian editors to smash the orthogonal issues together.

Suppose that you have two populations with identical genetic distributions except for the prevalence of the gene for sickle hemoglobin. Let's also suppose that that these two populations are exposed to exactly equal distributions of environmental conditions. These are really stark simplifications of real life. Moreover, the sickle hemoglobin gene is not normally thought of as an "intelligence gene"—nonetheless, one typical symptom of sickle-cell disease is oxygen deprivation to the brain, which then can clearly affect intelligence. Of these two hypothetical populations, no one would sensibly claim that intelligence is 0% heritable, or at least we would not put it that way. Someone might state, accurately enough, that "the heritable mechanisms are not explanatorily important". There's a big gap between the ontological caricature and the rather positivistic explanatory statement.

Now clearly, even people who doubt the "reality" of race do not think that means that the groups empirically identified as "African-American" and "White" have no identifiable differences in gene frequencies. That's yet another strawman refusal to understand what is actually stated by critics of racial thinking. Instead, they believe that these differences are far less systematic, distant, and distinct than race proponents claim. And moreover, the race critics think that while any identifiable and distinct groups inevitably have differences in genetic distributions (though not necessarily any distinct individual genes that don't occur in both populations in some frequencies), the distinctions historically drawn on race do not "cut nature at her joints." That is, given any two populations, of course you'll find different genetic distributions; but that doesn't mean that the groups you pick are maximally or causally distinct in genetic distribution. Not everything measurable is explanatorily important.

So overall there are three criticisms of Jensenite thinking, all of them caricatured, but not critiqued, in this article (and by Jensen, etc):

  1. 'g' is not ontologically deep;
  2. Race is not ontologically deep;
  3. Hereditarian causation is not a good explanatory mechanism for IQ/race correlation;

It's easy to create strawmen that look just slightly like each of these points, but it is dishonest to put them in a WP article. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 18:23, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I think you mean g and not IQ in (1) (changed). Of course, this is a very old critique, and hasn't been seen much since g was found to correlate with many biological variables including the volume of specific regions of the brain. The race is not ontologically deep (2) is a non-starter, because there is no commitment to it one way or another beyond that populations labeled as different races are genetically non-identical (in addition to experiencing non-identical environments). I'm afraid I have no idea what you're referring to in (3). --Rikurzhen 19:42, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Well, the critique is as recent as Gould's update to Mismeasure of Man in, what 1994? But certainly more recent as well. (2) is much more germane than you say. Rushton and gang, whatever they might dissimulate, are absolutely committed to the ontological depth of race. Look at the sickle-cell analogy: yes the trait is very unequally distributed across populations, but no one states in some generic way that "African Americans are succeptible to sickle-cell anemia"... it's known very specifically now which gene is associated, and it's not a generic quality of African Americans. Think of how absurd it would be to have an article "Race and sickle-cell anemia".
Of course I don't think there's going to be some simple "low IQ gene" or "high IQ gene". But supposing there were: once found, we would stop talking about "race", and just talk about the specific gene. If race is not ontologically deep (and it's not), then whatever Jensenites do is just a sloppy cover for discussing the real underlying unknown gene. Of course, they have a political agenda that makes acknowledging the logical structure undesirable... they want to talk about race in much the same was Francis Galton did. The conclusions desired come before whatever "facts" are recruited to support the racialist analysis.
Gould wrote MMoM in 1981(?) and the 1994 update was only to append a final chapter.
Jensen has specifically rejected the "essentialist" position on race and his hypothesis is that group differences are identical in cause to individual differences. That's hardly a deep committment to race. He has claimed to be committed to a populationist view of race. Your description of sickle cell is conflating the essentialist view of race with a popluationist view. At a population level, African Americans are vastly more likely to have the disease than other populations (the disease causing allele is found in other popluations but not at such high frequencies that a large number of individuals get the dieases). Having sickle cell is no more a AA disease than low IQ is an AA trait, but statistically there is an association. --Rikurzhen 20:13, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
The aim of the Race and intelligence (Public controversy) article/section was the cover this material. --Rikurzhen 21:51, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Bad design of push polls

Have you seen this data? It's hard to call environment/culture only a straw man:

Group Entirely Environment Entirely Genetic Both Data Are Insufficient
Journalists 34% 1% 27% 38%
Editors 47% 2% 23% 28%
IQ Experts 17% 1% 53% 28%

the plurality of journalists and editors believed the IQ gap was entirely environmental.

but suffice it to say that I think the <=20% stipulation should resolve this problem. i would note that it was resolved by my reading papers and not by argument on the talk page. lets try to resolve all such disputes that way. --Rikurzhen 18:04, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, as I commented above, this is an amazingly poorly designed poll that prohibits respondents from giving meaningful or interesting answers. It's like having a poll on "In your opinion, how long has Jensen stopped beating his wife?"
There's no good way to answer the misleading question. The poll is designed to produce roughly the results it does: I'm entirely certain that all the "entirely environmental" voters thought "well, I think it is predominantly environmental, so this is kinda-sorta the closest option". On the other hand, the "both" answer is in a strictly technical sense a priori true; so some voters who would prefer a "predominantly environmental" option felt they had to vote for the technically correct option. Probably most of the "insufficient" and "no response" voters just chose those not because they really didn't have an opinion, but because the poll provided no way to express it. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 18:23, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
That's not even remotely descriptive of the papers I've seen written on this subject. See my discussion of Scandum above. Again, suffice it to say that reading paper rather than making bold but unsupported claims is going to resolve this. --Rikurzhen 18:33, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
If we're trying to understand the advantage culturists perceive in saying the genetic contribution is nil instead of small, it seems likely that it comes from the belief that any genetic difference in intelligence between races would conflict with fundamental social philosophies, such as absolute racial egalitarianism (note the "absolute" part; races aren't considered only "mostly" equal).--Nectar T 23:19, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

User:Slrubenstein makes a great comment at Rikurzhen's user page. In part:

But many times, their criticisms are of a whole other order -- challenging fundamental assumptions Jensen and others make. At this level, the controversy cannot be settled through experiments and statistical analysis, because some of the criticisms raise issues that cannot be tested experimentally...
I can't put words into Gould's mouth but I would bet he never responded to Rushton because virtually all of Gould's colleagues -- I mean, evolutionary biologists and anthropologists -- consider Rushton a crank, and it is clear from Rushton's writings that he does not understand basic points Gould has made, the most obvious one being about the misuse of the concept of heritability

If Rushton (and Jensen) fundamentally misuse the concept of heritability (and they do), how do you "experimentally" show that flaw? Not by reading yet another "review" written by Jensen and Rushton themselves; and not even by presenting yet another empirical study committing the same conceptual errors. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 18:56, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

None of the papers we've been discussing have been primary research papers. They've all been review papers. Trying not to stray from the discussion, I think you misunderstand that conversation. SLR was talking about Rushton's application of RK theory, not heritability. --Rikurzhen 19:39, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Hypothetical poll

Just as another thought experiment, this is something like what I would put as options in a poll of opinions on the causation of IQ/race correlation (and my "wild-ass guess" at "likely results"):

Group Entirely Environment Predominantly Environmental Significantly mixed (20% < H < 80%) Predominantly Genetic Entirely Genetic Data Are Insufficient
"Experts" 1% 45% 25% 10% 1% 18%

I could be entirely wrong about what the percentages would be. But my hunch is that if it were designed this way, a lot of the "insufficient" and "both" voters would choose better selected options. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 20:30, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

You're reading far too much into this 20% thing. A 20% within group heritability could, for example, show up as an DZ twin correlation of .1 and a MZ twin correlation of .2. I don't think you'd notice such correlations in anything but a large sample set. For the B-W gap, the average estimate is 15 points difference. 20% of that is 3 points, which is in the range of the measurement error for an individual IQ score. So the 20% POV is that the gap due to genetic differences is 0, 1, 2 or at most 3 points. When people responded to the S&R poll of as "entirely environmental", they would have already factored in a reasonable margin or error. Jensen's hypothesis is, as S&R point out, the modal belief among experts. --Rikurzhen 21:21, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm not trying to exaggerate the 20% threshold's importance. I just picked the example from Reynolds. But my point is that we have no idea what the modal belief is among experts based on one misdesigned poll. The poll that was actually done provided no means for respondents to answer in any way that was meaningful or informative; the hypothetical poll I suggest would actually let respondents distinguish their opinion. I am 100% certain that almost none of the respondents "factored in reasonable margin of error" into the meaning of "entirely environmental"... that's just not how humans think about poll questions.
An anecdote: I was once telephone polled (and didn't just hang up, as I do since then) by what turned out to be an alcohol company, or a consortium of them, or something. One of those consumer surveys, not as any kind of expert on anything. Anyway, the only point is that at a certain point they got to a question: "How often do you drink: (a) Never; (b) 1-2 drinks per day; (c) 3-4 drinks per day; ..." I'm approximating from memory. In fact, while I'm not a tea-tottler or recovering alcoholic, I drink quite a bit less than one drink a day. I told the surveyer this, and basically he was just pissed off that I couldn't answer in the provided categories. Well... the categories of the survey presented are even worse than those in the stupid consumer survey I was called about.
If the answers don't provide any means of distinguishing the actual range of opinion, any statement about median or modal responses is utterly meaningless. What was measured was the unrelated question: "How will psychologists respond to an impossible-to-answer survey on IQ and race?" Maybe it says something about poll response strategies, and about willingness to deliberately re-interpret the provided answers, but it certainly says nothing at all about the actual range of expert opinion. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 21:59, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
Surely you're not suggesting that we substitute our own opinions about Mark Snyderman and Stanley Rothman's published work (they were at Harvard at the time) for their own interpretations? --Rikurzhen 22:23, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
It certainly wasn't the first time (nor only the thousandth) someone employed by Harvard designed a survey or study badly. Is this supposed to be some sort of mystified reverence for that school down the road from me? Heck, whoever wrote the stupid consumer survey I mention probably studied at Harvard too :-). But obviously, no, I'm not proposing any original research be published on WP either. S & R's survey really doesn't tell us any information because of it's bad design; the fact it was conducted is verifiable, of course, but the information content in it is nil (ontologically, not just positivisticly, that is [*wink*]). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 07:47, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Your evaluation of this survey doesn't seem to be taking into account that the vast majority of statements on this topic do support an "entirely environmental" explanation. The survey doesn't assert that "culture only" is being used as an ontological statement any more than those who say "entirely environmental" or "nil" assert that they're making ontological statements. At the very least, the survey tells us the majority of respondents believe genetics are involved to some degree, which is a revelation. Keep in mind a large proportion of scholars (but not biologists) prominently deny that race is a useful biological concept.--Nectar T 09:01, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
What the survey tells us is that a large number (not a majority though) of respondents, given a Hobson's choice, decided the "both" option was the least bad of those presented. I'm quite confident that a lot of "insufficient data" voters also didn't really believe the data was insufficient, but simply that that was the least noxious way out of completing the survey. Actually, the "no response" is probably the same, in a different way.
I think editors here have picked up what my take on the overall topic is. If, for example, I had been in the survey'd population, I really have no idea how I might have answered. Not because I'm unclear of my own opinion (in great specificity), but because it's not anywhere in the list of choices. I don't think the data is insufficient. And given my comments elsewhere, I obviously don't believe in that even arbitrarily constructed populations are identical in gene distribution, I couldn't accurately answer "environment only". So even as a "hard-line anti-hereditarian", in greatest honesty I'd have to answer "both" (which is technically true of my opinion). But the implicational meaning of "both" is something like the Reynold's >20% idea (it definitely doesn't include us "one-percenters" in insinuation). I suppose: "Learn to design a g-d d--n survey!" would probably be recorded as "no response" (which wouldn't be quite accurate either, on the surveyers part).
A little common sense tells us that a survey to which many editors here could give no honest answer isn't such a good one. And to claim it "demonstrates" anything, in whatever direction, is misleading. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 09:27, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
To put it simply, the survey showed a large number of experts reject the "nil" argument advanced by hard-liners such as Nisbett. This is useful, as outside of the field, it's generally assumed that races can't vary genetically in such traits. Re "not a majority of respondents": The percentage of respondents favouring the both response was 45%, which becomes 53% after excluding non-respondents and those who responded "not qualified." Yes, this survey question was poorly designed.--Nectar T 10:23, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Candidate for trimming

We've been discussing the "Culture/genetic explanation" section a bit. In part, some editors have mentioned that that discussion should not get too long, but rather shunt some of it to the subarticle. In principle I agree, but there's not all that many words in the section now. Moreover, the style of causal explanation really is the central focus of discussions around the topic.

IMO, a better opportunity for trimming the main article is in the section "Significance of group IQ differences" which refers to the child article Practical importance of IQ. That section is longer currently than the "Culture/genetic" one, and is also less central the the controversies that prompt this article (and its topic) in the first place. But the reference currently just points to IQ, rather than an independent article. At a quick glance, most of the charts in the section seem to be replicated in the IQ article. I'd recommend trying to get the section down to about half its current length; but make sure, of course, that all the good language and concepts are covered in the child article.

Any objection in principle to me trying to do this? Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 19:45, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

There are two distinct but related concepts being entertained: (1) the practical importance at an individual level and (2) the practical importance of group differences. The IQ article should focus on (1) and this article should focus on (2). --Rikurzhen 19:52, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
OK, I think that is mostly agreement in principle. Much of what is in this section now are things along the lines of "what jobs can someone with IQ X do?" For the most part, that's the individual level. I'm thinking that creating an actual article Practical importance of IQ (to individuals) is worthwhile; but I would then want to redirect readers of IQ there for part of the content currently covered in IQ. Of course, I have not edited IQ, so I suspect there's a whole new tarpit in trying to do so. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 20:01, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

the distinction is that individuals obviously differ in many factors, but groups could differ on average in just one factor. for example, group differences in school achievement or income seem to be almost entirely due to IQ differences, whereas IQ accounts for only like 20% of individual differences in income but more than half of individual differences in school performance. --Rikurzhen 21:16, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

culture only and partly genetic

i've been skimming lots of papers to see what they say about these positions. i see a general trend from all angles, including the Rushton and Jensen (2005) paper, that indicates that when people say entirely environmental or culture only they append effectively or essentially before it. i see this as meaning that Reynolds (2000) is just putting a different spin on the same set of facts as Rushton & Jensen, Nisbett, and others. It changes nothing about how people are siding on the interpretation of data sets or the value of different kinds of evidence. So... if it can be accommodated easily there's no reason not to embrace this extra precision, but we don't need to go to extremes to emphasize differences in their phrases because they are of little real consequence. --Rikurzhen 22:45, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

It's hard to know how to handle terminology here. Obviously anyone arguing against "purely" genetic or "purely" environmental influence is fighting a strawman (counterexamples: malnutrition and Down's syndrome), but there seem to be some people who actually think like that. The problem is that the two aren't actually separable - it doesn't ever make sense to say something like "70% environmental and 30% genetic" without massive qualifications, because a small change in cultural or environmental background, or in the presence or regulation of one or two genes, could easily affect the "other" variable. Norms of reaction and all that. (Consider an allele which produces higher intelligence/height/whatever, but only in people who are malnourished or on low protein diets; it has the reverse effect on people on high protein diets.) -- Danny Yee 22:09, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

This reminds me of seeing an interview of a Swedish Down Syndrome child on British TV. She was notable for having the equivalent of 5 GCSEs (about 50% of UK students manage to get 5 GCSES). How would you calculate nature and nurture in such a case? I believe Swedish Down Syndrome children are educated together with the rest of the school population. If she were not Swedish but Somalian, what would be her educational attainment? I agree that you can't assign percentages, because you don't know the effect of each individuals environment. The Race and IQ debate has been led into this cul-de-sac by proponents of both extremes. - Xed 23:53, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
How would you calculate nature and nurture in such a case? One can never determine the relative contribution of genetic and environmental factors to an individual's phenotype (for non-trival cases). Heritability is a property of a population. --Rikurzhen 00:36, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
But individuals are part of populations... Going back to the genetics, what happens with an allele that produces higher intelligence in people fed a low-protein diet, but lower intelligence in people fed a high protein diet? -- Danny Yee 04:28, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
For any such hypothetical the only possible answer is -- it depends. But we do have realitvely good data that says that the variation in environments found in middle class developed nations has little impact on IQ. Predominately, the reason for this is that people shape their environments, not vice versa. --Rikurzhen 06:11, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
My whole point is that there is no "vice versa" - people create their environments and are created by those same environments, *and those processes in no way exclude one another* (indeed they can often be synergistic). -- Danny Yee 06:29, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure I get the relevance of your point. Certainly active genotype-environment correlation is a conclusion of rather than a problem for the kind of behavior genetic research that's been done on IQ. --Rikurzhen 06:34, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Using "partly-genetic" everywhere seems wrong to me - it's an implicit claim that all that's needed is to refute the "zero-genetic" strawman. Can we use something like "significantly genetic", which seems closer to what is actually being claimed in most cases? -- Danny Yee 04:32, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Please yes! I practically had to sweat blood to get other editors to allow a change to the strawman title "culture-only" to something slightly less biased (read through this talk page). But removing the POV from this page is something that seems to take massive effort, and only happens about five words at a time (each such clause dozens of paragraphs of discussion before the hard-hereditarians allow a more neutral phrasing). The neutral opposition, of course, would be "predominantly cultural" vs. "largely genetic"... but I just gave up on the Herculean effort of acheiving that neutrality. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 05:20, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
Lulu, I think you get me wrong. I would love to make a gentleman's agreement that we simply say that the two positions that reasonable people hold are "predominantly cultural" vs. "largely genetic". But that's simply not accurate AFAIK, in that it ignores the experts whose writings are driving the plurality of non-experts to believe that the gap is entirely environmental. There's also the problem that the genetic position is more like "significantly genetic" rather than predominately genetic. --Rikurzhen 06:11, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
The terms are used only if you limit the meaning of "experts" to Rushton, Jensen, and a couple other supporters of theirs who use the same strawmen rather than directly engage in authentic discussion. I don't much care about whether the genetic position is called "significantly" or "largely", but saying just "partly" is definitely misrepresenting why people disagree. As I've observed before on this talk page, if Jensen were publishing papers that said "1% of IQ differences between races in the USA is due to different gene frequencies" no one would bother criticizing him from a "culturalist" perspective (even if you thought it was 0.1% or 0%, so what?). But by claiming the misleading term "partly-genetic" for Jensenites, it suggests that they "win" if this 1% heritable difference applies to the populations. I'm not sure if it was you who added the Reynolds <20% comment to the "cultural explanations" section, but I think that sentence is really excellent in clarifying the real nature of the discussion. Actually, I think most "predominantly environmental" folks would say something quite a bit less than 20%, but at least it points out that culturalists are not caricatures who categorically deny population-sensitive allele frequencies. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 06:35, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

What is science?

I'm afraid you're seeing this the way you wish it were and not as it is. For a scientist, 1% and 0% genetic and trivially different. If the genetic contribution to the IQ gap is 1% then Nisbett rather than Jensen is right. I haven't seen Jensen's 1969 paper, so I don't know whether he makes a guess at the possible extent to which genetic differences could be the cause. However, it seems perfeclty clear from every author I've read on this subject that there are two views and little doubt about distinguishing them. The reason for this is that the data rather than the definitions is what drives (or should drive) a scientific debate. Jensen et al see evidence for a non-trivial/signifcant/substantial genetic contribution to the IQ gap (with a talking-point suggestion of 50/50). Nisbett et al see no such evidence and/or see evidence against that position. --Rikurzhen 06:52, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

I think this gets at something important. Rikurzhen claims that data rather than the definitions is what drives (or should drive) a scientific debate. That seems exactly wrong to me. Not, of course, that data is not important. But you can never design study without already starting with a set of conceptual assumptions that underly the methodology itself. Data is never "raw", but is always informed by theory... yeah, it can become anomolous (ala Kuhn) and drive a paradigm shift; but theory is always broad enough to accomodate a wide range of discordant data. In fact, if Jensen and Rushton didn't endorse this very point then they wouldn't be trying to recruit Lakatos in their defense. That's a way of claiming "meta-theoretical" support for their position, which is at least two steps removed from the data itself.
Or similarly, the S&R survey tells us absolutely nothing because of its design flaws. These flaws are not flaws in their addition, multiplication, or confidence tests; the flaws are purely conceptual. But data collected using a flawed theory neither demonstrates nor refutes anything. And adding more data of zero value brings the total value to... well, zero.
I'm not trying to be overly specific here about what we must or must not conclude. But take it from someone who's been around that philosophy of science block that data really is not, in the first place, what drives scientific debate. It's a nice story for junior-high Popperians, but even Popperians stop thinking that once they get into college. :-) Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 02:54, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
No. The question of what fraction of the IQ gap is caused by genetic differences is not at the level of conceptual differences. The question is quite specific and well defined -- there is agreement about what causes are worth considering (except maybe genetic causes). It's the interpretation of the available data that makes the differences as to what conclusion the various researchers make. The question allows for any answer between 0 and 1. The labels partly genetic and culture only are merely convenient ways to describe two alternative conclusions. --Rikurzhen 03:13, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Wow! It's hard to imagine a more conceptually entangled question that the one you list. Maybe someday we'll have a drug or gene treatment to treat the ravages of positivism :-). Until then, only the talking cure is available.
Let's post a similar question that is exactly equally "factual": What fraction of the gap in incarceration rates is caused by genetic differences? In fact, this question is exactly as measurable as is the IQ one, in pretty much the same manner. And it will almost certainly turn out that the heritable component of group differences in "incarceration rate" is quite a bit higher than it is for IQ. While Jensenites would quickly spin some conceptual framework about "criminality genes" or some such foolishness, the true explanation is far more straightforward. Skin color is highly heritable, and we live (in the USA) is a society that locks up people with darker skin more often and for longer (even, or especially, after controlling for actual criminal acts committed). Moreover, proneness to incarceration is much more consistent over a lifetime than is 'g'.
I know it's fun to pretend you're talking about "facts" when you talk about theory. I once wrote a paper arguing for a form of that, when I was a wee lad. But just asking a question that has a "procedure" attached to it doesn't make it fly free of its theoretical baggage. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 03:34, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Lulu: “But take it from someone who's been around that philosophy of science block that data really is not, in the first place, what drives scientific debate.” Well, the rejoinder to that statement is: “Philosophy of science is not, in the first place, what drives scientific debate.” Trust us who are actually in the trenches. Data is important. Scientists don't much care for semantics, or ontology, or "theoretical baggage". A Danish psychologist said something like "It really isn't important what intelligence means. What is important is that we can measure it", and I think that sums up the science POV pretty well. I understand you (and Jokestress) ambition to bring some Philosophy of Science POV into this, it is no different than Rik's motivation for being involved in this, or my own. But at least keep in mind that the preference of concepts over data espoused by the humanities is only a POV. (It's a relevant point, and it certainly deserves to be included on this page.) Arbor 08:59, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Of course philosophy of science is not what drives scientific debate: phil sci is the study of the question "what drives scientific debate?". I happen to have done a doctorate in... well, I won't overstate matters, phil sci is an AOC not my AOS.
Are you a Ph.D. scientist, Arbor? FWIW, if so, you'll be the first one I've met who actually believed that "data is what drives scientific debate". Or are you just going on hearsay about scientists not "caring for semantics, ontology, theoretical baggage"? (I know there's a comforting fable one tells about that, kinda like one tells children about the tooth fairy; I've just never met a scientist who entirely believed that fable... Rushton/Jensen, for example, disclaim it in their reference to Lakatos). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 17:27, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Several of the editors on this article are PhD scientists or grad students. I guess you've been hanging out with the wrong scientists. The point of this thread was that the labels partly genetic and culture only are descriptive of a debate, not the debate itself. A genetics-cause gap of only a few points would be a victory for culture-only and a gap of 7, 8 or more points is a victory for partly genetic. If this were a true scientific debate, rather than just obfuscationism, which at least some researchers working on it are treating it as (e.g. Nisbett and Flynn seem top notch), then it is the interpretation of data that should make the difference in the outcome. In fact, there is an experimental design that can answer the question more or less convincingly: mapping by admixture linkage disequalibium. It could also answer the race-criminality question. According to Jensen, the difference between him and Flynn is how they weight the evidence. I expect Flynn would say the same. --Rikurzhen 18:19, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't mean to be too brusque here, Rikurzhen, but the ontological gap between having a Ph.D. and merely studying for one is much larger than that between attending undergrad school and attending grad school. Way back when I was a wee lad in grad school, I also thought it was really something to talk with all these smart people, go to conferences, and publish papers. If you still believe in a reductive facticity after they hand you a diploma, I'll give that a whole lot more weight. I'll make you a gentleman's wager (say, $1) that you'll have changed your mind on methodology by the time people call you "Dr.".
FWIW, I think I've been hanging out with the right scientists. YMMV. And obviously, even those scientists (i.e. Jensen) whom you like, also don't believe the "raw fact" thing (or why do the Lakatos dance?).

Zen-master banned

I am banning Zen-master from editing this article for two weeks for disruptive editing. He may still edit the talk page, but if he is disruptive here I will have to extend the ban. If he edits Race and intelligence at any point during the next 14 days, any administrator should block him for up to 48 hours. See Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Zen-master and Wikipedia:Probation for more information. --Ryan Delaney talk 00:48, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

S&R paper

you can read the S&R (1987) paper by joining the yahoo group i created [7] to share copyrighted papers for this page. parts of the book are in google print and you can buy a used copy from amazon for ~$13. --Rikurzhen 01:06, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

My concern in taking out the description of S&R's papers were not with its flaws in design, though I'm certain the book doesn't make those go away (the experts surveyed didn't read a whole book "clarifying" what the falsely restrained answers meant). The point was that we presented one of the options as "partly genetic", and editors insist on labelling the Jensen discussion with the same phrase... thereby in WP it insinuates that those are the percentages endorsing Jensen. As I've argued, it certainly isn't that many who support Jensen's interpretation of "partly genetic" (meaning, really, "largely genetic"). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 04:06, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
My reading of the paper/book is that that's exactly what their results are. On page 258 of the book they seem to be saying that most experts agree with Jensen and Herrnstein. --Rikurzhen 07:20, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Nah, Lulu, "partly genetic" really isn't the same as "largely genetic". Herrnstein and Murray are explicity agnostic about whether the contribution is .1 or .9, and for good reasons. If genes account of .2 in the US population (or .02 or .00002) then in a utopian society that significance would be 1. In other words, the goal of egalitarianism would be to raise the "genetic contribution" to 100%, or (even more paradoxically) the degree of egalitarianism in a society is proportional to the size of the "genetic contribution". That's a central point of H&M's argument: to argue against egalitarianism, 0.1 is all you need (I don't agree with H&M's political conclusions, being at the far left end of the political spectrum myself. I don't endorse their conclusion at all. They put focus on the size of the genetic contribution instead of the size of the IQ gap.) In effect, Lulu's classification gives no way to classify H&M's position. Their views certainly aren't concordant with what Lulu wants to label "0<=x<0.2". They are in "0<x<1", and explicitly so (I think I remember Murray saying they are "purposefully agnostic" about the size of the contribution, or something like that). We cannot (on WP) claim that "H&R really assume x>.2, even though they say the opposite", no more than we can say "people really assume x<.2 even though they say x=0". H&M explicitly claim that they don't care (even though I think they lie) and many others explicitly reject the idea that genes could have any contribution (even though I think they lie). Both groups get lots of rhetorical mileage out of their claims. Arbor 09:42, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

(outdent) The point about the bad design of S&R's survey is really clear; I'm having trouble believing that any editors actually don't know why it's badly broken now. The supposed agnosticism of Hernstein and Murray are irrelevant to this point. Let's try again an analogy I made before. Here's a survey:

In your opinion, what is the relationship between bovine flatulence (BF) and global warming? (GW)
  1. BF has no effect on GW
  2. GW is partly caused by BF
  3. GW is entirely caused by BF
  4. Data are insufficient

This survey, exactly in parallel with the S&R design, presents a Hobson's choice. Technically, the "right" answer is (2): cows really do emit the greenhouse gas methane. This effect is very small, of little practical importance, but non-zero. The data are not insufficient, it is quite easy to quantify methane from cows (I can't off the top of my head, but I've seen the numbers that are easily agreed upon).

But once the LotLE study is done among climatologists and chemists, what will be the political spin on the result that "99% of climatologists say GW is partly caused by BF"? Actually, probably that wouldn't be the result: a lot of climatologists would decide to ignore the actual wording, and answer (1), which is "true-ish". Or some will answer (4) because it's a strategy to avoid the deceptive agreement with (2). And maybe a lot of them will respond: "Learn to design a g-d d--n survey!" (which will be recorded as "no response"). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 20:09, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Lulu, you're consistently excluding a key piece of data. Most culturists clearly support the entirely environmental position. For some scientists that means "nil," and for others it means "not an important explanation." Your argument is that those who mean "not an important explanation" don't interpret their own statements of "entirely environmental" or "not genetic" as ontological statements, but they do interpret "culture-only" as an ontological statement. This is far too hypothetical to be the basis of an extended debate on this page. It may be that every scientist who supports the "entirely environmental" position chose the "culture-only" response, meaning "genetics are not an important explanation."--Nectar T 21:35, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
This is really frustratingly dishonest. I'm talking about the poll that was done here, not something else. Presented with the poll, someone who believed "not an important explanation" has no answer available in the given choices. I believe that "not an important explanation" is a widely held position, probably even majority, but the poll is designed to deliberately exclude the possibility of giving that answer. Of course we can't prove my claim based on the fact a survey is bad, but we also can't make any statement about its contrary... the S&R survey design simply doesn't support any conclusion. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 22:42, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, we are both talking about the S&R poll. Scholars in the 'not an important explanation' camp make 'not genetic' statements routinely. You've argued they don't mean '100% not genetic' when they say it, but that on the questionaire they would interprete "culture only" (i.e. not genetic) as meaning '100%.'
Anyway, what the survey did at least show, is that a large number of experts reject the "nil" argument advanced by hard-liners such as Nisbett. You're argument is that many or most culturists aren't actually in the "nil" camp.--Nectar T 23:53, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
I am entirely confident that the "not an important explanation" folks split their answers between all the provided answers other than "genetic only" (including "no response"). I definitely don't think all of them, or even most of them, answered "culture only".
I guess that it's true that a large number of experts reject the "nil" argument. I'd place the number of such rejectors at 100%, in fact (well, maybe 99.9%). Most certainly I do not believe Nisbett believes the "nil" argument in a deep sense, despite his obviously rhetorical flourish to use that word informally. Had the poll been designed in the way I propose on this talk page (drop the 20% detail if that bothers you, a precise number is not important), the "entirely environment" votes would have been much less (I gave a hypothetical 1%, but actually I think it would be much less than that). Can we just call the stawman dead and move on to chasing away crows? Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 00:07, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
In any case, it doesn't matter if Lulu is correct or not. Even if we all agreed about his interpretation and critique of the S&R poll, we couldn't use that here unless we find a reference. As to the cow analogy, this is a good example of why analogies are not part of the scientist's toolbox outside of the humanities. "Exactly in parallel"? The idea that "there is a genetic differences between races (or sexes, for that matter) that accounts for differences in cognitive ability" is highly explosive. The idea that "cows fart" isn't. Cows' farts may be. Arbor 22:15, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
No, no, no. "Cows fart" is neutral. The "meme" that cow farts are important to global warming was spread dishonestly by the Reagan administration, and is politically loaded. Exactly the same as the race/IQ stuff: politically loaded, and not neutral.
Of course I'm not proposing that the article say "According to Lulu...". But it's also daft to pretend that anything published somewhere, no matter how self-evidently misdesigned, represents some neutral truth. Editors make judgements about relevance and quality when putting stuff into WP articles. Frankly, S&R don't come close to that standard (but I'm not going to take it back out, as long as we can have the APA counterbalance). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 22:42, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
As I said up above in response to Dd2, the top two answers in S&R are partly genetic and insufficient data. Among those who say insufficient data are probably a lot of people who question the validity of the entire line of inquiry and knowledge produced, in addition to those who would not hazard a guess based on existing information and definitions. Much of the data created relies on assumptions that many scientists do not consider scientifically rigorous or even intellectually honest. This false dichotomy of cultrue only vs. partially genetic is merely an attempt to dismiss the overarching issues of whether this can even be considered science. Jokestress 22:19, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Speculation is pointless*: the results of speculation cannot be included in the article and there is plenty of published commentary on this survey to justify its inclusion. The current text merely describes the results and leaves it to the reader to draw their own interpretation as each of us has, the many authors that have written about the poll have and as the researchers who conducted the poll did. However, if anyone cares to find some published commentary on this poll which addresses the various concerns about it, that too could be included.

  • why is speculation pointless? for example, because if we allowed even reasonable speculation, then we should surely have to write a great deal of this article about these two papers PMID 16151010 and PMID 16151009, which were published just in September with the promise of follow ups soon. We could speculate pages and pages of text about what these reports mean for this topic, but that would also be pointless and inappropriate WRT WP policy. --Rikurzhen 01:10, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Jokestress: "Among those who say insufficient data are probably a lot of people who question the validity of the entire line of inquiry and knowledge produced, in addition to those who would not hazard a guess based on existing information and definitions." Well. among those who way "insufficient data" are probably a lot of level-headed people who nevertheless think the idea that there should be strong genetic influences is highly plausible. (The argument being that Darwinism predicts cognitive differences between geographically isolated breeding populations, so the a priori assumption would favour the "genetics significant" position, but since our understanding of the history of genes for 'brain building" is still shaky, let me tick off "insufficient data" and wait for September 2005.) I myself have held that viewpoint for some years, and I currently hold it for sex differences in cognition. "Insufficient evidence". (But this is just speculation and thus futile. I am not arguing that my line of reasoning should influence how we edit the article. I am trying to make a point about the futility of speculating about what S&R really means.) Arbor 13:57, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Believe me, I am not especially impressed with an 18-year-old straw poll among a subgroup of scientists as evidence of current scientific consensus on race and intelligence, but since S&R get cited a lot here, I think it's important to keep pointing out that the top two responses during the Reagan Administration were not partly-genetic on environment only. Many people voted that pressing forward with heredity vs environment arguments is a waste of time until there is sufficient data. Jokestress 18:58, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
I think the "speculation is pointless" idea is slightly off base. Speculation on the article page is certainly wildly inappropriate. Speculation on the talk page can be quite useful in clarifying what is really known, unknown, and unknowable (as well as other questions). I'm certain that Arbor is correct that some "insufficient evidence" votes in S&R thought "highly plausible". Actually, if I believed humans had been more genetically isolated in breeding than I believe they have been, I might well be a lot closer to the "highly plausible" camp than I am. But the only group that really had any significant isolation on evolutionarily significant time scales might be the Australian Aborigines (even given the recent "fast evoluation" evidence Rikhurzhen mentions).
My criticism of S&R is by no means speculation though. My illustrations about how I think voters might have behaved on a better survey are, of course, speculative. But the fact the survey was badly designed is a pure analytic question, no "evidence" in the future would (or could/should) affect the judgement either way. Likewise, I don't "speculate" that 173*34==5882, even though I've never seen that fact cited, nor ever thought about the particular product until just now. Either claim (multiplication, S&R did bad) stand completely on their own as a matter of logic and reason. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 18:49, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Reynolds and Roth

Reynold's 1987 meta-analysis puts the mean African American IQ at 86.9, whereas Roth's 2001 meta-analysis puts it at 83.5. Is there any reason we aren't using the more recent meta-analysis provided by Roth?--Nectar T 10:41, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

What's the white mean from Roth? Roth is better in being newer and more comprehensive. However, in being so comprehensive, most of the data comes form pen-and-paper tests. People with poor literacy tend to score lower on these tests (they give up before they should) than on non-written tests, and this tends to drag the Black average down. I don't know how large this effect is -- why I asked about the White mean from Roth. --Rikurzhen 19:31, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

flynn effect NPOV

moved from article:

The Flynn effect provides compelling evidence that IQ is not primarily dependent on genetics. A rise of 3 points every decade cannot be attributed to genetic evolution, since evolution does not work that quickly. The explanation for the Flynn effect must therefore be either environmental or cultural.

as written this violates NPOV and is inaccurate. the claims are not attributed. at least one (partial) explanation for the flynn effect is heterosis, which is genetic in nature. other proposed explanations include improving nutrition (biological) and psychometric artifact (i.e. no change is g). no one thinks the flynn effect means that individual variation in IQ at any particular time isn't largely genetic -- if it has an environmental cause it is working relatively constantly (but not perfectly so). also witcherts (2004) direclty addresses the signifance of the flynn effect to the B-W gap and finds evidence that they are different kinds of effects. and so on ... this is important stuff, but we need to do it right. --Rikurzhen 01:21, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

On this question I entirely agree with Rikurzhen. I saw the paragraph go back-and-forth between a couple versions today, and was planning on posting the same concern as him on this talk page. While the Flynn effect is interesting, it is not a priori "non-genetic". At the least, it could represent an interaction of genetic and environmental effects (Norms of reaction are really worth taking seriously). An underlying gene might vary its (degree of) expression depending on environmental factors, for example (a perfectly common occurrence, in general).
I think it is reasonable to say "The Flynn effects provides evidence that IQ is not primarily dependendent on genetics" (minus the "compelling"). And maybe something other than "cannot be attributed to" in the next couple sentences: e.g. "Gene frequency distributions are unlikely to change significantly in mere decades, in humans, though environmental factors might affect the expression of existing genes." I do think it's reasonable to characterize the Flynn effect as leaning against hereditarian explanations, but it is by no means decisive. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 01:47, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
"The Flynn effects provides evidence that IQ is not primarily dependendent on genetics" -- maybe "The Flynn effects provides evidence that IQ may be highly malleable to non-genetic effects" but the implications of the Flynn effect for g, which is where it really matters, are AFAIK completely unknown. Prima facie it makes no sense that g has gone up that much because we're not overwhelmed by massively more geniuses than at times in the past. --Rikurzhen 02:01, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Another point worth considering is that there are probably as many theories about the flynn effect as their are theories about the B-W IQ gap. However, some of them turn on psychometrics esoterica which are beyond my ability to recall after reading about them. So... let's tred carefully. --Rikurzhen 02:15, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Don't refute positions unmentioned in article

Nectorflowed made an edit with comment: (Revert. It's often claimed that political persuasian accounts for a large portion of variance. (e.g. claims of Marxist bias against or that this research is only supported by right-wingers & Nazis).

However, this article contains no claims about any of the matters allegedly needing to be refuted. Maybe one of the subarticles could quote a claim that "Marxists believe X" or "Nazis believe Y", or whatever it is that Nectorflowed is imagining might be claimed. The whole issue is enormously outside scope of this particular article. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 04:21, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

that sentence belongs in the public controversy section somewhere near Accusations of bias, but that section is really long already. --Rikurzhen 04:30, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Slow down there, Lulu. Just to cite quotes that are already in the article:
  • Behavioral geneticist Glayde Whitney argued in his controversial 1995 presidential address to the Behavior Genetics Association that suppression of debate on both individual and group hereditary differences has occurred as a result of a larger ideology of "environmental determinism for all important human traits ... [a] 'Marxist-Lysenkoist' denial of genetics."
  • Psychologist Jerry Hirsch has claimed that Arthur Jensen has "avowed goals" that were "as heinously barbaric as were Hitler's and the anti-abolitionists"
The argument for including it with the study results is that a political bias in respondents would reduce the results' reliability. (The absence of a political bias in respondents is thus relevant.)--Nectar T 04:37, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
No evidence is presented that correlation with political opinions would affect reliability WP:NOR
(1) Moved to child article
(2) Does not occur in article --Lulu
Read Whitney's quote closely. (He's arguing political bias is affecting the reliability of scientists' behavior.)
From the S&R survey: "It seems clear despite the highly political climate surrounding testing, political ideology does not have a large influence on expert opinion. That political perspective accounts for less than 10% of the data variance and that experts hold generally pro-testing attitudes despite being slightly left of center politically are important points and must be contrasted with the heavy political influence apparent in public discussion about intelligence and aptitude testing." (i.e. there's reason to suspect politics are influencing experts' opinions, but results show this is not the case.)
Moving Whitney's quote to a sub-article doesn't move it outside of the topic. You can find the second quote in the public controversy article, one of the sub-articles of this page. (The sub-articles were moved off of this page for length concerns, but remain part of this article.)--Nectar T 00:33, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I understand, Nectraflowed, that you're imagining that "someone might claim (whatever)". Values of "whatever" might include "all hereditarians are right-wing" or "cultural explanations are inspired by Marxism". Those ideas are not unfamiliar to me; but at the same time, they aren't in this article, so refuting them is superfluous... or confirming them, for that matter. If those ideas occur in other WP articles, some contrary articles in such articles might be relevant, of course. But don't write an article arguing against what WP readers "might be thinking". Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 01:11, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Accusations of political bias are a notable part of the field and are covered in the article. Political bias means political perspectives are influencing the reliability of experts' opinions. The survey's political data is germane to its reliability.--Nectar T 04:30, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I left in a minimal form of the non-correlation w/ politics thing; can we keep it to a short clause w/o belaboring the point in the article?
S&R consider the direction the respondents' political perspectives lean to be very important (see above quote). Saving 11 words isn't a justification for the curious decision to avoid noting which direction the respondents' political perspectives lean.--Nectar T 05:02, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

IQ tests and the concept of race

The current article is biased in stating that IQ tests are accepted as culturally neutral. Also, there is too little mention of the criticism of the concept of race. I refer to the following article [8]. Ultramarine 00:44, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

The psychologists who design "culture-free" or "culture-fair" tests deliberately do what those adjectives suggest: they make IQ tests that are culturally unloaded, or nearly so, once it is explained to the test-taker what he/she is to do. --67.50.134.41 18:21, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
we quote that paper at length here and describe the main objections to IQ and race in the background section. --Rikurzhen 01:19, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Again, there is no mention of the criticism against the neutrality of IQ tests. And only a single sentence regarding the criticism against the race concept. The arguments regarding this is not mention anywhere. For example, that the amount of genetic variation in Africa is enormous and is much greater than that in the rest of the world making the concept of a "Black" race very doubtful. Or that one can as well construct a race of those who have "royal blood" and find many correlations with for example diseases. Ultramarine 01:36, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
UL, the royal blood analogy is truly silly. The race article does a good job of describing all of the details about why race is good or bad as a categorization system, but a more variation in Africa than elsewhere argument against race is a non-starter. On bias in IQ, are you talking about within societies or between them. The within society bias is absolutely, truly resolved. The between society bias is both clearly possible with culture loaded tests and AFAIK not well documented enough. However, because within society comparisons are the crux of this topic, the main point stands. --Rikurzhen 01:50, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Your unexplained opinions regarding "truly silly", "non-starter", and "not well-documented" are not interesting. These arguments (and many others) are mentioned in a scholarly article. I see no reason why they should not be included. You are of course free to add sourced counter-arguments. Ultramarine 01:59, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
They shouldn't be included if they constitute a fringe view or are irrelevant or better described elsewhere. Sternberg's description of race is attacking the concept as understood before DNA (ca. 1950). If you're correctly describing his opinions on IQ from this article, then he's contradicting his own prior statements -- he was a co-author of the APA report. --Rikurzhen 02:04, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Please read NPOV. Explain why criticisms from a peer-reviewed article from 2005 should not be allowed. Ultramarine 02:07, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Here are other 2005 papers criticzing the race concept and IQ tests. The article is very biased by excluding these views [9][10][11]. Ultramarine 02:36, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Someone else can take over for the night. I've got no more time to spare today. --Rikurzhen 02:41, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit conflict] First, a psychologist is not an expert on the gentics of race. Second, NPOV is pretty clear that you should make necessary assumptions (see the first paragraph of this article) and describe fringe conflicts elsewhere rather than bringing them up on every page that might be related. Your interpretation of this article is finge. The race article describes the debate surrounding race. The intelligence (trait) article describes the debate about intelligence.

on the point about race, Francis Collins summed it up recently:

Well-intentioned statements over the past few years, some coming from geneticists, might lead one to believe there is no connection whatsoever between self-identified race or ethnicity and the frequency of particular genetic variants1, 2. Increasing scientific evidence, however, indicates that genetic variation can be used to make a reasonably accurate prediction of geographic origins of an individual, at least if that individual's grandparents all came from the same part of the world3.[12]

--Rikurzhen 02:39, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Your article is one view. I have given four 2005 peer-reviewed articles, all criticizing the research on racial IQ. Clearly this is not a "fringe" view. Your insistence that their views should be excluded is a clear violation of NPOV. Your argument that a peer-reviewed paper should not be allwed since the author is a psychologist is ad hominem. Ultramarine 02:52, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I agree, Ultramarine, that the pseudo-scientific concept of race is presented much too uncritically in this article. A bit more clarity in pointers to the reasons for questioning the concept would benefit the article. That said, we should be careful to keep focus; other articles are more centrally focused on that issue. We should emphasize pointers to the questions, rather than fully explicate them here. Likewise with issues about the neutrality of IQ tests. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 03:07, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
There's nothing phony about the concept of race. There might, however, be something phony about attempts to prove that race is a "pseudo-scientific concept."
Race is not a social construct; it is a biological fact. Race (or breed) exists in many species, including humans. It's obvious despite the existence of ancient racial hybrids (non-Yoyoi Asiatics) and persons of more recently mixed ancestry (Mestizos). The theory that race is a "social construct" has made me smile more than once during debates. Referring to human differences that are real – biological and innate – as "social constructs" is one of the ways by which some people trivialize what they cannot control.
A "social construct" is something that exists only by courtesy of human definition; e.g., "human dignity" is a social construct. It doesn't affect whether a wolf will eat you, or whether an earthquake will shake your house down on top of you. But it might affect whether you can or can't sign up for welfare benefits because your application will be decided by humans having minds able to entertain "social constructs" (such as how much "human dignity" you have). Race and gender are physical realities that have frequently been miscategorized as social constructs; however, neither is in that class.
The differences between the hominid races are as real (if not as large) as those between gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans. While it is true that only a small percentage of genes is responsible for racial differences, we do not judge the significance of those differences by counting genes. We judge their significance by the qualities and performance factors of the organisms that those genes create.
I'd like to point out that deceptions can be carried out by means other than direct lies. One of the other means is convoluted obfuscation, of which there's an example in the article as written:
Significance of group IQ differences...Within societies... There is substantial overlap in the distribution of IQ scores among individuals of each race. Jensen (1998, p. 357) estimates that in a random sample of equal numbers of US Blacks and Whites, most of variance in IQ would be unrelated to race or social class. 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.
The deception is obscured by the emphasis on IQ average differences for two distributions being compared. These average differences are statistics similar to the standard deviation: both relate to the width of the distribution, not to where the mean of the distribution is located. The importance of the averages themselves (for the distributions being compared) slips from cognizance. I believe that this slipping from cognizance was intended by the writer.
Notice, please, what is being serially compared: (1) the average IQ difference between a randomly selected Black and a randomly selected White, within the U.S., (2) the average difference between two random people, and (3) the average difference between two random siblings.
A more complete and concise way to present this information would be to show, for the following groups, their IQ averages and standard deviations: (1) All US residents, (2) all US-resident Whites, (3) all US-resident Blacks, (4) US-resident White siblings, (5) US-resident Black siblings. For the sibling comparisons, you might present the average difference together with the average sum, just to indicate that the equality in the size of the intervals does not imply that the same absolute interval is involved in both cases.
The benefit of doing this would be to let the reader know if, for example, the typical interval of IQ for White siblings were from 95 to 107 (an average gap of 12 points), while the typical interval of IQ for Black siblings were from 83 to 95 (also an average gap of 12 points). Simply telling the reader that both races have average sibling IQ gaps of 12 points conceals from them the fact that these IQ intervals begin and end at different places along the scale, even though they run the same length along the scale. --67.50.134.41 (Jerry Abbott) 18:21, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
^^^^^^^^^^Wait so your saying that gender is not a social construct? How is "men should wear ties to work," not a social construct. I would love to hear your reasoning on this one. Anon
Ties are not indications of gender. Primary sexual characteristics are usually good indications of gender. The best indication is probably an examination of genes: XX = female, XY = male. What a culture makes of gender is custom, which is a social construct. Gender itself is not a social construct. The gender that is naturally made in a way to facilitate pregnancy and lactation don't depend on any notions to the contrary that you might have. --67.50.134.41 (Jerry Abbott) 18:21, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Policy implications

The article has some strange and very biased descriptions of this. The article states that "Indeed, even proponents of a partly genetic interpretation of the IQ gap such as Rushton and Jensen (2005) and Gottfredson (2005b) argue that their interpretation does not in itself demand any particular policy response:" The article also states that "Robert Sternberg asks "What good is research of [this kind] supposed to achieve?" This is an inaccurate straw-man description of Sternberg's article, using an out of context citation, and a very doubtful description of Rushton's view, more correct would be that Sternberg argues that Rushton et al implicitly states that little or nothing can and should be done to help genetically inferior groups in society. See his article here [13]. Ultramarine 01:15, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

read the cited papers. they are quite clear. --Rikurzhen 01:17, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Again, the description of Sternberg view is an inaccurate straw-man. The description of Rushton's view is very doubtful. See the reference. Ultramarine 01:20, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

sternberg writes:

What good is research of the kind done by Rushton and Jensen supposed to achieve? Only vaguely cloaked behind their words is the purported demonstration that certain groups are, on average, genetically inferior to other groups, at least in that aspect of intelligence measured by IQ.

The articles and books reporting on this research inevitably have the seemingly obligatory final public-policy section, which is somehow supposed to justify, in part, the usefulness of the research. The “Implications for Public Policy” section (Rushton & Jensen, Section 15) that is included in works of this kind (see also Herrnstein & Murray, 1994; Jensen, 1969) seem to have the intention to provide a public-policy rationale for work attempting to show that one group is inferior to another and that not much, if anything, can be done about it. It is therefore worthwhile to examine whether any of the alleged public-policy implications follow from the data. If not, the argument that the research is useful in formulating public policy is impugned.

gottfredson writes:

Rushton and Jensen (2005) make no recommendations for specific policies and correctly argue that the hereditarian hypothesis implies none in particular. For example, proof that the Black-White IQ gap is partly genetic could, depending on one's goals, be used to justify banning all racial preferences in employment and college admissions or, from a Rawlsian perspective (that genetic advantages are undeserved and unfair), require substantial and permanent racial preferences.

rushton and jensen write:

The conclusion reached in Sections 13 and 14—that about 50% of the variance in mean Black-White group differences in IQ is due to heredity—is compatible with a wide range of recommendations, from programs for the disadvantaged and laissez-faire approaches to selection and opportunity grouping in certain educational and vocational situations.

You forgot to mention what follows immediately after "In The Bell Curve, Herrnstein and Murray (1994) offered some specific policy recommendations based on their conclusions about genetic variation and IQ, which are generally concordant with political conservatism, such as scaling back affirmative action, reducing the intrusiveness of government, and returning to individualism." Ultramarine 01:48, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Right. The research findings are concordant with conservatism or liberalism. Are you trying to contradict their own claim and Gottfredson's interpretation of their claim on the basis of that sentence? --Rikurzhen 02:29, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Read the first paragraph again. The article is incorrect regarding Sternberg's and Rushton's position on public policy. Rushton want to reduce policies such as affirmative action and may also as Murray argue that racial differences in IQ is scientific evidence for conservatism. It is this that Sternberg argues against, not that the research is dangerous and have no utility. That is a gross and inaccurate straw man. Ultramarine 02:43, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Accusations of bias section

I recently tried to cut the section dramatically to put the information in a child article. Per summary style and all, this is very desirable. And also to get this article as a whole shorter, which is a good thing.

Unfortunately, the section seems to be growing again, and mostly with rather contentious language. I think this section should contain exactly the following:

  1. A pointer to the longer child article
  2. Exactly one (short) paragraph describing the types of accusations made against genetic-cause proponents
  3. Exactly one (short) paragraph describing the types of accusations made against culture-cause proponents

The longer child article can argue and cite lots of details on the merits of those various accusations. But here it is important to limit the description to the broad "lay of the land".

I think the improvised "not-quite-npov-but-still-want-a-box" template is peculiar. We could certainly get the short summaries to be pithier, but we basically want them to be "too short for POV" (that's a slight joke, but there is a point to it). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 04:18, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I think your text is an improvement. Note that there can be much stronger criticisms, although I agree that should be placed in a child article. "In an article in Rolling Stone, journalist Adam Miller (1994) reported on an interview with Rushton. He showed Rushton a quote from Roger Pearson (1966a):'If a nation with a more advanced, more specialized, or in any way superior set of genes mingles with, instead of exterminating, an inferior tribe, then it commits racial suicide.'(p. 26). According to Miller, Rushton 's reaction was 'why should I pass value judgments on other people's political opinions?' When pressed, Rushton is reported to have terminated the interview."[14] Ultramarine 04:48, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I wouldn't make too much of the Miller interview you mention. A popular journalist read a quote from a passage Rushton may have been unfamiliar with. I wouldn't expect someone to necessarily comment definitively on a quote that may well be taken out of context. It's an old trick: kinda like finding some quote from Mein Kampf, then getting people to agree with it, then claiming they are horrible people because they "agreed with Hitler". Or pick a quote from Capital if that's more likely to upset the subject. Actually, I guess Miller's thing is just the other way around. But Rushton terminating the interview could generously be seen as refusing to fall for a possible trick, rather than something more nefarious (obviously, I don't defend Rushton; but criticsm should be fair). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 08:31, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Roger Pearson is closely associated with the Pioneer Fund, as is Rushston. It is a safe assumption to state that Rushton is familiar with the works of one of the main beneficiaries of the fund. Ultramarine 16:59, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Well, yeah, but I was careful to change my comment to indicate that I meant the specific passage (e.g. does the next or prior sentence change meaning?). But in any case, if the worst thing we could say about Rushton was that he "handled a popular interview clumsily", that's pretty thin criticism. In actual fact, there is a lot more that that is discreditable about Rushton, hearsay from a Rolling Stone reporter is low on my list of concerns. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 19:01, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
The fund may have stopped associating with Pearson (their biggest liability by far) once their activities became the subject of large scrutiny in the years following the publication of the Bell Curve (years before Rushton became more than a grantee of the fund). Also, do we have any idea what Pearson's work was after the 1970s (presumably the period from which that quote derives)?. --Nectar 18:08, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
(I think it was the Institute for the Study Academic Racism that reported he distanced himself from his fringe views and went into conservative politics/lobbying.)--Nectar 02:04, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Tucker

Tucker's criticism of the Pioneer Fund only has to do with it's political agenda. Here's his opening summation:

"If the fund has done no more than provide resources to universities for scientific research of high quality, then Pioneer may have been victimized by an intellectually stultifying pressure to conform to political orthodoxy. On the other hand, if the many grants made by Pioneer — not only to a number of well-known scientists but also to a host of obscure academics who similarly maintain that blacks are intellectually inferior to whites — mask other, less laudable goals, then the fund may be hiding an oppressive political agenda behind the protection of academic freedom."

(He concludes the latter.)--Nectar 08:48, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

He explicitly doesn't criticize the scientists for their source of funding.--Nectar 08:51, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Since he concludes the latter, he is certainly critical of the fund and the whole book is an implicit criticism of the funded research. He is also very critical of the scientists, for example accusing them of double standard they refuse to condemn even those advocating racial violence while at the same time claiming that they themselves are wrongly discriminated. Ultramarine 17:10, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Even if the research has a political agenda it's still valid scientific research, or did I miss something? I'd say this is comparable to Nazi logic where Einstein's theories were rejected simply because he was a Jew. Even the Nazis didn't stoop to the level where they required their scientists to condemn the Jews and their plans to take over the world in order to have any scientific validity.
Sometimes I'm slightly troubled by what goes on here at Wikipedia. --Scandum 09:34, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I think the idea here for some people is that racism could be biasing scientists, causing them to interprete the data in an unwarranted way, thus producing the partly genetic interpretation. If even many liberal experts, though, support the partly genetic interpretation, this doesn't seem to be the case (the body of data itself isn't accused of being tainted).--Nectar 22:31, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I won't go as far as accusing them to voluntarily tainting them, but I have yet to find rational reasons to explain how come the mistakes found in their studies (mistakes which are admitted), disfavour the large majority of times Blacks, when we would expect about 50-50, or near to it. Lynn arithmetic mistakes for example, which overestimate the magnitude of cranial capacity differences (1990, 1993), or Rushton uses of the wrong equation… etc. Fad (ix) 23:36, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Cognitive ability section (statistical bias)

One of the current bullet points in the summary is:

  • IQ tests do not show statistical bias against socio-economic or racial-ethnic groups

I think I may have reworded an earlier version to indicate "statistical". But looking at it again, I cannot figure out what claim is being made (w/ or w/o the word "statistical" in there). Other than the vague insinuation that "IQ tests are really groovy", what specific fact is being purported here (and purported as consensus)?

various criteria have been proposed to detect bias. by these criteria, the tests are not biased. the question of bias is often one of "validity". predictive validity is described by the apa report: --Rikurzhen 08:46, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Test Bias. It is often argued that the lower mean scores of African Americans reflect a bias in the intelligence tests themselves. This argument is right in one sense of "bias" but wrong in another. To see the first of these, consider how the term is used in probability theory. When a coin comes up heads consistently for any reason it is said to be 'biased," regardless of any consequences that the outcome may or may"not have. In this sense the Black/White score differential is ipso facto evidence of what may be called "outcome bias." African Americans are subject to outcome bias not only with respect to tests but along many dimensions of American life. They have the short end of nearly every stick: average income, representation in high-level occupations, health and health care, death rate, confrontations with the legal system, and so on. With this situation in mind, some critics regard the test score differential as just another example of a pervasive outcome bias that characterizes our society as a whole (Jackson, 1975; Mercer, 1984). Although there is a sense in which they are right, this critique ignores the particular social purpose that tests are designed to serve.

From an educational point of view, the chief function of mental tests is as predictors (Section 2). Intelligence tests predict school performance fairly well, at least in American schools as they are now constituted. Similarly, achievement tests are fairly good predictors of performance in college and postgraduate settings. Considered in this light, the relevant question is whether the tests have a "predictive bias" against Blacks, Such a bias would exist if African-American performance on the criterion variables (school achievement, college GPA, etc.) were systematically higher than the same subjects' test scores would predict. This is not the case. The actual regression lines (which show the mean criterion performance for individuals who got various scores on the predictor) for Blacks do not lie above those for Whites; there is even a slight tendency in the other direction (Jensen, 1980; Reynolds &:Brown, 1984). Considered as predictors of future performance, the tests do not seem to be biased against African Americans.

Characteristics of Tests. It has been suggested that various aspects of the way tests are formulated and administered may put African Americans at an disadvantage. The language of testing is a standard form of English with which some Blacks may not be familiar; specific vocabulary items are often unfamiliar to Black children; the tests are often given by White examiners rather than by more familiar Black teachers; African Americans may not be motivated to work hard on tests that so clearly reflect White values; the time demands of some tests may be alien to Black culture. (Similar suggestions have been made in connection with the test performance of Hispanic Americans, e.g., Rodriguez, 1992.) Many of these suggestions are plausible, and such mechanisms may play a role in particular cases. Controlled studies have shown, however, that none of them contributes substantially to the Black/White differential under discussion here (Jensen, 1980; Reynolds 82 Brown, 1984; for a different view see Helms, 1992). Moreover, efforts to devise reliable and valid tests that would minimize disadvantages of this kind have been unsuccessful. [15]

Eyferth

Re Lulu: "The alleged flaws in Eyferth are far less serious than those in ANY of the studies advanced by Rushton"

It's not uncommon to note strong limitations of interpretability of studies. In fact, it'd be inappropriate to ommit such criticisms. If this has been done with any problematic studies of Rushton's, that should be corrected. I take it you're referring to something not on this page but on the main page of "Culture only or partially genetic explanation?" --Nectar 09:07, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

The footnote seems fine, and I left it in place. But inserting sotto voce interruptions of the basic presentation to add "but this isn't really true" every time you disagree with content reads as doggerel. After all, how'd you feel if I copied all my criticisms of the S&R survey over into its brief description (using more words to criticize it than are used to describe it; as you did for Eyferth)? Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 09:32, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Actually, looking over more discussions of the study, you're right.. it looks defendable enough to leave it alone.--Nectar 11:36, 17 November 2005 (UTC)


Study by Elsie Moore

Why is the flawed Scarr study cited but not Elsie Moore's study? Elsie Moore's study showed that blacks adopted by whites had an average IQ of 117, whereas those adopted by blacks had an average IQ of 104. How can the genetic hypothesis account for this?

http://brookings.nap.edu/books/0815746091/html/93.html

Anon

Hi Anon, and welcome to this page. You are more than welcome to help developing this article. If you know about the Moore study, I encourage you to study it and write a paragraph about it (it seems that it belongs under the Genetics–Environment headline). This article would benefit a lot from a well-written account of the "environmental POV." And to answer your question: the "genetic hypothesis" is no "genetics-only" hypothesis. (Such a hypothesis would indeed have difficulties explaining such data. It's a fringe POV, and this article shouldn't leave any doubt about that. If you can find a way to make that clearer, please help.) Arbor 13:56, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Most likely this study doesn't come up in review papers because the IQ scores are so far from the population mean(s of whites and blacks) that it becomes hard to interpret them broadly, rather than as some kind of bias during adoption. Imagine if you did a study of heart disease and found your control and experimental group lived to be 90 and 100 years old respectively. --Rikurzhen 18:24, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Translation: The results do not fit Rikurzhen's assumptions. FYI adoption agencies prefer to place children with "their own kind," if any selection bias exists it runs in the other direction. You also fail to consider that the childrens IQ's reflected the IQs of their adoptive parents, more evidence supporting the enviromental hypothesis. Really how many times do white supremacists need to be disproved before they'll give up the game? --Anon

I agree with Rik that the high IQ scores look fishy, and I wonder about how representative the involved populations are. Another point is raised in the resource linked by Anon: "Black parents expressed a preference for black rather than mixed-race children". So we can assume that the children raised by black families are black, while the children raised by white families are mixed-race, at least the trend seems to be like that. (The original study ought to include data about which race the adopted children actually were—otherwise I hope we can all agree it's worthless.) Without such information, the study supports the hereditary POV. Still, it's an interesting point (especially because it is at variance with the majority of existing research) and deserves mention. It's relevant by definition because it appears in a survey book. I would be happy if Anon read the original reference and added this study to our little article here. The faults of the study (non-representative populations, self-selection in black families) are obvious. Arbor 18:52, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Anon, I'm not a white supremacist. If anything, I'm an East Asian supremacist or an Ashkenazi supremacist. Both groups have higher IQs. I'm told that Brahmins may also. I'm speculating as to why we don't see scholars writing on this topic mentioning this study. It would be great to find it discussed in peer reviewed secondary sources to understand its context in the debate. --Rikurzhen 18:46, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Actually. I'm quite certain this study is being dismissed as unrealisitic. If black children adopted by white families had an average IQ of 117, then such children would make up a substiantial fraction of the black students at top-tier universities. This would be quite obvious -- black children with adopted white parents. --Rikurzhen 18:50, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
lol. I hope your aware that many people on Stormfront also agree with your views about easatasian superiority, believing Asians and Jews are smarter doesn't prevent one from being a white supremacist. Rather their supposed intelligence is seen as making them more dangerous. At anyrate, you are a white supremacist becuase you believe that whites are intellectually superior to blacks, biologically. My question is simple how can your beliefs be falsified. As for being published in a peer reviewed sceintific journal, I would love to see Bouchards twin study published in a peer reviewed journal. (Falsely signed comment by anonymous IP 147.26.148.42 [[16]])
Exactly how many black children are adopted by white families? Moore never claimed that all black adoptees of white families have such high IQ's. About the results being unrepresentative, this cracks me up. Unrepresentative of who? Blacks raised in rich white homes? Adoptive children raised in white homes? Oh I see.....Unrepresentative of people raised in wildly different enviroments, wow brilliant. (Falsely signed comment by anonymous IP 147.26.148.42 [[17]])
Arbor has made a good suggestion for how you should proceed. I have no intention of helping you given your incivility. --Rikurzhen 19:31, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Incivility? Did I directly call you a white supremacist? Do you deny that much of the research you get comes from white supremacists? You do realize that your beliefs are by definition racist? Thats not incivility that is just a factual account "The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others." Dictionary.com definition of racism
I don't mean to get into minor language quibbles but I think you should admit that your beliefs are by definition racist. Thats not to say they are wrong, but they are racist and honesty compels you to admit as much (even if in your racial hierarchy Whites are not at the apex).
I also find it queer that your should refuse to discuss these matters because of lack of civility. If you feel the "white supremacist" remark was incivil fine, but that doesn't let you off the hook for the POV nature of this article. 147.26.148.42
I don't find the defintion of "white supremacist" or "racist" that you are using to be particular meaningful. Both labels are generally understood to indicate a belief about matters of value, not matters of fact. It's essential to distinguish between is and ought, lest one's fundamental moral convictions would be susceptible to empirical falsification. (I cannot imagine any research finding that would lead me to believe that individual persons should not be treated with equal moral respect.) I would self-identify with the very careful statements about the relationship between matters of fact and matters of value that begin and end this article.
I would suggest you do as Arbor recommends and research the paper you mention -- write up a summary that can be included in the appropriate article. A secondary source describing the impact and interpretations of that paper would be especially helpful as it removes some of the burden of the WP:NOR requirement. --Rikurzhen 21:31, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Anon user signing under false username

Hi, dear contributor signing with User:Anon. I can see that you are actually the anonymous IP [[18]]. I have re-signed some of your comments to use the correct signature, but I am unsure how to proceed. Please continue you contributions to this page by signing with four tildes. Also, get a proper account, that would make it easier for us to talk to you. Arbor 19:19, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

I am not signing under a false name I am anonymous (Anon in Wiki-speak), however you want me to sign my comments I will oblige.....well maybe not anyway you want me too. 147.26.148.42

Sorry, but you are (or rather were) signing as a false user (not maliciously, I assume). User:anon is a registered account, and it's not yours. If and when you make a contribution it is registered (in the "history") under your IP, not under User:anon. If I look at User:anon's contributions, yours won't show up. This is basically the fault of User:anon choosing a highly misleading user name; the account ought to be closed. Anyway, thanks for following standard procedure (not doing so is a sure way of getting banned by the moderators, and we don't want that). Better yet: get your own account so we can talk to you. Best, Arbor 09:21, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

It is now clear that there is a diberate censorship campaign

Ironbrew just removed comments I made because they were "unsubstantiated," comments in the talk page.... The talk page is for discussion, clearly opposing viewpoints are being censored on wikipedia.

What I wanted to say was this: The pioneer fund is not a scientific organization but a eugenicist advocacy group. Tucker details the unscientific nature of the fund, here is a discussion:

http://www.press.uillinois.edu/epub/books/tucker/toc.html

I would also like to add that Blacks have, in absolute terms, the largest brains and asains the smallest (In the US). The size of the human head/brain varies in relation to the size of the body, but the head size varies less then the size of the body, (smaller people have larger brain/body ratios, bigger people have bigger brains in absolute terms).Anon

Ironbrew, removing non-abusive comments from a Talk page is bad form, whether unsubstantiated or not. -- Danny Yee 12:09, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
It is not true that Blacks have larger absolute brain sizes than Asians or Whites. Both Whites and Asians have larger absolute brain sizes than Blacks. Some studies show the largest absolute sizes belonging to Asians, some show it belonging to Whites. When adjusted for body size, there is a clear East Asian --> White --> Black pattern. See Ho et al. 1980 Dd2 15:09, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
That isn't what your study says, and you apparently don't understand understand what absolute means. Absolute means prior to adjusting to other factors, like body size. Your study supports what I said:
"there is a positive relationship between the brain weight and the body dimensions. The brain weight, however, increases at a slower rate than the body dimensions.......When adjusted to body dimensions, the brain weight is greater for white men than for black men and for white women than for black men." (Abbreviated for emphasis)
In other words Blacks have larger brains in absolute terms but smaller proportionally. "In 1970 the South African Anthropologist P.V. Tobias wrote a courageous article exposing the myth that group differences in brain size bear any relation to intelligence-indeed, he argued group differences in brain size, independent of body size and other biasing factors have never been demonstrated." (Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould pg. 140, updated edition copyright 1996, 1981)Anon
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Before adjusted for body size, the order is White men, Black men, White women, Black women. (Ho et al., p636) After adjusted for body size, the order is White men, White women, Black men, Black women. [19] If you are not convinced yet, see Image:Morton_drawing.png. Can you cite some study backing up your claim that Blacks have larger absolute brain sizes? I have pored over the literature and your claim is not true. It is also very well established that there is a correlation between brain size and intelligence. (a meta-analysis by McDaniel 2005 gives .33) Dd2 21:39, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
That McDaniel study looks very dubious to me. Where's the analysis of possible confounders - or even just a table showing which confounders individual studies analysed for? (I'm thinking most obviously of nutrition, both maternal and infant, but there are other obvious possibilities.) -- Danny Yee 21:53, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
McDaniel (2005) is a metanalysis looking at the extent to which brain size and IQ are related, not the cause of that relationship. However, that question has been examined in other studies. The answer from twin studies is that brain volume is substantially heritable (e.g. [20]). --Rikurzhen 07:47, 20 November 2005 (UTC)


What relevance does the heritability of brain volume have? You can't get from a correlation between X and Y and the heritability of X to a causal relationship between X and Y. -- Danny Yee 08:58, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
You can if you collected brain scan and IQ test data from the same sets of twins. For an analysis of this kind see: Posthuma D et al. (2002). The Association between Brain Volume and Intelligence is of Genetic Origin, Nature Neuroscience, 5(2):83-84. --Rikurzhen 09:23, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

A warning

I would just like to strongly echo Danny Yee in saying that removing talk page comments is highly disruptive and not to be tolerated except in cases of simple vandalism, no matter how strongly you may agree with their content. --Ryan Delaney talk 09:17, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Ryan, I am sure we all agree. First, note that the removal was done by User:Ironbrew, and as far as I can see that has been his only contribution to this page, at least looking at his edits since July, [21]. If there is a deliberate campaign, it's certainly not perpetuated by the current editors on this page. Second, the removed contribution was by anonymous user IP 147.26.148.42, who signed his statement as User:anon (actually typing in the hyperlink instead of signing with four tildes). I don't know if making misattributed contributions counts as vandalism, but User:Ironbrew removed a comment that was attributed to User:anon without ever having been written by that user. That could have been a well-intentioned vandal hunt. (However, his misleading signature seems to have been based on ignorance instead of malice, see my exchange with him above; I think we solved it. I don't support User:Ironbrew's handling of this, and think my own was better.) The same anon IP has also used language on this page somewhat outside the boundaries of polite conversation (search for racist and white supremacist on this page). I would be happy if you extended the same diligence in correcting his behaviour as you extend to User:Ironbrew. In general, please stick around on this page. We need all the help we can get to keep this talk page useful. Arbor 09:45, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't have any comment on the conspiracy theories about coverup attempts or whatever. I'm just speaking to the point that removing comments is not acceptable. The signature of the user is immaterial. If one thinks a user has a confusing signature, that would be the appropriate topic of a user RFC. I would also be inclined to accept fixing his signatures, given that Arbcom has ruled in the past that confusing signatures are not allowed. To the point of incivility on the part of the anon, I would also think this should be the topic of a user RFC. --Ryan Delaney talk 12:08, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
Ryam, whether or not the signature User:anon is confusing or not is not the point. The point is that user 147.26.148.42 used it. It is not his. User:Anon and IP 147.26.148.42 are two different persons, but the latter used the former's signature. That's as bad as if I signed one of my contributions using your signature. (Except I am now sure 147.26.148.42 acted in Good Faith.) All I am saying is that User:Ironbrew may himself have acted in Good Faith when he removed that contribution. (I honestly don't know.) As to your intervention, seeing that User:Ironbrew seems to have only this single (highly questionable) contribution to the current page ever, maybe your could have left the warning on his own talk page. He may not see it here. Arbor 14:26, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
Just a "me too" here. There are certainly editors on this page whom I disagree with on content and POV issues; but they have respectfully discussed those disagreements here, and have followed Wikiquette consistently. Not one regular editor is engaging in any kind of conspiracy to supress content. One single improper deletion was performed by one editor who had not previously edited this article or talk page. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 19:53, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
All right then, it sounds like we are all on the same page. :-) Carry on! --Ryan Delaney talk 02:09, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

"Acting White" by ROLAND G. FRYER

is this publicly accessible? [22] --Rikurzhen 20:42, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes. I didn't have the stomach to read the rest of it, since it jumps from a quotation of Barak Obama saying that people are discouraged from learning by people who accuse them of "acting white" to the remarks of the author that "acting white" is "a slippery, contentious phrase that is used to refer to a variety of unsavory social practices and attitudes." So if a black kid spends more time reading than playing kick the can (that's what we did, I have no idea what real city kids do nowadays), then he is indulging in an unsavory social practice and/or has an unsavory attitude? I used to tell my kids in disciplinary school (where I was a substitute teacher) that they needed to emulate Stokley Carmichael and be able to make sense to Harvard profs and to Mississippi sharecroppers. I must be out of step with the drumstick. P0M 05:31, 21 November 2005 (UTC) (Sorry for the cynicism and sarcasm.)

it may be noteworth that the author, Roland G. Fryer [23], is a Harvard Junior Fellow, a prestigious research position. i know a former fellow quite well -- they're a cut above us mere mortals. --Rikurzhen 05:43, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

That's the first thing you've ever written that has made me angry. Either he can't write or he is discouraging black kids from learning. P0M 05:54, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
Maybe you, I and Dr Fryer are miscommunicating. FYI, he's black, and can probably speak to the stigma of "acting white" from personal experience. I'm quite certain that he considers the phenomenon to be a problem that needs a solution. He's developed a new techinque to quantify the effect on popularity of school achievement -- the dramatic impact is seen in Figure 1. --Rikurzhen 06:04, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
Yeah ... you definately got the referent of what's "unsavory" wrong. He's claiming that stigmatizing a peer for "acting white" is unsavory, not that "acting white" itself is. --Rikurzhen 06:08, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
I did not get the referent wrong. If what you say he is claiming is correct then he and his editor are at fault.

the term [acting white] has become a slippery, contentious phrase that is used to refer to a variety of unsavory social practices and attitudes and whose meaning is open to many interpretations

It's bad writing if your take on his actual position is correct. I hope you're right. It's easier to fix sloppy writing than it is to fix the kind of attitude that promotes attacks on people for daring to break group solidarity by using their brains. P0M 06:41, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
I certainly did not get the impression in skimming Fryer's paper that Fryer wants to do anything other than encourage African American youths to obtain good grades and study diligently. "Acting white" is used (according to Fryer) as a negative characterization in parts of the AA community; it's not that he wishes to praise "acting white" in such terms, it's that Fryer thinks it's harmful to have that normative category at all. I'm not sure how much I really agree with Fryer's analysis, but I think the criticisms by Patrick0Moran are misguided. Something very similar to Fryer's criticism of (part of) AA culture were popularized (though contentiously) by actor/celebrity Bill Cosby a few years ago (who himself happens to have a doctorate in education from my own alma mater, FWIW... not that I'm saying we should cite Cosby in this article). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 06:59, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

also fyi - that page is a synopsis of his actual paper, which is linked on the same page. --Rikurzhen 08:00, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

The question is why anti intellectualism blossoms in the black community. There's this thing called 'acting black' which might very well depress white IQ scores in horrible manners in return. The cultural viewpoint is rather one sided with about everything being pulled out of the bookcase to prove the egalitarian position. This creates a one dimentional picture of the issue.
I think it should be mentioned that these claims do not follow the scientific method and are 99% of the time focussed on showing white culture as increasing IQ and black culture as decreasing IQ without in any way relating the two on a comparable scale. As far as I'm concerned this is putting environmentalism at the same level as astrology. --Scandum 20:52, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Save Robert Perloff!

Save Robert Perloff from the deletionists!

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Robert Perloff

He signed both the WSJ and APA statements. The deletionists think it's a vanity article for some reason. Back in a week or two. Bye! Jokestress 09:32, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

What does this have to do with this article? --Ryan Delaney talk 09:45, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
As I said, he signed the Wall Steet Journal statement on race and intelligence frequently cited here and helped craft the American Psychological Association statement on race and intelligence frequently cited here, and is considered a key intelligence researcher frequently cited here. And deletionists want to get rid of his entry for being a vanity article. So a vote would be nice. Jokestress 10:01, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Ah ok, thanks for the note. --Ryan Delaney talk 10:31, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Fascinating how people behave when they see their heritage or nation attacked

They basically go into denial, against all rhyme or reason, and argue with their eyes wide shut the whole time, because they just don't want to believe that they come from a group that officialdom (be it science or history) has labelled them as inept or bad in some way. I personally can't blame them for reacting that way, but after a while when the reality of it sinks in for everybody, there has to be a quiet realization and admission that that's just the way things are. If a person fails to reach this level and persists with the denial, he can't look forward to the next level which is reconciliation and striving to make the individual inside the best that he can be, despite what officialdom says about the group he belongs to.

For example, I see Japanese-educated people in denial about Japan's war crimes. But on the other hand, I also see Japanese people who ventured to look outside of their highly-edited and revised government-approved history text books come to the realization of their past, and they move on from there to form a more wholistic and accurate view of history, themselves, and their position in the world.

Now, as far race and intelligence goes, it doesn't do any good to deny the research.

However, one would do well to ask oneself what he can do personally to be different from the group he belongs to, if the group he belongs to has a low score and this really bothers him. This may sometimes involve rejecting the group he belongs to (eg blacks "acting white") but as far as one's personal intellectual/spiritual journey is concerned, no group should dictate that anyways. In fact, in an increasingly intermingled world, much of the human journey for this century will probably involve transcending the limitations of one's group or background.

And finally, intelligence is helpful in creating wealthy, peaceful, advanced societies, but it's not the be-all and end-all nor is it the highest human value. In fact it can sometimes be used in downright evil ways, like creating terrible weapons or enriching oneself on the toil and sweat of the less intelligent or fortunate, all of which create more pain and discord in the world. Don't get me wrong...intelligence is great, but the real underpinnings of peace and harmony are kindness and putting others before yourself. --Atrahasis 18:59, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Linda Gottfredson likewise sees a balance between intelligence and “organizational citizenship behavior”. [24] --Elabro 19:59, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

intervention

Finally, genetic engineering may one day be able to directly change any alleles found to influence intelligence or racial traits (such as skin color), making them subject to medical intervention. In principle, such advancements would make much of the current concept and discussion of race and intelligence obsolete.

This is problematic. If variation in alleles for intelligence has persisted despite the obvious fitness advantages of higher intelligence, then that can only be because of balancing selection with some fairly serious tradeoffs. My suspicion is that intervention to turn on all the "high intelligence alleles" in a human would produce non-viable results. -- Danny Yee 04:02, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I think if we kill the second sentence we're on OK ground. "Subject ot medical intervention" doesn't judge too specifically on the exact contexts in which such intervention might be appropriate, or when it might have other (e.g. undesirable) effects on the mature organism. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 04:08, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
There exist very high intelligence individuals, so clearly some allele combinations are viable. There need not be "balancing selection" in the technical sense, but there is likely to be a nonlinear fitness landscape. In modern societies, high intelligence has lower fitness than low intelligence, but this was probably not the case in pre-modern environments (pre-birth control pill). The second sentence is more speculative and probably less verifiable than the first. --Rikurzhen 05:31, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
There do exist high intelligence individuals (though obviously, we're not in consensus about how much of that has to do with which alleles they have). But conceivably—maybe even probably—quite a lot of haplotypes interact in complex ways. So maybe if you add the HiIQ allele it also gives you a schizophrenic person if that person doesn't happen to have the NoCrazy allele at a different site.
It seems likely that medical science will be able to replace a couple genes individually long before it will be able to write a whole custom genome. So which gene interventions might be desirable could depend on a whole lot of other factors, rather than just be a "Chinese menu" of desired traits. I'm not disagreeing with Rikurzhen here, just sort of elaborating the thought a bit... obviously, neither of our speculations belong in the article itself, and just removing the speculative sentence solves the problem. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 06:35, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
The conceps of pleiotropy and epistasis... myopia is a good candidate. --Rikurzhen 06:47, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Strange attractors

Btw. A bit relevant to Danny Yee's original question (Rikurzhen's reference to epistasis is helpful too). In Triple Helix (which I read recently and mislayed for now), Lewontin gives a really interesting chart where gene frequencies (of multiple, i.e. two, interacting sites) show a sensitive dependency on initial conditions. The example he gives is taken from an empirical study of some Australian grass, I believe. But the general concept is that a slight difference in initial frequency of alleles in a starting population can lead the evolutionary direction to any of a variety of local fitness maxima. Just saying "intelligence is an advantage" may be quite insufficient for a real evolutionary picture. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 07:28, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes... on that point, it's not clear what all of the fitness advantages of higher intelligence were and what times they were acting. Nor is it clear that sufficent time has passed for the design space of building a smarter brain to be fully explored by mutation. The recently discovered ASPM and MCPH1 alleles only showed up in the last 5-15k years, and the ASPM allele is not finished sweeping. Moreover, culture has had a drastic effect on reproductive fitness -- note that sexual selection is one hypothesis for the evolution of human intelligence. --Rikurzhen 07:58, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Evolutionarily stable gene distributions
Evolutionarily stable gene distributions

I just created a drawing to illustrate the concept of sensitive dependency on initial conditions. I think it's pretty nice. It's done at the hypothetical level, rather than as an empirical description of any specific phenomenon. But it's a good image to have in mind for evolutionary genetics. For purposes here, imagine that the Y axis in the relative frequency of alleles YA/Ya, and the X axis is the frequency distribution of XA/Xa (where X and Y gene sites jointly influence phenotype). The paths charted are possible ones for several populations that start with different distributions to reach different equilibria. Notice particularly, in my example, that several nearby locations in the phase space (as illustrated, near the 0/0 point), reach evolutionarily stable equilibria (attractors) at quite different frequency distributions. On the other hand, populations that start out in very different places might reach these same equilibria. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 08:34, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

P.S. yeah, I know this is not actaully an illustration of strange attractors in the chaos theory sense... I just like the section heading. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 08:35, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

On this topic... --Rikurzhen 06:18, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

"Schizotypy, creativity and mating success in humans" Daniel Nettle and Helen Clegg

Abstract:

There is an evolutionary puzzle surrounding the persistence of schizophrenia, since it is substantially heritable and associated with sharply reduced fitness. However, some of the personality traits which are predictive of schizophrenia are also associated with artistic creativity. Geoffrey Miller has proposed that artistic creativity functions to attract mates. Here, we investigate the relationship between schizotypal personality traits, creative activity, and mating success in a large sample of British poets, visual artists, and other adults. We show that two components of schizotypy are positively correlated with mating success. For one component, this relationship is mediated by creative activity. Results are discussed in terms of the evolution of human creativity and the genesis of schizophrenia.

indian - what type, american or from india?

Twice the article mentions Indian, which indian is it referring to? American-Indian, or Indian from India?

South Asian Indians. --Rikurzhen 02:46, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
Do you know where American-Indian's fall in the list? 67.165.96.26 02:56, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Native Americans score better than African Americans. As a first approximation, they score near Latinos, maybe higher. Here's SAT data

SAT Ethnic Group Scores (Math/Verbal+total)

• American Indian---482/480 (962) • Asian American-----575/508 (1083) • African American-----426/431 (857) • Puerto Rican----457/448 (905)

Other Hispanic----464/457 (921)

• White-----534/529 (1063) • Other ----513/501 (1014)

--Rikurzhen 06:47, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Askenazi IQ

(Note that the Ashkenazi Jewish population has significantly higher average IQ scores than other Whites, usually approximated to be one standard deviation from the mean of other Whites.) How come no footnote? Give us several references, please. Also note there is only one average IQ score, not "average IQ scores" GangofOne 03:08, 1 December 2005 (UTC)


Here's the data[25], we should make a footnote...

Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average IQ of any ethnic group for which there are reliable data. They score 0.75 to 1.0 standard deviations above the general European average, corresponding to an IQ 112-115. This has been seen in many studies (Backman, 1972; Levinson, 1959; Romanoff, 1976), although a recent review concludes that the advantage is slightly less, only half a standard deviation Lynn (2004).

Backman, M. E. (1972) Patterns of mental abilities: ethnic, socioeconomic, and sex differences. American Educational Research Journal 9,1–12.

Levinson, B. (1959) A comparison of the performance of monolingual and bilingual native-born Jewish preschool children of traditional parentage on four intelligence tests. Journal of Clinical Psychology 15,74–76.

Romanoff, J. S. (1976) Birth order, family size, and sibling spacing as influences on intelligence and academic abilities of Jewish adolescents. Department of Psychology, Temple University .

Lynn, R. (2004) The Intelligence of American Jews. Personality and Individual Diff erences 26, 201–206.

--Rikurzhen 05:02, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I dispute this bell curve image

Studies comparing races and ethnic groups with IQ among U.S. test subjects show differences in average test scores, though the distributions overlap, as seen in this graph based on Reynolds et al. 1987 ....
Studies comparing races and ethnic groups with IQ among U.S. test subjects show differences in average test scores, though the distributions overlap, as seen in this graph based on Reynolds et al. 1987 ....

later it is said: "According to these findings, WAIS IQs for Whites (mean = 101.4, SD = 14.7) were higher than Blacks (mean = 86.9, SD = 13.0); distributions for Hispanics (mean = 91) and Asians (mean = 106) are less precise because of overlap and small sample size. .... Based on Reynolds et al. 1987, p. 330.

Reynolds says the SDs are different, yet the image is drawn with exactly the same SD for each subgroup. I.e. the curve is just shifted over horizontally and not with different widths like it should be. How can we have an argument about the meaning of the data when we can't even represent the data from the reference correctly?

Also, I don't see mentioned the error (uncertainty) of the Reynolds data. For example if group Whites has mean 101.4, it should say something along the lines of mean 101.4 plus or minus 5.5{whatever) at the 95% level, (or however you want to express it). In other words, the uncertainity in Reynolds is not being expressed in the article. This would have the visual effect of smearing the lines, but be closer to the study results. Especially so for the groups with small sample size. One would not want unjustified conclusions to be drawn from assumptions about equality of sample size. GangofOne 04:36, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

precision of average -- of course there have been many dozens of studies. for example, the meta analysis by roth et al 2001 -- one of the many references in the full footnote -- included 6 million individuals. In that analysis the 95% CI for the black-white gap is 1.15 - 1.06 SD (17.25 - 15.9 points). The difference in Reynolds is 14.5 points, an underestimate.
showing different standard deviations -- is not worth it. to do this you would have graphs with different relative heights at the mode, which would be very confusing for someone who doesn't have a good understanding of probability distributions. the actual effect of using the same SDs is to exaggerate the overlap between the black and white curves.
in summary -- the graph actually shows groups differences that are slightly smaller than the most precise estimates. however, the averages from reynolds were chosen because they are frequently cited -- being a standardization set for the WAIS-R. --Rikurzhen 04:50, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
"showing different standard deviations -- is not worth it. to do this you would have graphs with different relative heights at the mode," Are you sure? For each group's bell curve, the SD is just (a parameter for) the width. What variable is the height representing if one did it as you suggest not doing? As far as "exaggerating the overlap", that is only one way of looking at it. (Just focusing on the Black and White curves for simplicity) if we say the B curve is accurate and the W curve is narrower than it should be, then if we make the W curve wider, the overlap increases. Or, if we say the W curve is drawn correctly and the B curve should be narrowed, then the overlap decreases, true, but the extension of the B curve into the low side also decreases. Which may or may not be on various persons' agenda; but the point is it is just not as accurate as it could be, about what it claims to be, which is Reynolds, 1987. GangofOne 05:31, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

The shape of a normal distribution is determined by the mean and SD (really variance). The graphs were drawn with SD=15, which is the overall SD for an IQ distribution. Notice the numbers from Reynolds are white SD = 14.7 (rounds to 15) and black SD = 13. The black curve with SD=13 would be taller and skinner with SD=13 than a curve with SD=15. I just don't see it being worth the extra bit of precision to introduce the distraction of having curves with different heights. The graph is merely "based on" values from Reynolds. The more precise graph is given later in the article... --Rikurzhen 05:56, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Here's what the difference between SD=13 and SD=15 makes. --Rikurzhen 06:12, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Encarta on this topic

Encarta has a article sub-section titled "race and intelligence"

With respect to some of the debate that's taken place over this page recently, I thought these bits were worth quoting here. (Note they are copyrighted.)

The debate about racial and ethnic differences in IQ scores is not about if the differences exist but what causes them. ... No one knows exactly what causes racial and ethnic differences in IQ scores. Some scientists maintain that these differences are in part genetically based. Supporters of this view believe that racial and ethnic groups score differently on intelligence tests partly because of genetic differences between the groups. Others think the cause is entirely environmental. In this view, certain racial and ethnic groups do poorer on IQ tests because of cultural and social factors that put them at a disadvantage, such as poverty, less access to good education, and prejudicial attitudes that interfere with learning. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2006. © 1993-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

--Rikurzhen 06:52, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Their account is more balanced than Wikipedia's. "Supporters ... believe" and "Others think". Can we copy or imitate this wording? Elabro 21:22, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
Are you sure? What are you comparing it to in this article? My concern is WP:AWT. --Rikurzhen 21:30, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
Encarta seems OK, for a one paragraph summary. But it doesn't seem particularly different in tone from WP; in fact, I wasn't sure what point Rikurzhen had in mind by mentioning it. For a long article, however, the tone we have is certainly much more scholarly, and other than some minor wording and perspective issues I've mentioned before, I think our article is quite balanced. Supporters and opponents are both addressed, just over the course of multiple sections rather than forcing every sentence to present all/both sides. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 22:33, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

nutrition

I think there should be a section in this wiki article that touches on the effect of nutrition while inside the mother's womb (and nutrition in general), which is sort of between the biological and environmental explanations for intelligence. It could be the reason why Asians have higher IQ scores is because the mothers eat healthy, the same reason why Asians in the developed far east Asian countries like Japan and Korea live longer than the average caucasian (Korea recently exceeded the American lifespan by 2 years.) You have in the Asian diet a balance between vegetables, meat, and fermented foods with all those healthy bacteria like bacillus, whereas diets everywhere else in the world probably have too much of this or that, like meat or simple carbohydrates. If you argue that the Africans did not need to develop a lot of intelligence because they just plucked food from trees and ate them, or that caucasians got more intelligent because they had to figure out how to hunt deer in adverse conditions, then some attention should be given to the fact that Asians not only had cultivation and animal farming, but they also developed fermented food to a degree like nowhere else. If blood type evolved over time because of what was available to eat, for example the B type evolved from the A type because there was not a lot of vegetables but a lot of meat, then it only follows that genetics re intelligence evolved linked to diet as well. --Atrahasis 14:55, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

what we have on that is mostly here Race_and_intelligence_(Culture-only_or_partially-genetic_explanation)#Nongenetic_biological_factors --Rikurzhen 17:35, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
AFAIK, there is no known connection between microbiotics and IQ, but there does seem to be a strong link between omega-3 PUFAs and IQ. WRT to the IQ gap, these are hypotheses of the "Factor X" variety, although they could also be a gene-environment or gene-gene interaction variety (e.g. hypertension and heart disease). --Rikurzhen 20:02, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
There are also studies that support the thesis that Omega 3 increases gestation time. I don't know the mean Black Omega 3 consuption, but I'd assume it's lower than those for Asians, more particularly Japanese. I haven't been able to find any studies giving a partial explaination for Asian-high and Black-low gestation time with a colleration with nutrition, more particularly Omega 3 consuption. Fad (ix) 00:40, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

All of the biomechemical and genetic details are fine to mention, but I can't seem to escape the logic that those are just the details that are a part of the more important bigger picture, which means the real reason for the intelligence gap(s) has a lot to do with the macro-environment, in this case nutrition and mothers and how they treat their babies while they are inside and outside the womb. One may be able to trace the existence or non-existence of this or that gene in a racial group, but genes themselves (if I have my biology correct) need environmental triggers to fully manifest themselves, which again points in the direction of the macro-environment as a very important factor in not only mental but physical development as well. The section of the article that was pointed out to me explained a lot about breastfeeding and the harmful effects of drugs and poisons to a fetus, but the more fascinating side that needs to be given more attention is what are the mothers of the smarter children doing when their babies are inside and outside the womb? Again this points in the direction of nutrition and care-giving, with things like the mothers eating the right foods, playing classical music to their unborns, and even rewarding failure with love and acceptance, which reportedly increases IQ development. --Atrahasis 06:22, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't know of any researchers that believe that most/all of the B-W gap is due to nutritional and prenatal/perinatal care differences, but I think people on all sides of the genetics question agree that it is at least a plasuible source for some of the gap. The problem with any such environmental cause is that the gap is equally large across the entire range of socieo-economic status (if not larger for the highest SES range). This finding calls for a "Factor X"--an as yet unidentified variable that is different between groups but not correlated with other variables except race--that might cause the gap. I saw an abstract recently that considered hypertension as a Factor X--didn't seem to find an effect. --Rikurzhen 06:43, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
So basically that means no matter how rich or well-off black babies may be they will still score lower on the IQ tests than rich and well-off white babies. But this still does not necessarily mean that this "Factor X" that is causing the difference is not involved with nurturing in some way, because although wealth can buy material support it doesn't necessarily buy the special care that a mother can give if she puts her heart into it. Therefore the question that has to be asked is what makes Asian (and possibly Jewish) mothers better than white mothers, and white mothers better than black mothers? Because there is a non-scientific anecdotal kind of general belief that Asian mothers really put their all into raising their children, and that doesn't mean just material support, but those special things that only mothers can give...therein probably lies a lot of the "X Factor". I wonder if there's a scientific way to measure this "motherly attention"? One can possibly start with measuring how much a given mother invests into her child's education not by what schools she sends them to, but by how much time they personlly spend with their kids teaching them things. --Atrahasis 13:26, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
I think I understand the statistical process whereby researchers glean causative factors from the mix of observations. The various choices of the parents, such as what to eat during pregnancy, what sort of neighborhood to live in, whether to stay in one's native land or emigrate to another country, how much emphasis to place on children doing their homework (versus goofing off with TV and video games). Also the influence of the culture milieu - expectations of relatives, friends and neighbors; of teachers and schoolmates.
Once those are accounted for - if they ever are! - what's left is generally assigned to "genes" or "heredity".
But we know for certain that skin color and the shape of facial features are inherited. It's common knowledge: children tend to look like their parents. Mix black and white, and you get mulatto (or as like to call it, "mochachino" ;-)
What of the German GI study? Has the mainstream scientific community accepted or rejected its findings that environment trumps race? Elabro 14:35, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Fascinating discussion we're having, isn't it? I'd like to clarify that it's not that I don't think genes are important, but from the most logical and neutral perspective I can muster, I have to conclude that it's not just the genes that contribute to molding a person's particular intelligence, rather that environment can trump "good" genes or make "bad" genes better somehow, and that this is not an insignificant contribution. Take examples from agriculture: I recently saw a report on CNN about how a grape farmer in (I think Italy) produces better-than-usual grapes by having a lot of speakers that play classical music all day long --- to his grapes! And he swears they come out sweeter and higher quality than otherwise. In that case we're not even talking about nutrients, but rather something more akin to attention and/or energy. It's a no-brainer that nicer soil and good nutrients will produce good grapes, but he produces outstanding grapes by what we could call a factor that is completely environmental. If that points out the importance of environment on at least plant biological processes, it's not a big leap to assume a similar effect for animal biology as well, especially in light of those reports of classical music increasing babie's IQ scores. So, if we want to find out what makes a given race's babies smarter than another's, examining how they are raised just cannot be overlooked. That itself should be a no-brainer. -- As for the German GI issue, if skin color or cuteness or even the color of one's hair (light golden hair on a baby elicits more "awwww" from parents, for more on this you can research human attractiveness) affects how the baby is treated by its own mother and by others, that may explain why the mixed-race (and presumably light-colored) GI babies show no statistically significant difference in IQ with the "pure" white ones, ie they were sufficiently cute enough to warrant about the same amount of attention from mom and others. "Cuteness" being a factor in a child's mental development may seem like a superfluous idea, but I assure you it is not, because it is a fact of life that the cute ones tend to get treated better. Again, this points us in the direction of environment being a not insignificant factor. --Atrahasis 16:07, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Atrahasis, Elabro: You are having in intelligent discussion about a difficult subject, and the talk pages may just be the right place for it, but please note that we aren't doing research here. It is futile to discuss the plausibility of hypotheses for this and that. Instead, if you want to contribute, start reading the literature (primary and secondary sources), understand it, and abstract it here. Don't try to dream up research proposals. (Not because it's silly. But because of WP:NOR.) Elabro: The archives [26] contain the latest discussion of the "German GI" paper. In short: (1) American GI's are selected for IQ. Black American GI's certainly aren't a representative sample of the Black American population. (2) German women might further select in the remaining high-IQ Black population. It is plausible that this drives the mean IQ of the fathers up. (3) The environmental effect of children is much higher than in adults. Nevertheless I would be very happy if the study (which is widely known) would be included in our little endeavour here. Please help. Arbor 17:22, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
I beg to differ...we are doing research here and it is always fruitful to discuss the plausibility of this or that, and it is a way to contribute if only to steer articles down certain directions. The "no original research rule" only applies to what goes in the articles, but bringing up ideas is totally allowed on the talk pages as far as I know. The way I see it, the discussion here seems to have been mostly about genetic factors, with the environmental factors not really being given their fair due, and writing about them the way we are right now may not be fit for a wiki article, but it does help us think things through. There may very well be research re the environmental factor that is out there that has not really been explored in the article, we should at least bring up ideas here that might help us to locate that research. --Atrahasis 17:52, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Sure, as I said such discussions are certainly valid for the talk page. By all means continue. I am not trying to discourage intelligent debate here. I am trying to encourage you to look into the (rich) published research literature, which often contains solid studies that address your ideas. Arbor 18:07, 6 December 2005 (UTC)


Quite specifically on this topic, here's a book I'm hoping to read over Xmas: Maximizing Intelligence by David J. Armor ISBN 076580185X. --Rikurzhen 03:57, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

What about ethnicity and culture?

I distrust studies which examine only a few factors. Many studies are commissioned to "prove" an idea or a hoped-for outcome. Like drug companies hope a study finds their pill better than another company's pill.

I also distrust research programs which publish positive results while ignoring negative results (see publication bias).

Can Wikipedia find any studies which - instead of factoring out politically incorrect attributes such as IQ or education of parents - include as many factors as can conveniently be measured?

Can Wikipedia digest research (without conducting "original research", of course) which shed light on the fact that US blacks score 15 to 18 points lower on IQ tests than whites and Asians?

  • Is skin color the only correlate?
  • Isn't family stability a factor?
  • Presence or absence of the father in the home?
  • Marital status of the mother
    • Presence / absence of a father who is married to the mother?
  • Pressure to finish homework before being allowed free time?
  • Support in the culture for academic achievement?

Can Wikipedia explore all this objectively, or is it too much of a taboo subject? Elabro 20:10, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Work has been published which addresses some but not all of these questions. Race and intelligence (Culture-only or partially-genetic explanation) is fairly comprehensive, but not complete. --Rikurzhen 20:48, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

By the way, Elabro, skin color is not a correlate (or at least a very weak one). Maybe the article should be even more clear about that. (I tried to work that in once, but it got modified.) Instead, geographic ancestry ("race") is a strong correlate. Now, skin color is of course linked to race. But there are many Indians with darker skin color than some Blacks, and the "degree of pigmentation" has is not a good predictor of the relative IQ of those groups. More generally, I think you will find most of your points adressed in the article—if there is something you propose to change to make the information more accessible (since obviously you didn't find it the first time around) please improve it. Best, Arbor 15:53, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Specific studies

  • researchers at Columbia and Northwestern Universities
    • "Contrary to The Bell Curve findings, a new study by researchers at Columbia and Northwestern Universities suggests that poverty and early learning opportunities -- not race -- account for the gap in IQ scores between blacks and whites."
    • "Most studies of socioeconomic status do not consider such obvious factors as family income or neighborhood conditions."
    • "After World War II, many American GI's (both white and black) fathered children by German women; these children were then raised in German society. The children fathered by black GI's had an average IQ of 96.5, and the children fathered by white GI's had an average IQ of 97 -- a statistically insignificant difference."
  • Take a look at this research and the work that preceeded it (i.e. Ogbu, Thernstrom & Thernstrom) --Rikurzhen 20:46, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Expert opinion and "partly genetic" nonsense

There is not a consensus among experts that the partly genetic theory is correct, as is implied in several places in the current article. Unless supporting arguments is given, I will correct this inaccuracy. Ultramarine 09:39, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

There is no such thing as "the partly genetic theory", there are lots of different theories, for one thing, and the "genetics has zero effect" is a strawman. A Google search on "partly genetic theory" returns hits only to this page and mirrors thereof. So can we please use something more like "predominantly genetic", or at least "significantly genetic"? Barring that, please point me at anyone with any kind of clue who either denies Down's Syndrome is inherited genetically or that it influences cognitive capacities. -- Danny Yee 09:57, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Down's syndrome has no bearing on whether different races have different genetic average IQ. Please point me to anyone who denies that heavy metal poisoning in children affects intelligence. Ultramarine 10:02, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Ultra: "There is not a consensus among experts that the partly genetic theory is correct," Exactly. But the media tells us "there is consensus among experts that the partly genetic theory is pseudoscience", which is wrong. That's why it is correct to say that the media portrayal is false. Arbor 11:57, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
The media portrayal may have been wrong in 1987 when the study was done. That is no reason include a study of expert opinions under "partly genetic", as noted there was no consensus. Ultramarine 12:09, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Isn't invention of our own terminology - see http://www.google.com/search?q=%22partly+genetic+theory%22 -- close to a violation of the No Original Research prohibition? -- Danny Yee 12:18, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Here is a different search [27]. Ultramarine 12:22, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Yes, but that's not the same thing. By using "partly genetic theory" we're asserting that there is a specific theory about the genetics of intelligence (note: not about race) that goes by that name, when there clearly isn't. We're also effectively invoking a complete strawman in opposition, since the presumable negation of "partly genetic" is "not at all genetic". Does anyone really have an objection to using "substantially genetic" instead, and trying to avoid singular "theory" when we're actually referring to a body of often quite different ideas? -- Danny Yee 12:30, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
It is certainly possible that there is no genetic compenent and that all the differences in tested average IQ between races is due to environemnt. Ultramarine 12:37, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
It is incorrect to have an comparison between a genetic and non-genetic theory. As noted, even Rushton states that not all of the differences are genetic. Thus, I will restore partially genetic shortly. Ultramarine 01:05, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I believe Danny Yee and Ultramarine are largely talking past one another. As the Encarta quotation I pasted above shows the major views are "environment only" and "partly genetic", and yet I think we can reasonably talk about the evidence for/against culture and the evidence for/against genetics. Careful word choice would be needed to distinguish these two modes of description. --Rikurzhen 02:56, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Odd speculation on future laws

In the "policy implication" section, Ultramarine has a couple times put back this terrible paragraph that is rampant with implied speculation about future politics.

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

In 50 or 100 years from now, will society resemble distopian stories like Gattaca or Brave New World? Or will it instead resemble utopian visions like Star Trek? Will parents (with uniform access to medical resources) cure all genetic diseases in-vitro? Or will a totalitarian society have a homophobic and racist legal requirement to eliminate homosexuality, dark skins, and disobediant inclinations in-vitro? Sure, I like the first thing but not the second. But I don't have a crystal ball to predict this on WP. And just putting a distopian thing in parens next to a utopian one doesn't make it NPOV. For that matter, maybe some readers prefer weeding out undesirable traits in a eugenics agenda. We just don't need to get into that.

The last sentence about "make obsolete" is speculation of a different kind. Alleles might become changeable, but they won't become independent of each other in their effects on phenotypes. Whatever either race or intelligence may be, it's pretty clear that neither resides on a small number of alleles. If technology can substitute a half-dozen genes in vitro, that might cure Tay-Sachs or perhaps diabetes (or even affect IQ or skin coloration somewhat), but it certainly doesn't remove the whole categories of race or intelligence. It might change the discussion, but "obsolete" is pretty fanciful.

This paragraph is much cleaner, and actually states facts rather than speculation. Well, it has a certain speculative element in that alleles "may one day" be changeable. But not the social policy part.

Finally, genetic engineering may one day be able to directly change alleles, such as those found to influence intelligence or racially identifying traits (such as skin color), making them succeptible to medical intervention.

This is simple and states what we are actually presenting. Ultramarine's weird edit comments about race or cosmetic surgery not being "medical (conditions)" are just off-base. Of course race isn't a disease. And likewise neither is having a bigger nose or smaller breasts than you might want (or smaller nose and bigger breasts than you want, for that matter). But the procedures that some people undergo to change their noses and breasts are medical procedures. Not ones I would ever recommend personally (absent gross deformaties or injuries), but most certainly medical.

Similarly, if there was some operation to lighten skin color, in our racist society many people would probably undergo it. The fact would be socially deplorable, but the procedure would be medical. Likewise, in some genetic engineering future where racism still governs, black couples might well medically intervene to create lighter skinned babies. Yes the fact that would be socially desirable is reprehensible, but it would be medical doctors who did the procedures. In any case, simply stating that such things would be medical interventions doesn't commit us on the ethics or politics of such future medical procedures. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 19:00, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Skln color can be changed exposure to sunlight. This is not a medical procedure. Medicine is the treatment of diseases. That cosmetic surgery on healthy people is medicine is very questionable. Surgery need not be medicine, it can be a form a torture as in the Nazi concentration camps. Ultramarine 19:11, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
That medical doctors do something does not mean that it is medicine, many doctors have participated in torture. And there is nothing that says that a doctor must be involved in genetic engineering procedures, it can just as likely be performed by a lab technician using for example some cells and retrovirus. Ultramarine 19:23, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Blah, blah, Godwin's law, blah, blah.
Why are we even having this silly argumentum ad misericordiam. Yes, Nazi's are bad. Racism is bad. IMO, personal autonomy is better than state impositions (in most cases, but it's complicated). But of course medical procedures are medical (no, sunbathing is not a medical procedure; but gene replacement is). And above all else, Wikipedia is not speculative fiction. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 19:25, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
You have not responded to my arguments. Again, there is nothing that says that gene replacement must be performed by doctors and changing skin color is not a disease. Ultramarine 19:28, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Is your position now that my blood lipid test is non-medical? My flu vaccination is non-medical? Blood-pressure measurement is non-medical? X-rays are non-medical? Dispensing presciptions is non-medical? None of these things are normally performed by M.D.'s. Lab techs, phlebotomists, nurses, pharmacists, etc. are medical personel, y'know. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 19:36, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure exactly how I'm supposed to "respond" to the naming of utterly unrelated facts, whose only sliver of connection is that they occasionally mention medicine or race. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 19:36, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
All the test that you mention concern diseases, thus they are medical. Skin color is not a disease, changing it is not treatment of a disease, thus it is not a medical procedure. As noted, skin color can be changed in other ways and this is not a medical procedure. Ultramarine 19:39, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Here is the Merriam-Webster definition of medicine " the science and art dealing with the maintenance of health and the prevention, alleviation, or cure of disease". No mention of genetic engineering or eugenics. Ultramarine 19:41, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

All forseeable techniques of genetic engineering would involve an MD at some point in the procedure because such techinques would closely resemble current reproductive medicine. Having a child who is an immunological match to an existing child (or sex selection) is not a "disease" treatment for either mother or engineered child, but it is certainly medical. For want to a better word to describe the things done by MDs to people even when it doesn't directly involve disease treatment (e.g. cosmetic surgery), we should continue to use "medical intervention". --Rikurzhen 19:49, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I disagree, medical intervention implies disease. Please give source for the claim that eugenics is part of medicine. Ultramarine 20:17, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Medical intervention may be closely associated with diseases, but clearly we've pointed out examples of medical interventions that do not involve things that are unamibiously "disease" (i.e. cosmetic surgery and PGD). Some qualification is needed on "intervention" because that alone is too open ended (e.g. divine intervention). Off the top of my head -- "human intervention", "technological intervention", "biomedical intervention". --Rikurzhen 00:44, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
This is better, "Finally, genetic engineering may one day be able to directly change alleles, such as those found to influence intelligence or racially identifying traits (such as skin color), making these characteristics a matter of choice." However, I think this is inferior to the earlier version, obviously this would make the current concept of race obsolete and I do not see why this should not be mentioned. In fact, I think this an important argument against those may use the research to advocating for example racial separation, racial purity, and racial violence. Ultramarine 01:00, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
With some level of genetic engineering you could make a person "look like" they are members of a particular race, but to actually make them indistinguishable to any examination you would have to engineering their entire genome. This seems implausible only because parents tend to want children who are related to them (else you could merely adopt). Of course this could also be accomplished by a massive controlled outbreeding program which would erase the distinguishability of racial groups without the aid of genetic engineering. And OTOH, the view point you mention is wrong despite the existence of racial groups merely because IQ is not associated closely enough with race to use race as a good predictor of an individuals' IQ. --Rikurzhen 01:14, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
Most people classify race according to appearance. And you do not need to change the entire genome in order to change appearance. If you do this, then the current concept of race as classified by most people disappear. Ultramarine 01:24, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
I think your proposed short version and arguments for it takes a way too narrow view of medical capabilities with regard to genetics. Yes, most physical traits will depend upon very many genetic combinations: but that is only to say the problem is complex. Why do we have computers if not to sort out complex puzzles? It will be sorted. Irrespective of precisely when it is fully sorted, the actual existing technology is growing steadily so that real choices can now be made about simple cases.
I dont know about suggesting this might be voluntary parental/ compulsory governmental, it could simply say 'matter of choice'. I don't know whether you wish to discuss the ethics of compulsory genetic intervention, but an awful lot of people have, over the years. The science for doing this is already a lot more refined now, than the old methods of simply killing reject adults. There are two ethical issues. making choices for yourslf/ your descendants, and imposing choices on different people's descendants.
The suggested second version 'medical intervention' is somewhat POV also: it implies that current physical traits are 'diseases' which can be cured. Sandpiper 00:09, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

no utilty

sternberg (2005) claims R&I has no utility. we quote him as such. his actual argument is more indirect than this, but his conclusion is described accurately. his actual argument is:

  1. this research has only one possible utility (utilty A)
  2. utility A does not obtain, and my opponent claims to agree so there's no argument
  3. therefore this research actually has no utility
  • where utility A = justification for conservative political positions

i might have misread him somehow, except he just published another criticism were he makes the same argument with a different kind of research and a different "utility A", see the IQ-temperature-skin color correlation article in press at Intelligence. --Rikurzhen 20:06, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Note that his article is called "There are no public-policy implications: A Reply to Rushton and Jensen". There is no claim that research has no utility, only no public policy implications. An in press publication is not very interesting. Ultramarine 20:25, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Um... "in press" means that it has been accepted for publication and will be printed in the next issue. Maybe you're thinking of "submitted" which means mostly nothing.
Policy discussions may be the primary target of his scorn (noteworth that the journal is called "Psychology, public policy, and law" as it seems clear that the results of psychology reserach can have publich policy implications, albiet within the proper confines of the is-out distinction). But he is unambiously questioning the value of doing race and intelligence research. His very next sentence is to accuse R&J of "vaguely cloaked" belief in the inferiority of blacks. The question we quote isn't merely a rhetorical flourish. He concludes the article by saying "Readers will have to decide for themselves whether the problem addressed in Rushton and Jensen's (2005) article represents good taste in the selection of the problem. Would that Rushton and Jensen had devoted their penetrating intellects to other more scientifically and socially productive problems!" That's an unambigious claim that the reserach question of race and intelligence is of no scientific or social value (i.e. no utility). --Rikurzhen 00:59, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
In press is not very interesting since it is not accessible to most people. Regarding "utility", read the abstract "J. P. Rushton and A. R. Jensen (2005) purport to show public-policy implications arising from their analysis of alleged genetic bases for group mean differences in IQ. This article argues that none of these implications in fact follow from any of the data they present. The risk in work such as this is that public-policy implications may come to be ideologically driven rather than data driven, and to drive the research "rather than be driven by the data"."
And that what I read in the article. The article argues that the research is driven by not so subtle ideological motives. When he states that "What good is research of the kind done by Rushton and Jensen supposed to achieve?", he is not questioning the research itself, he is as openly as is possible stating that Rushton and Jensen are trying to promote racism and that this is the "good" that the research is supposed to achieve. Ultramarine 01:15, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
By your reading or mine the two sentences on Sternberg (2005) are highly relevant. There's no reason to delete good (i.e. reveant) content. It belongs either in the utility section where it is now or in the "racism" section that preceeds it. If we're both correct and he's both questioning the utility while covertly accusing R&J of racism then it's doubly good content and we should write it in as such. --Rikurzhen 02:05, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Everybody likes to accuse Jensen of racism, just as they accused Charles Murray. It's easier to accuse others of racism than to study a taboo subject objectively.

Do you realize the extent to which funding is tied to "getting the desired results"? Government, industry and academia do not generally fund pure research. They are looking for research which supports their pre-determined agenda. (Or which makes a discovery they can profit from.)

Who in the world is actually looking for "what is so"? Elabro 21:56, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

The Race and Intelligence research actually does have a utility in that it promotes discussion and debate and makes us more self-examining, which is the hallmark of the kind of free-thinking that has made the great societies of the world great. It gets hairy when you try to put all of the burden for the differences purely on genetics, which imo is both illogical and probably has a political or racist agenda. But on the other hand, if people seriously start to look at and try to scientifically take into account the non-genetic reasons for the differences (assuming there are any, but that's not a wild assumption imo) then we might all eventually come to learn how to raise our kids better and eat and live properly, which has the potential to be quite a raising of the general consciousness, much like people are into LOHAS or similar lifestyles these days. If from the R and I research, scientists could tell me how exactly to raise kids to be intelligent and maximized people who care and contribute to society, I bet there'd be many parents who would listen. A lot of books re that have probably already been published no doubt, but it seems a lot of the gray needs to be sorted out still. --Atrahasis 16:51, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, I think that is one fundamental and vast problem with r and i research, the intro of this article makes their motives quite clear, they seek "practical consequences" rather than objective research, any true motivation for research has long since moved out of the realm of science and into the realm of something much more sinister: politics. I see no practicality nor justification for perpetuating an IQ based caste system, instead of accepting their proposed "consequences" we should be working toward increasing intelligence. This area of "research" also has the effect of dividing society instead of bringing it together, the age old divide and conquer technique. zen master T 05:41, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

duplication

Note to Rikurzhen: Ultramarine did not delete the "linked to specific genes" thing. S/he just move the sentence down a couple paragraphs. I don't really care which place it goes, but we don't need to duplicate it. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 20:46, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

oops! i'll revert myself, but it would be nice to have attribution to that claim. --Rikurzhen 00:59, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

b-w gap shrinking?

good material for Race_and_intelligence_(Average_gaps_among_races)#Is_the_gap_closing? --Rikurzhen 19:43, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Genetic theory

Have any papers been published in journals about a genetic theory of intelligence? Wikipedia doesn't have an article about this, if the red link here means anything.

There is no genetic theory of sports proficiency either.

I think rather there is an agreement that if all environmental factors have been identified that what remains "must be" genetic. So there is a push toward research that might find the genetic cause.

But some of this stuff comes perilously close to Eugenics. Elabro 21:52, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

see IQ#Genetics_vs_environment --Rikurzhen 23:19, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Presentation of bias suspicions too feeble?

I added http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1271 as supporting source for the Bias accusation paragraph (I also a link to that in my copy of The Bell Curve). However, the paragraph looks too weak in comparison to the accusations; the paragraph presents the allegations too feebly. Contrary to the suggestion of this Wikipedia article, it's not just the funding that is in doubt! Harald88 21:14, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

that section is continued in its own article: Race and intelligence (Accusations of bias). also, the article you linked is rather poor, and I would strongly advise against taking its conclusions as well founded or representative of the informed opinion of experts. --Rikurzhen 22:29, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Who you call "experts" I call people that have intentionally created and perpetuated an unscientific dichotomy for the purpose of inducing racism and "IQ" based classism upon society. zen master T 22:42, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
That Wikipedia article also lacks the information about possible more direct observer bias. As no references appear in that other article, all references are centralised on this article, as well as the main points. And although the fair.org article is clearly biased, the presented factual allegations have nothing to do with its bias nor with the "informed opinion of experts" that Rikurzhen has in mind. In such social matters, the correct expert is the political scientist who also covered the Iran-Contra scandal. Harald88 22:58, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps you'd like to point one some parts of the artilce that you think should be incorporated into this article. Unfortunately, the author appears to have lept to the demonstrably false conclusion whenever he interjected. --Rikurzhen 23:01, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Also, before this discussion runs on needlessly, read what Encarta, 52 professors and an APA task force report have to say about the science. --Rikurzhen 23:06, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
I already read most of that and neither their or his opiniated conclusion matters: what is lacking now in the Wikipedia article is the allegation of a direct link between the Bell curve data and researchers who have themselves a bias towards finding the results that they wanted to find. Harald88 23:11, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
The important question is: what results? For example, the swipe at Bouchard's within group heritability estimates is at best anachronistic -- within group heritability is no longer a matter of doubt. Indeed, none of the prominently cited data is in doubt, and the conflict over interpretation is of course the heart of the article. --Rikurzhen 23:15, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
I must get sleep now, maybe I'll have time tomorrow. But I doubt that I am much needed for those details, my main role purpose is to put attention to this point. It's just a matter of fair presentation of arguments. Cheers, Harald88 23:23, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Maybe someone will be able to make something of it, but I doubt this editorial can offer anything that isn't better done by Tucker (2002). --Rikurzhen 01:13, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Rikurzhen, the statement by the 52 scientists is not a convincing statement. I suspect that many more than 52 evolutionary scientists disagree with them. They just see no need to take out an ad in the Wall Street Journal explaining why. For one thing, the statement by the 52 gets "heritability" wrong. I am not prepared to argue their other claims, or yours. But they really do misconstrue and abuse the concept of heritability. Slrubenstein | Talk 23:18, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

The statement should not be convincing on it's own, but only to the extent that it is an accurate summary of expert opinion. This we can confirm by its correspondence with other public statements, text books, encyclopedias, review papers, etc. Thus, it is telling that no contrary statements exist. Your claim about this being an "ad" is incorrect: it's an invited editorial[28]. Their description of how heritability increases when environmental variation diminishes is poorly written, but not misleading. The question of within group heritability of IQ is quite firmly settled: it varies from 40% to 80%, increasing over that range during development. --Rikurzhen 01:13, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Rikurzhen, I stand corrected on the ad thing; thanks. I think what we have here is an NPOV issue. You are quite right that the statement reflects the views of its signatories and, as such, should be included in the article. However, Gould and Lewinton have both criticized the misuse of the concept of "heritability." They were not specifically addressing the 52 (well, they may have, I just do not know). But they have expressed an opposing view on this issue. I think it would be fair -- and NPOV compliant -- to include their view and also state that other scientists, for example Gould and Lewenton, have argued that "heritability' is being misconstrued and misused. The issue is not the calculation of heritability, it is the use of heritability, which accounts for variation within a population, to account for variation between or among populations.By the way, G and L are just examples; I can provide plenty of quotes from textbooks on this matter. Also, bear in mind I am speaking solely of the heritability issue. If we represent the views of the 52, we should represent alternate and opposing views as well. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:20, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh, well I'm familiar with the Gould and Lewontin argument. And if anyone did what G&L claimed, G&L would be right to criticize them. I think if you read the article, especially the Race and intelligence (Culture-only or partially-genetic explanation) article, you'll see that no one (at least now) commits that fallacy. Indeed, the WSJ statement says: There is no definitive answer to why IQ bell curves differ across racial-ethnic groups. The reasons for these IQ differences between groups may be markedly different from the reasons for why individuals differ among themselves within any particular group (whites or blacks or Asians). In fact, it is wrong to assume, as many do, that the reason why some individuals in a population have high IQs but others have low IQs must be the same reason why some populations contain more such high (or low) IQ individuals than others. In the sub-article we make this point with a long quotation from The Bell Curve qutoting Lewotin's seed example to show that all parties agree that Lewontin is right. --Rikurzhen 19:30, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I guess you could say charitably that G&L's criticism is anachronistic, but Jensen called it a straw man[29]. --Rikurzhen 19:34, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I will check it out. Given that people made this mistake in the past, it is important that the article make this clear. If you are satisfied about that, great! Slrubenstein | Talk 22:44, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, there's never been any serious disagreement about that point in the technical literature. For example, "Group racial and social class differences are first of all individual differences [i.e., they are the statistical averages of individual measurements], but the causes of the group differences may not be the same as of the individual differences" (Jensen 1970, p.154). --Rikurzhen 22:51, 15 December 2005 (UTC)