Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 2

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For what it is worth, I do agree with both Ericd and Tannin, at least as Tannin represents the debate. I believe that all human beings (absent some neurological trauma) are capable of complex symbolic thought, and that this capacity is a product of our evolution -- beyond that, I think any definition of intelligence is culture-bound; I also think races are real and important but not in any biological or transcendent or essential way, only as social constructions.

But I also know there are many people out there, including people with PhD.s in psychology and biology, who disagree with us. As I mentioned to Ericd before, if we deleted this article, someone would just write an article presenting races, intelligence, and their corelation as fact.

What we need is an article that is truly NPOV -- which is as important when we happen to be right as when we are wrong. I do not think that this article should try to answer the question "is race real" or "what is intelligence" or "Does education increase intelligence" of "does income increase intelligence." What it should do is provide an informative account of a debate among scientists and others (a debate which, of course, does raise questions like what is intelligence and does it correlate more with genes or socialization -- my point is that the debate itself should be the focus of the article). Tannin, I especially like your comments above about psychological tests for intelligence and I really hope you will put much of that content into the article. Slrubenstein

Naturally people will disagree with you if their invested in making a living sucking state-sector science funds off to 'study' crap like this. Gary

"In early US IQ testing, Americans of African descent, Jews, and other recent immigrants from Europe, were assigned significantly lower average scores (mean of 85) than "white" people (mean of 100), with "Hispanics" somewhere in between. These studies were later rejected as badly flawed for a number of reasons, notably because they did not control for the relationship between IQ and education level or income. Since higher intelligence certainly correlated with better education and higher income - and indeed it is in part defined as the ability to have an education and earn income - the lack of a correction for these factors made the earlier studies scientifically useless. However, some later studies in the same tradition have attempted to make corrections for the lack of control; certain of these make the measured IQ gap only slightly smaller; provided one ignores the vast conceptual problems posed by IQ testing and simply examines the detailed methodological isues, these studies suggest that a significant gap does exist, but, curiously, find no significant IQ gap between "white", "Jewish" and "Asian" people. These studies have received an extremely skeptical reception in the scientific community, partly because of methodological problems in studies in the early 20th century which purported to show large IQ deficits in Irish and southern European immigrants to the United States"

This paragraph is fuzzy about the method. From a statistical POV this kind of studies led to Multiple Correlation Analysis, it would be interresting to see the coeff. for the ethnic group.

It's worth to notice also that recent immigrants are not representative of an ethnic groups. Recent immigrants were generally not members of the upper-class in their country of origin. The social bias is obvious. Ericd 17:08 Feb 10, 2003 (UTC)


This article needs subheadings to break it up into logical sections.

I agree, although I do not have the time right now and I wouldn't want to make major changes (even if only in the organization of the article) without getting Ericd and Tannin's imput, or others. But I would suggest:
  1. A brief account of the controversy (basic facts about Burt, Jensen, and Murry & Hernstein)
  2. A very very brief mention of controversies about "race" and a link to that article
  3. "Intelligence"
    1. debates over the reality of "g"
    2. issues in measuring "g"
  4. the realtionship between heredity and IQ scores
    1. what does correlation mean?
    2. what does heritability mean?
  5. the relationship between socioeconomic status and IQ scores

What do others think? Does anyone want to start on this? Slrubenstein

I rewrote parts of the introduction, I'll explain why: I deleted the following: "Since ancient times, intelligence (or "wisdom") has been considered a valuable attribute of human beings, and many writers have described how this attribute may be found or bestowed or developed." because it is fluff -- what doe we mean, "since ancient times?" And valued by whom? Socrates was wise and they killed him. I deleted the following "Many scholars, such as anthropologists and psychologists have described or speculated upon a cause-and-effect relationship between race and intelligence, most frequently suggesting that skin color correlates with (or "determines") one's intelligence level." only because I think the rest of the intro makes this clear (I have no substantive problem with the sentence). I replaced both of these sentences with a well-informed and historically accurate and more specific account, focusing on the West and detailing changing debates that started in the 17th century and continued into the 19th century -- more informative than "since ancient times" I think.

I deleted this "Towards the end of the 20th century, there has arisen considerable debate among natural, behavioral, and social scientists, as to the reality of this relationship." since it is wrong, the debate began in the early 20th century and I made this clear. I deleted "Some of this debate veers off into social science and politics, focusing on the extent to which race and intelligence are meaningful terms, with some writers rejecting the concept of "races" entirely (more on this aspect of the debate at Race)." because the "veering off" is editorializing and bizarre -- the subject of the sentence includes "social scientists" yet the predicate has them "veering off" into social science -- how is that a "veer?" Moreover, the question of "the extent to which race and intelligence are meaningful terms" is in no way a "veering off," it is a central methodological and theoretical question to the scientific issue at hand.

I also reinserted "important" before genetic differences; this is vague, I admit, but incontestable Slrubenstein

I see work on this article has been mostly dormant for about half a year. That's too bad, because it's going to need a lot of work to get it up to par. As we learned on the Race page (which is finally a pretty damn good article), topics like this require an incredible amount of threshing out until just the right tone, balance and detail are achieved. The hand of Slrubenstein is apparent in large blocks here, and that means the article has much good material to build on and riff off of. But as earnest as Slr is in his efforts to maintain NPOV, true balance awaits the contributions of some reasonable person coming from a distinctly different angle. I'd be a decent candidate for this myself, but I haven't been actively studying these questions for quite a while now, and my powers of recall have been feeble of late. So, if there's anyone out there with some serious study in this field under your belt, and you don't reflexively dismiss people like Arthur Jensen as perpetrators of "bad science", please step up and weave the facts as you see them into this piece. At the very least, The Voice of Gould needs either strong counterweighting or liberal trimming. JDG 06:02, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I'm going to edit the second paragraph because I find it to be difficult to understand in parts. I look forward to improvements from others. Rikurzhen

Slrubenstein, I like your modifications, but I'm not sure I understand the second sentence of the second paragraph: "Many continue to use "race" as a biologically meaningful and useful term... (see Race)." Especially at two points: (1) "genetic similarities within races are mutable" -- do you mean that the genetic properties of races are accidental (i.e. not necessary, such that an African need not necessarily have dark skin)? If so I agree, but mutable in this case is trivially true, since any inherited trait can be changed by mutation. (2) "the relationship between inherited traits and learned traits is either tenuous or complex" -- are you talking about multifactorial traits, which have both genetic and environmental determinants? If so, wouldn't it be better to say "many traits have both genetic and environmental determinants." Rikurzhen

I changed accidental back to mutable for two reasons. First, the major contribution of Darwin was to conceive of species, subspecies, and races as statistical and not essential (an unchanging) things. "Mutable" does not necessarily refer to genetic mutation, it is a good English word for "changing" and if you feel that that word would be better, you cahn change mutable to changable. The second reason is, the differences between species, between subspecies, and, for those who use the term, races, is not accidental. Darwin's whole argument -- one still accepted, though added to, by the modern synthesis -- is that these differences are not accidental, they are products of natural selection. It is variation within a population that is "accidental" (or may be accidental, or, for Darwin at least, incidental) -- that is, differences among individuals. But this sentence is not talking about differences among individuals, it is talking about differences among races -- so "accidental" is wrong, and "mutable" is right.
By accidental, I meant Accidental properties. So I meant, those properties of races that are not essential to races, which is what I thought you meant by mutable: the major races could continune to exist even if their accidential properties changed. Albiet these properties may be biologically meaningful. Does this need further clarification? Rikurzhen
The fact that some inherited traits are incidental to one's "race" is important (though not accidental -- I am thinking of blood-type in many cases, or wet versus dry ear-wax); so is the fact that some mutations are neutral in the sence of being neither adaptive nor maladaptive. But this valid but very nuanced point of yours belongs, I think, in some other article -- perhaps race, but even biologists and physical anthropologists who donot use the term race recognize this, so maybe it is even more suited to the articles on evolution or population genetics (with a link, in this article). Slrubenstein
as for "tenuous and complex" this may just be a matter of semantics. I think most biologists would have no objection to your formulation. But phenotype has other determinations, so to be accurate you should right, "have a variety of determinants, among them both genetic and environmental." Nevertheless, most debates over "is the concept of race inherantly racist" hinge not so much on whether racial differences are "nature" or "nurture" (although this is how the debate is often presented in the popular media) -- it is whether some traits which are highly heritable (e.g. skin color) correlate positively with traits which are not as highly heritable (e.g. intelligence, moral values), and if so, why -- in other words, the issue at stake is not whether some trait has both heritable and environmental determinants (although to be clear I recognize that this is an important part of the debate), it is a little more complex. Slrubenstein

Stevertigo, I'm afraid that as it is the first paragraph isn't NPOV and if read literally isn't true. I'm moving it here with an explanation below. (1) There are still many researchers who give considerable merit to the premise that the average intelligence of individuals in different races are not equal. Although as it stands this article hardly even states their position. (Not your fault.) (2) "Superficial distincion" could refer to surface traits or trivial traits or both. However, this is not true. Consider the association of the sickle cell allele beta globin, which is associated with African populations. The sickle cell phenotype is neither constrained to the surface nor trivial. (3) There must be hundreds or thousands of loci in the human genome that demonstrate non-random distributions among "races," so seemingly melanin distribution in skin and the epicanthic fold are not the "only" race associated physiologies. Consider for example the associations between certain disease propensities and races.Rikurzhen

A relationship between race and intelligence was until recently given substantial merit among Western European scientists. It is now largely considered to be a relic of unscientific thinking. In light of recent DNA studies, the concept of "race" has been definitively and substantially confined to a largely superficial distinction-- its only physiological meanings being: to vary the degrees by which melanin blocks the human body's ability to process vitamin D from sunlight. In the case of Asian peoples, the epicanthic fold developed as protection from snowblindness, as they first migrated north into northeastern Russia and Asia over 30,000 years ago.


Your claims are incorrect, and exagerrated. Races do exist, and they do have important genetic differences which result in differing phenotypes. Now, the 19th century concept of races has certainly been demolished, sure. Back then they viewed different human races almost as different species. (This has recently been discussed in other articles.) But the modern scientific 21st century concept of races is much more subtle, and fact based, and should not be dismissed due to political correctness. One we let political ideology prevent us from discussing a scientific topic, we are in a situation of censorship. RK 21:55, Nov 2, 2003 (UTC)
I agree. That's why I removed it. Rikurzhen 07:59, Nov 3, 2003 (UTC)

I may have gotten the description of the decision time tests backwards. Can anyone confirm my description?

In the section "IQ Gap Among Races", the following sentence appears: "It is difficult to imagine that people could be motivated during one part of the test but motivated during the other."

Is there a missing "not" in there?

Ericd rightly restored a passage someone had deleted without explanation. It was not I who deleted it. Nevertheless, now that I have read that paragraph carefully, I believe it ought to be deleted. As far as I can understand it, the paragraph makes two claims: that all people are stupid, and that this claim is not a scientific claim. Given that the first claim is unattributed (just who are these people, anyway?) and given that half the paragraph is dedicated to explaining that the theory hasn't and may not be able to be tested, I think that the whole paragraph is at best a joke and perhaps a mockery of the article. I certainly don't think it adds anything of value. Given that Ericd just restored it, I won't delete it just yet. But can anyone give me a good argument for keeping it? I think it is embarrassing! Slrubenstein

last paragraph should go; others are hard to read

That last paragraph really should go.

Even for someone familiar with a lot of the of the source material, this article seems hard to read. Does anyone one else think it could use some simplification -- maybe an opening summary? Some short and direct statements about what the central questions/positions are? --Rikurzhen 09:28, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)