Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 7

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

Archive 1

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Archive 5

Proposal 1

I rescued this from the otherwise well-intentioned archiving process, because we are still lacking any kind of closure on this debate. (If I'm wrong we should remove the issue from the todo-list.)Arbor 20:20, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

No problem. I moved it back to the top of this page so that it is in approximately the same sequence with the other parts as it was before I made the move. P0M 23:42, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Here's my proposal --Rikurzhen 03:03, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

Problems with the current article include:

length is too long for the average reader
difficulty of material is higher than desired
back-and-forth arguments sound like a two-person debate rather than a one-person narrative

Potential solutions:

Implementation:

Move lengthy/detailed sections from current article to sub-articles
Use Race and intelligence (XXX) naming convention to maintain relationship between articles
Aim for generalizations when possible; use simple language; keep it short
Everything discussed in the summary article should be backed up in more detail in the subarticles
Summary article must be written with single-narrator voice; not argumenative with self
Summary article should rely on joint statements and review articles whenever possible; I have a copy of the 1980s survey results which may help, plus the APA and WSJ statements
Summary article should be representative of content of detailed article; single reports of exceptions to generalizations should get limited coverage
Summary article should not try to solve problems that aren't yet solved; for example, existing admixture analysis and adoption studies are pretty hopelessly unable to answer any questions -- so don't dwell on them

Sounds very nice but I am somewhat doubtful that anyone of us are energetic enough to do it. I atill propose we begin by breaking out gene/environment section and see if it works out. Ultramarine 04:01, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I was thinking specifically of breaking out the Culture-only or partially-genetic explanation? mega-section when I wrote this up. (Other top-level sections are small enough at the moment.) But if we can't meet these standards, then such a move would not be worth it -- it wouldn't solve the problem we set out to fix. --Rikurzhen 05:07, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

I can see why a Summary style article would be attractive, and many of the points of this article would be better served with a less complete and neutral presentation. I would like to see such a summary very much. However, I think the present article is good enough. I vote to keep it as it is, and instead discuss how we can move to Featured Article Candidacy speedily. Arbor 18:43, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I was originally weak opposed to this line of change, but wanted to offer an alternative that I wouldn't oppose, so I have no problem dropping the idea. If I'm reading correctly, Ultramarine seems opposed for practical reasons. We can drop it. --Rikurzhen 20:37, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

Rather than breaking the article into pieces, would it be possible to re-arrange material to layer details from summaries near the top to details near the bottom? I think moving the opinions section near the top has helped a bit with that. --Rikurzhen 21:41, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)

copied from peer review page by Rikurzhen 04:33, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

This is simply way too long as-is and is many times the recommended point where articles may be considered too long (going above that requires more and more substantiation that the increased reading time is warranted; the larger the article, the more substantiation that is needed). Much summarizing and spinning off of detail is needed per point 6 of the FA criteria. See also Wikipedia:Summary style. --mav 04:06, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I did some calculations. The article is about 2X longer than recommended (not the 5X as the actual KB size would suggest). So I think I'll change my vote to Weak Support for breaking out section 3, because this will probably get us to a reasonable size. --Rikurzhen 04:27, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

I made a first shot at it with a lot of help from MS Word's auto summarize feature. In theory we need to keep it down to three paragraphs. --Rikurzhen 05:41, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

So what it lacks in subtlty, I think it makes up in brevity. The three paragraph are even somewhat coherent (1) consensus, (2) pro-culture only, (3) pro-partly genetic. --Rikurzhen 07:03, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

Success -- pasted into MS Word, the unformatted text of this article is now just 15 pages, which is the recommended limit. --Rikurzhen 17:50, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

Organization

I think this article has reached the saturation point with regard to new material, at least until we do some fine-level adjustments to compress or re-arrange material. For example, I noticed nutrition comes up a lot in various sections. Does it need its own section? Perhaps a section on pre-natal and peri-natal environmental factors? --Rikurzhen 06:37, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

Yes... we definintely need a section on non-genetic factors that have biological effects on the brain/IQ. This would include micronutrients, breast-feeding, heavy metals, drugs, etc. --Rikurzhen 18:49, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

Racism?

I think some people think even the slightest hints that not all non-white people might be perfect in every way imaginable are racism. — JIP | Talk 17:23, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think yo have it the wrong way round - given the underlying assumption that balck people are inferior, (a) people quickly latch on to proof for their own biases, and (b), given (a) people with any professional integrity (or a desire to be taken seriously by anyone other than the bigots) who delve into this area do their best to give the impression that they are not doing (a)... regardless of whether they are doing (a) or not (cf., the Bell Curve). Guettarda 17:36, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I was referring to the VfD discussion. — JIP | Talk 18:09, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Even the parts of this article that are non-controversial to researchers are unknown/misunderstood by the public. One annecdotal study I've read about claims that even intelligent and educated people will respond viscerally to breaking of taboos, unwilling to entertain arguments against their inital position. Discussion of this topic breaks a lot of taboos. --Rikurzhen 18:21, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

The psychologist Philip Tetlock has argued that the mentality of taboo--the belief that certain ideas are so dangerous that it is sinful even to think them--is not a quirk of Polynesian culture or religious superstition but is ingrained into our moral sense. In 2000, he reported asking university students their opinions of unpopular but defensible proposals, such as allowing people to buy and sell organs or auctioning adoption licenses to the highest-bidding parents. He found that most of his respondents did not even try to refute the proposals but expressed shock and outrage at having been asked to entertain them. They refused to consider positive arguments for the proposals and sought to cleanse themselves by volunteering for campaigns to oppose them. ... The psychology of taboo is not completely irrational. In maintaining our most precious relationships, it is not enough to say and do the right thing. We have to show that our heart is in the right place and that we don't weigh the costs and benefits of selling out those who trust us. If someone offers to buy your child or your spouse or your vote, the appropriate response is not to think it over or to ask how much. The appropriate response is to refuse even to consider the possibility. Anything less emphatic would betray the awful truth that you don't understand what it means to be a genuine parent or spouse or citizen. (The logic of taboo underlies the horrific fascination of plots whose protagonists are agonized by unthinkable thoughts, such as Indecent Proposal and Sophie's Choice.) Sacred and tabooed beliefs also work as membership badges in coalitions. To believe something with a perfect faith, to be incapable of apostasy, is a sign of fidelity to the group and loyalty to the cause. Unfortunately, the psychology of taboo is incompatible with the ideal of scholarship, which is that any idea is worth thinking about, if only to determine whether it is wrong. [1]

Cause and Effect in Language

I consider it subtly yet profoundly racist to frame the effects of the alleged discrepancy repeatedly and exclusively in racial terms with the apparent goal being to confuse effect with cause. There are a myriad of different ways of describing the alleged discrepancy's effects, but that does not prove cause. To be neutral this acticle and subject should describe the alleged discrepancy's effects in terms that aren't also possible causes (or use all such terms equally), we need to decouple/disassociate cause and effect at a language usage level. I am the only one that finds this repeated use of subtle yet profound language propaganda on wikipedia and elsewhere to be very suspicious? It is a master key that potentially unlocks everything. zen master T 19:09, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Dude. We've had this conversation. That's a conspiracy theory. We present what's in the published literature; not what we think up ourselves. --Rikurzhen 19:51, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

Then why above did you simply repeat the same misuse of language (effect implying cause) when I pointed it out? You seem to be completely ignoring and deflecting away from this point? You have already given yourself away in the manner in which you respond. Even if we dubiously assume race is a factor for this alleged discrepancy to be neutral shouldn't we present the effects in non racial terms? The goal seems to be to use endless repetition and emphasis on race in describing the discrepancy's effects for the purpose of wearing people down into assuming effect is cause. That is the most racist thing I've ever heard of. "conspiracy theory" itself is another separate language misuse repetition. Either this article and many "published literature" sources have cause and effect needlessly associated through a misuse of language or they do not. zen master T 20:12, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

But of course they don't confuse cause and effect because they are people trained all their lives to figure out such problem and they are applying the methods of science to do just that on the question of why there are statistical differences in the distrubtion of IQ scores between races. The entire section 4 of this article is dedicated to determining cause and effect. I know of no other way to explain this better than I have already tried. It's plain and clear to me. Can anyone else help explain this? --Rikurzhen 20:15, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

You just did it again, you presented the discrepancy exclusively in racial terms when it just as easily could have been presented in economic, nutritional, or environmental terms. You fail to note there are statistical differences with all those other ways of looking at the effects of this discrepancy too. Why do you repeatedly present the effects of this discrepancy exclusively in racial terms? zen master T 20:33, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sorry -- typo -- section 3 Culture-only or partially-genetic explanation? -- is the section which examines these possibilities. Doesn't that make sense? They are examined (sections 3.1-3.8), compared (3.9), miscellaeous extra theories are mentioned (3.10) and overall none are found sufficient to be called a consensus explantion (section 3.11). --Rikurzhen 21:11, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

Rikurzhen, you keep playing psychological language games. You and the article do present alternative causes for the discrepancy but they are always presented as causes, you never describe the discrepancy's effects using terms from any alternative cause/interpretation. Instead, you repeatedly, to the point of propagandizing, describe the discrepancy's effects only in racial terms for the apparent purpose of wearing people down into errantly assuming that effect equals cause. How many people have attended this psychological misuse of language propaganda skunkworks factory/university? it must be quite few? What is your motivation for doing what you do? It seems infinitely evil to me. zen master T 22:39, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

All of us! Everyone with a PhD is secretly conspiring to use propaganda to obfuscate this issue. From textbook writers to IQ researchers to the staunchest critics of IQ researchers. And my motivation? PURE EVIL!!! I work on Wikipedia for the love of EVIL and obfuscation; that's why I meticulously add citations when I write and spend lots of time consulting sources -- so no one can verify my work -- propaganda!! obfuscate!!! EVIL!!!! ... enough of this ... someone else will have to answer your questions --Rikurzhen 22:54, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

Zen Master, Rikurzhen is a model of neutrality and politeness, working on a complex article. I think it's beyond politeness to make accusations of propagandizing and of having evil motivations. This article is a model Wikipedia article that is impeccably referenced, and in the recent VFD was only opposed by about 4 of the 40 or so voters. --Nectarflowed ^T 22:57, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

He is a model of propaganda and misdirection as far as this article is concerned at least. Why won't either of you two comment on or try to refute the fact that it's not neutral to present this alleged IQ discrepancy's effects exclusively in racial terms? You always just respond to that point with a question that again frames the discrepancy's effects in terms of race, why? You are obviously trying to perpetuate psychologically damaging language by needlessly commingling cause and effect. zen master T 01:51, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

my answer ... again ... written ... very ... slowly: --Rikurzhen 02:50, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

the fundamental reason: It would be illogical ... to have written about this topic ... starting from the question of ... how intelligence is related to a factor ... other than race ... because there is no consensus among scholars ... as seen from numerous sources ... about why races differ in average IQ. The published consensus is ... that no simple obvious factors ... account for racial differences in IQ. Thus ... starting with some factor ... other than race ... would have not lead to a meaningful discussion ... on this socially significant topic.
the proximal reason: As Wikipedia edtiors ... our job is to act like reporters ... describing what exists in the world. a debate about race and intelligence ... specifcally about race and intelligence ... exists in the world. Scholars in the world ... approaches the topic ... from the question of race and intelligence. Thus ... we are duty bound ... to neutrally present this article ... in a way ... that represents what exists in the world ... to present race and intelligence.

You are a master at psychological language games I now see judging from these two paragraphs (nice use of ellipses), also your buddies sure know how to fill in space below. If there is "no consensus amongst scholars" (your words) then this article should not frame the discrepancy factor in terms of race. You yet again tried to confuse cause and effect (factor = effect), the obviousness of your repetition gives you away. Repeatedly presenting this issue in the manner you do using psychological word game trickery propaganda is obviously racist, just admit the truth. zen master T 06:13, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

If I am the "buddy" who fills in space, all I can tell you is that I have tried to make as clear to you as I can the way I think about these issues. I was trying to be helpful to you. You are not obligated to read what I have written, and the space is free. If you have objections to what I have said and can express yourself clearly enough for me to understand you may even succeed in educating me. P0M 06:40, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The way you think/present this issue is racist. You are intentionally or unintentionally confusing cause and effect. Because "race" is a possible cause that word should not be used to describe the discrepancy's effects. Why has everyone in this thread and the thread above responded to my points with just more and more repetition that frames the issue as a "racial" discrepancy? zen master T 23:26, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Look at my recent posting. Particularly look my postings for 3 May, 17 May, 9 June, and 14 June. I don't even ***believe*** in [race] or [races]. And I have been arguing that even if people in the general population started thinking about the problem addressed in this article because during World War II (or whenever it was when they started doing lots of IQ testing on troops) and observed a significant disparity between Black recruits and White recruits, the more the results are refined the smaller the measured difference between [races] has become. It remains to be seen whether I am right and the difference eventually drops below the level of statistical significance or whether others are guessing right and there turns out to be a genetic component (e.g., it might turn out that Chinese have more of the smartness gene or Whites have more of the stupidity gene, so to speak). I could go on, but I'll end up citing all my own postings, which would not be very helpful.

You assert that I confuse cause and effect. I'm not sure what you mean. I assume that you think I believe that race causes intelligence. But if to say that is to reverse cause and effect then the right idea would be that "intelligence causes race." I think that you surely can't mean what you seem to be saying.

Genetically, you and I are different from my horse. I am pretty sure that the reason I am smarter than she is mostly depends on the difference in our genetics, just as I'm sure that no matter how hard I train I'd never beat her in a mile race. I'm willing to assume, for the sake of argument, that all human beings have exactly the same genetic intelligence. Then the question becomes, why is Moran not another Einstein? There are a large number of known factors that could have reduced my intelligence. My mother could have been indulging in lots of drugs during my gestation, the oxygen supply to my brain could have been cut off for a while during delivery, I could have been dropped on my head, I could have been systematically abused by toxic parents, or, I could have been systematically deprived by a society that denied me equal nutrition, equal educational opportunities, equal self image, etc., etc.

So maybe your idea is that "treating someone as a [white Race] person is supposed to be treated causes the person to become a dull [white Race] person, but people think that being a [white Race] person causes the person to be dull and deserve to be treated accordingly," and that "If you treated a [white race] person entirely as if he were a [Chinese race] person, that would cause him/her to be bright."

The funny thing is that the position outlined immediately above is my position -- with one additional caveat required. I personally do not make any claim to know anything about the innate intelligence of human beings. My favorite teacher thought everyone has exactly the same intellectual potential. Some people disagree with her, assuming that there is a normal distribution curve with lots of people of moderate intelligence in the middle, Newton and Einstein and a few others on the high end and Beavis on the low end. Some people think the whole Newton family was brighter than every member of the Moran family. Some people think the average intelligence of the [English race] is higher than the average intelligence of the [Irish race]. (Well, with Newton weighing in, they might have a big advantage.) But I don't know, and I don't pretend to know. All I know is that it is possible to really mess up a person's intellectual capabilities by doing a whole catalog full of negative things -- from starting the kid out as a crack baby to traumatizing the kid as a college student put in a calculus class taught by a heartless nerd. Now tell me what I've got wrong. P0M 02:23, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

My "cause and effect" point was about a misuse of language in the presentation of this subject. Every time this alleged discrepancy is mentioned in the article its effects are described in racial terms, never in nutritional or environmental terms. Such alternative explanations (nutrition etc) are mentioned in the artcle as possible alternative causes (then pretty much discounted but that is a separate issue). The way this subtle language propaganda works is repeatedly and exclusively describing the issue in racial terms for the purpose of tricking the brain into thinking about the issue only in racial terms when there are numerous other/better ways of thinking about the exact same alleged discrepancy. The confusion exists because the word "race" in this context is both a way of describing the alleged discrepancy and also a possible cause for it, which is needlessly ambiguous. To remain scientific an article should present a subject neutrally before concluding anything about that subject (which means don't use ambiguous language or descriptive language that is also a possible conclusion). When someone asks what about nutrition as a possible cause the propagandist would repeatedly respond with something like "but studies show nutrition only explains part of the racial discrepancy". Do you see it now? Why is the word "race" the only adjective used in the article to describe this alleged discrepancy when there are many possibilities (even when describing other causes)? To flip my point around, why doesn't this article ever have a sentence that looks something like "race may not be a factor in the nutritional discrepancy"? The alleged discrepancy is the same regardless of the different ways of thinking about the issue and the words chosen to present it, wikipedia however is required to use neutral unambiguous words. zen master T 06:12, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

first, don't break people's text. second, substitute sex for race and height for intelligence and ask yourself whether you think your argument still makes any sense. sex is not the effect of sex differences in height. race is not the effect of race differences intelligence. sex is a prima facia cause of sex differences in height. also, sex hormones are a prima facia cause of sex differences in height. likewise, "race" (or racism) is a prima facia cause of race differences in intelligence. before experiments were done, many other factors were prima facia possible causes of race differences in intelligence. ... so to complete the analogy. sex is a significant independent factor in the matrix of associations with human height. race is a significant independent factor in the matrix of associations with human intelligence. we could have any number of articles that begin with some factor and describe its connection with height or intelligence. but to ignore race's connection with intelligence (or sex's influence with height) is impermissible given the huge literature built around the topic and the obvious significance of racial or gender stratrification on each variable. --Rikurzhen 07:11, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

To put what Rikurzhen said in another way, suppose you were looking at the levels of intelligence of all the people in Australia (for instance). You note that some people are less intelligent than others, and you want to understand why so you can prevent people from having problems in life. You look at pre-natal challenges (mother on drugs, etc.), birthing problems, post-natal nutrition, etc., etc. Would you, on an a priori basis, exclude consideration of the possibility that intelligence levels run in families, i.e., that there is an inherited component to intelligence? And would you, on an a priori basis, forbid yourself and everybody else from looking at the possibility that intelligence runs in clans or in even larger groups of people with some degree of shared inheritance? A parallel example would be an investigation of malnutrition in school children. You might examine the children for parasites, you might examine them for lactose intolerance, and in fact you might end up with a whole list of possible causes of malnutrition. But would it be responsible to rule out, from the very beginning, the possibility that parents were failing to feed these kids an adequate diet? You might find that every parent did provide a very adequate diet, that the contribution value of deliberate underfeeding is 0. But you wouldn't know that unless you realized it was a possibility and then checked it out. If you are responsible for curing malnutrition, you can't just say, "Oh, no, the parents of our fair country would never be too stingy or too poor to fail to provide their children with an adequate diet. Malnutrition must be caused by some of these other factors." You cannot rule out a factor unless you study it. P0M 07:15, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Responding to Rikurzhen above, breaking text is a must when people are unnecessarily long winded, I was responding directly to Patrick's statement about not understanding my "cause and effect" point. Race is not a "prima facia" cause of difference in intelligence, it can't be given at least partial alternative explanations and the fact that it changes over time, and even if it were an encyclopedia should still present the issue neutrally which means not jumping to conclusions and avoiding ambiguous and potentially confusing language. Conclusions should be based on fact rather than on subtle yet profoundly ambiguous psychologically confusing language. You have curiously avoided this point of mine, about the need to present this issue using neutral language no matter what, even if we dubiously assume for the sake of argument your conclusion is the correct one. All your rhetoric seems to be repetition in support of maintaining this profound misuse of confusing language (you keep digging a bigger, more obvious hole). In the article there is research that in every culture worldwide less "dominant" people have lower intelligence than the "dominant" people which disproves the entire premise of a causation between race and intelligence, especially considering the same "dominant" or more intelligence "race" in one country is a less "dominant" "race" in another country. The fact that nutrition has more to do with height than gender should tell you something about genetic differences. zen master T 07:21, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

you seem unwilling to accept our explanation for why, fundamentally, research has happened as it has. but you have no choice but to recognize the proximal matter that your personal opinions don't constitute a source for changing this article... copied from above: --Rikurzhen 07:39, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

the proximal reason: As Wikipedia edtiors our job is to act like reporters describing what exists in the world. a debate about race and intelligence specifcally about race and intelligence exists in the world. Scholars in the world approaches the topic from the question of race and intelligence. Thus we are duty bound to neutrally present this article in a way that represents what exists in the world to present race and intelligence.

put another way, WP:NOR ... that should mark the end of this --Rikurzhen 07:43, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

Huh? You are using circular logic. A debate about "race and intelligence" does indeed exist in the world, but it also exists under different names such as "nutrition and intelligence", "economics and intelligence". Scholars most certainly do not uniformly present the issue in "race and intelligence" terms and they certainly don't use repetition to confuse effect with cause. Research has "happened" but as wikipedia editors our job is to present that research neutrally which means avoiding ambiguous and confusing language. Just because one "race" tests worse than another is not proof of causality, you have to describe this discrepancy using neutral adjectives before you can begin arriving at a conclusion scientifically. All conclusions formed on top of a foundation of ambiguous and subtly confusing language are tainted. I repeat, why should we use non neutral language to present this subject even if we assume (dubiously) your conclusion is the correct one? You seem to be deflecting away from an analysis on the (lack of) clarity and neutrality of language? zen master T 08:16, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This article is about the connections between race and intelligence, which is not synonymous with "nutrition and intelligence." Let me complete a sentence you wrote above: "When someone asks what about nutrition as a possible cause [of the racial discrepancy], the propagandist would repeatedly respond with something like "but studies show nutrition only explains part of the racial discrepancy". The subject of discussion is the racial discrepancy.--Nectarflowed ^T 08:27, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

An unexplained disparity does exist, "race" is just one way of looking at it (usage of the word "discrepancy" in this context is also not appropriate now that I think about it). Just because this "discrepancy" can be literally described in racial terms is not evidence for any conclusion (you have intentionally confused effect with cause). If nutrition is the biggest/only factor then this "discrepancy" is instead best known as a "nutrition distribution disparity". Within a "nutrition distribution disparity" some "races" are going to test worse than others, cause and effect. But you assume/hint the cause of the "discrepancy" when you are describing its effect (the word for both is the same: "race"). Just because the title does literally describe one way of looking at the "discrepancy" doesn't make it neutral, especially considering you like to combine language confusion with repetition. zen master T 08:49, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

your comments are completely unsupported by the facts/opinions found in published sources acceptable for use in wikipedia. you're wholly ignoring both our explanations and the material already found in the article. nothing productive is going on here. --Rikurzhen 08:59, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

How can that be true when I am simply analyzing your and the article's use of language? "acceptable for use" does not mean let's perpetuate a misuse of language. Neutrality is the prime directive of wikipedia. zen master T 09:07, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Let me reply to your previous comment. The discrepancy under discussion is the discrepancy between racial groups. "An unexplained disparity does exist [between racial groups], "race" is just one way of looking at it." In order to divide the population according to race, you divide it according to race. Dividing by "nutrition distribution," on the otherhand, would have members of the races spread throughout the divisions --something which does not occur when you divide the population according to race.

The advantage here of dividing the population according to race is that it lets us compare them and try to identify the factors creating the discrepancy between them. It is uncontroversial that there is an IQ gap between the races; that is supported by overwhelming amounts of data. Race and intelligence research wants to know why that gap is there. --Nectarflowed ^T

Dividing the population by race is just one way of dividing the population, nutrition distribution is another. The unexplained disparity is the same regardless of the numerous ways the issue can be framed (the disparity is abstract, outside of the adjectives used to describe it). Some of that data you mention is just one way of describing the effect of the disparity, it does not prove cause. Why do you keep repeating provably errant language? There is numerous data that indicates "race" is a non factor in intelligence. Can you comment on my point about studies that show a disparity worldwide between the "dominant" "race" of one country vs other "races" within that country? You don't seem to be familiar with or support the scientific method, shouldn't we follow that here? Shouldn't Wikipedia strive for a higher neutrality where possible? If we assume, dubiously, that your conclusion of cause is the correct one why don't you want people to truly understand and believe it because facts were presented, rather than pressume it merely because confusing and misdirecting language was used? The only plausible answer I can come up with to that question is that you are a racist propagandist (please correct me if I am wrong). zen master T 18:27, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

please correct me if I am wrong YOU'RE WRONG... about most of the facts you just claimed. The unexplained disparity is the same regardless of the numerous ways the issue can be framed instead, the disparty is very different depending on how the issue is framed. There is numerous data that indicates "race" is a non factor in intelligence that's the opposite of the scientific consensus which existed as long ago as 1994. an argument predicated on false propositions may be logically valid, but it's not true. the reason your POV is not seen in the research literature is that it has little connection to available evidence. neither IQ researchers nor their critics are confused in the way that you seem to be. your opinions thus constitute original research of the worst kind. --Rikurzhen 18:39, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

Point me to info on scientific studies that show race is the cause of the disparity? There is not even consensus that the IQ tests are an accurate or objective measure of intelligence. There are numerous studies on a disparity of pre natal care between people of different socio-economic backgrounds (lack of universal health care) so how can "race" be the only factor? There can't be a consensus or else no one would have valid arguments for at least partial alternative explanations. Just because the language propaganda started in 1994 doesn't prove cause. You failed again to respond to my other points, why? What about presenting this issue neutrally no matter what? Every thing you are saying relates to protecting a status quo conclusion and use of mentally misdirecting language that you must like. How can I be POV when I have assumed for the sake of argument, dubiously, that your conclusion is the correct one but we should still present the subject neutrally and use the scientific method? You have curiously not commented on the need to present the issue neutrally first, then work towards finding a conclusion. Don't use language that jumps to conclusions, in this case doing so would be racist. zen master T 19:08, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've decided to not waste time on this discussion thread any longer. Re-read the article or read a few review papers to better famaliarize yourself with this topic. --Rikurzhen 19:22, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

That is your choice. My main point is not this "topic" itself, it is the neutrality of language used in any presentation but you keep repeatedly misdirecting away from any sort of language analysis. zen master T 19:30, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

As long as you don't violate WP:NOR by trying to bring your novel POV into the article, then write whatever you'd like on this talk page. --Rikurzhen 19:46, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

Could you explain exactly what "original research" I am trying to present? Seems like more propaganda and repetition on your part to try to misframe the issue to third parties. Though I agree striving for language neutrality is indeed a novel idea, hopefully it spreads. zen master T 23:17, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'll try my best to comment on what I think you're saying. First, the IQ gap between ethnic groups is scientifically well established, not merely "alleged." What is controversial is whether the cause is only environmental, such as lower education levels, or partially genetic. This article is on the topic of the IQ gap between these groups (races), so it does continually refer to possible causes of the gap in terms of the groups under discussion (races). The article isn't on, for example, the IQ gap between socioeconomic groups, which is a topic that would refer to the gap in terms of socioeconomic groups, not races.

When you talk of effects and causes, are you talking about the IQ gap being an effect of a non-genetic cause, such as education level of the parent? Doesn't the article cover these possible socioeconomic causes? Can you give specific examples of what we're doing wrong, and how that could be fixed?--Nectarflowed ^T 02:39, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Let me jam this in here. I'm responding to Zen, but got behind in the queue. I don't think that it is fair to make accusations that attack Rikurzhen's motivation. We should stick with the issues.

Before I write more, let me state that when I put a word in square brackets I mean by that, "I am not at all sure that this word/concept is a valid one." For instance, I might write, "The [flying saucers] were observed flying figure 8s over Los Vegas." That means that people reported seeing something flying over Los Vegas, and they categorized the things they saw as "flying saucers," but who knows what that really means.

I'm not positive, historically, how this [race] and [intelligence] question came about, nor am I aware of who started this article or what their motivation was. The fact remains that some people have made IQ tests on large numbers of people of various [races], and they have found that when they categorize people in a certain way and when they conduct IQ tests in a certain way they can average the results and find differences among them. My personal take on this situation is that Chinese people test better than Anglo-type Americans because the Chinese culture has made education a "value" since sometime around 700 BC if not earlier, and they have a culture that is, relatively speaking, extremely good at avoiding the production of dysfunctional people. My own culture, at least as I experienced it growing up, is more than a little anti-intellectual, hinders the development of the intellect with many dysfunctional cultural "features" (as the software guys say, "That's not a bug, that's a feature."), creates an attitude of entitlement rather than the expectation that one will have to work to get something, and compounds that "feature" with the additional feature that it is good at specifying desired results without being able to guide people effectively toward achieving those results. That's my point of view. Now let's look at how I react to the difference between the relatively low IQ average of my group and the relatively high IQ average of the Chinese group.

Some people could argue that the Chinese group is genetically superior to the White group in the field of IQ-test-taking. That kind of opinion could hurt my feelings, but opposing it would neither raise nor lower my own personal IQ score, nor would it raise or lower the scores of others in my group. If I were being objective about things, I would not care. What I care about is whether I and the members of my group are hindered is some way from the successful pursuit of true happiness. So this IQ result should be of interest to me. First I will want to assure myself that the test is a good predictor of whether people will do well in school, whether they will do well in their chosen way of life, etc. So I find out that people who don't test well usually have a devil of a time in the school system, and people who do test well usually have a much easier time. Then the question becomes, why is my group not doing as well as the Chinese. If I can figure out why, then it may be possible to improve the success rate of the members of my group.

Like it or not, the deck has been stacked in one way. The very nature of the discovery of a group of people who underperforms involved segregation by [race]. So a very easy hypothesis to make is going to be membership in the [White race] causes people to be of lower intelligence than people in the [Chinese race]. That idea may actually be based on a misapprehension. Perhaps the causal factor is actually lactose tolerance (which dumbs down the brain cells) vs. lactose intolerance (which brightens up the individual as soon as s/he gets weaned), and all the other traits that make somebody a member of the [White race] are irrelevant. It just happens that dairy farming is adaptive in only certain places around the globe, and most of the dairy farming land is in Europe where the [White race] got started. Maybe all we have to do is to really wean our children. But the way the question, "What is going on with these less intelligent [White race] folks?" was formed, people may miss out on the truth for a long time.

As somebody who has an interest in this less than stellarly intelligent group's welfare, I will not want to deny the test results. I will not want to deny the fact that something is holding my group back vis-a-vis the other groups being tested. As a civilized human being I should not hope to find something that would give my group a boost without the possibility of helping any member of any other group as well. If lactose tolerance is the problem, there are some Chinese that share that risk factor too.

But I will want not to blindly assume that there is a simple correlation between my being a member of the [White race] and my intelligence, either. I will want to ask, for instance, whether dependency needs of my group are not being met to the standard that they are met in other groups -- and, indeed, whether my group might not leap-frog other groups if the actual dependency needs were fully understood. It is known, for instance, that infants deprived of affection do not thrive, and that in some cases they die. There's a limit case: without any care at all, infants surely die. You can do without affection and survive after (perhaps) the age of three, but before that the earlier and the more severely deprivation is experienced the higher the mortality. So what does that say about the general ability to succeed in life of individuals who have enough of their needs met to survive but not enough to thrive? If the issue is nutrition, it is clear that early deprivation can lead to deficits that cannot be repaired later in life. As a member of the [White race], I would want to know whether there were unmet dependency needs that influence the lifelong intellectual capabilities of my group. (And a bunch of other stuff as well, of course.)

Does that much sound o.k. so far? If it does, then we can go on to ask how we can discuss the situation in which we find ourselves with regard to the IQ tests of members of the [White race] and members of the [Chinese race] without being hurtful to anyone. P0M 03:29, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Isn't it fundamentally fallacious to assume that differences in test scores = differences in IQ (or in g)? To begin with, in terms of measuring IQ, an IQ test provides an estimator of IQ (whatever IQ may be). It doesn't measure true IQ. Like any form of communication, it only communicates effectively with those who are schooled in the dominant idiom. I remember trying an online test, seeing some question for the first time and puzzling over it. Once I got it right, I had no problem with other questions of that type - it went from incredibly difficult to fairly intuitive once I figured it out once. Any test is coachable. Schools teach how to take standardised tests. Think Kaplan and the GREs. Does the achievement gap between White Americans and African Americans remain when they are both given tests designed for non-Americans? I doubt those tests have been done, but until they have been done, repeatedly, you cannot begin to control for the cultural bias of the tests. Guettarda 04:17, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Section 3.1 --Rikurzhen 04:41, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

I'm highly suspicious of anything by Rushton, especially when he is citing The Bell Curve? The truth may be in there, but how can you tell when it comes from sources like that? Rushton says: Many critics claim that Western-developed IQ tests are not valid for groups as culturally different as sub-Saharan Africans (e.g., Nell, 2000). The main evidence to support a claim of external bias would be if the test failed to predict performance for Africans. Even if tests only underpredicted performance for Africans compared with non-Africans, it would suggest that their test scores underestimated their “true” IQ scores. However, a review by Kendall, Verster, and von Mollendorf (1988) showed that test scores for Africans have about equal predictive validity as those for non-Africans (e.g., 0.20 to 0.50 for students' school grades and for employees' job performance) - this has the same problem of circularity - especially in South Africa, where these studies were published less than a decade after apartheid. As for my question, Rushton says: In an intervention study with 1st-year psychology students at the University of the Witwatersrand, Skuy et al. (2002) increased Raven's test scores in both Africans and non-Africans after intervention training. Both experimental groups improved over the baseline compared with their respective control groups, with significantly greater improvement for the African group (IQ score gains of 83 to 97 in Africans; 103 to 107 in non-Africans). The question remains, however, whether such intervention procedures only increase performance through mastery of subject-specific knowledge or whether they increase g-like problem-solving ability that generalizes to other tests as well (te Nijenhuis, Voskuijl, & Schijve, 2001). Increases in coaching increase IQ scores. This seems to be an excellent piece of evidence in favour of the argument that IQ tests are culturally biased (since coaching brings you closer to the "norm"). But he just dismisses it.

In the following paragraph, the paper says that the hypothesis that Africans are less interested, more anxious is rejected because he found that Africans worked very diligently, typically staying longer than Whites to recheck their answers. And then he goes into reaction times. I may misunderstand reaction times, but it would seem that people who are "more diligent" would score worse. I don't have time to dig through all the rest and all the refs...most of them are self-ref anyway. I think even less of Rushton after reading this than I did before (since I was simply amused at his apparent misunderstanding of r and K). But my fundamental question remains unanswered - do these people lack an understanding of the experimental method? Hypotheses and correlational data are all well and good, but no matter how much correlational data you amass, you are still assuming that cultural biases don't matter if you don't turn the whole thing on its head and use non-Western tests on Westerners.

After reading this, I'd actually be thrilled with a simple path analysis. :) But anyway, I realise that there is no point to carrying this any further WP:NOR. Guettarda 05:26, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry. Where is that quoted from? Not Section 3.1? --Rikurzhen 05:37, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

See work by Rowe in Section 3.8.3 for structural equation modeling results. --Rikurzhen 05:53, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

I think I've said the same thing, in other words of course, above. You're measuring an outcome, for one thing. And you're assuming that the outcome gives you a good indication of the "stuff in the black box." The outcome you are measuring is typically based on layers of other outcomes that go all the way back, maybe even to prenatal things. (Chinese tradition includes "fœtal education", believe it or not.) That being said, if I am going to be going to college with [Chinese race] kids and I'm testing low on some kind of test that is designed to indicate how well you can do the kind of stuff you need to do when you get into college, then that is an indication that something is not ideal. Somebody may say that I test badly because I am a [White race] person competing with [Chinese race] people. From the standpoint of my own self interest, my reaction is, "So what?" If my IQ is 120 and the average of [Chinese race] people competing with me is 140, I may not even get in to the college. What I want to know is, "What can I do to bring my competency up to the point where I test 140 too?" It might turn out that there is no genetic component involved at all. Maybe it is because learning a non-alphabetical writing system gives them some kind of weird advantage. Maybe it is because every time they say a big number they phrase it as, e.g., 9*10,000 + 3*1000 + 4*100 + 0*10 + 7, and forming numbers that way in their minds cuts out so much crap in math learning that they get a big jump ahead plus less learned disability, frustration, etc.

Of course you are right about correcting for cultural bias in intelligence tests -- if you are interested in the question of the average intelligence of races. I think I would have to get an advanced degree in psychometry or something like that to even begin to see how to do that.

But you also ought to correct for other factors, not only for the sake of accuracy but also because of the insight you might get into what changes in nurture might improve outcomes.

Going back to the article for a moment, the question, "What is the relationship between race and intelligence?" has been out there in society for a long time now. The article attempts to deal with that fact. I would prefer a title for the article that would make it clear that it does not propose to answer that question but to discuss the debate. My sense of the field is that the first crude measures taken suggested that there must be major differences in innate abilities, but that as studies have been refined (and as immigrant and other "outsider" groups have been more fully enculturated to wherever the tests are being given) the amount of difference that could be attributed to genetic differences have been steadily whittled away. There are two possibilities, maybe more: (1) The genetic contribution turns out to be 0, or (2) The genetic contribution turns out to be positive but less than the crude measures originally suggested. That's basically the way I would outline the article if I had the wherewithall to write it. P0M 05:26, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, nothing personal against anybody here, but as person educated in Sciences I have to admit that this article lacks scientific method. I'm really critic about the way this article has been written and is being maintained. Please consider that you are making statements about races, not about social groups. You are, starting with the title, stablishing a reason and a way on how differences can be explained. You mention others, but the title is still the same. Even more, for the average person that reaches the article they will get the title and the BIG graphic you show on top. From a genetic point of view even the distinction made about races is stupid and US centered. But even considering only the US the distinction is stupid. A genetic distinction cannot be stablished scientifically until the genes that determine intelligence have been found. Period. Given that point races could be scientifically examined to search for those genes, and make scientific statements. Science is based on real facts, measurable, repeatable, and that give good future predictions. Not on could-be's while there could-be others. This whole article is a whole POV. I could write tomorrow a paper that stablishes a relationship between IQ and the amount fish, lettuce, or m&m's somebody has eaten during his life. Even more if I make four categories like "A lot, some, not so much, and none", that neither have any scientifical value. A big statement should be written at beginning of this article stating the poor scientific methods that can be applied to such a subject because of the unknown genetics involved on it. It is sad that an open tool like this wikipedia is being use for racist propaganda. Following the logic of the article, one could say that as Chinese are more intelligent than white people, communism is a more intelligent aproach than capitalism. Assertions that could be made using the logic of the article is one of the many ways of proving it's level of truth. This whole article only leads to POV's that can not be proved with real measures. Also there is little feedback from real researchers on both sides of the spectrum. -- Jorge Daza

Jorge, have some modesty/courtesy. It seems you're either claming to have single-handedly outwitted an entire research community or you're claiming that we've fabricated this entire article. --Rikurzhen 03:47, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

Rikurzhen, do a simple google search for race and intelligence and you'll find answers to your questions. Of course, if you are willing to read a bit, because it even seems you haven't even read the papers you are basing your article on. Modesty/courtesy for those who deserve it. You have even deleted all my previous comments, not allowing other people to have another point of view. So have some modesty/courtesy yourself for worldwide readers. -- Jorge Daza

I have no idea what you're talking about. --Rikurzhen 06:46, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

Jorge, I'm interested in one of your ideas. Suppose that somebody noticed that people who eat a certain amount of fish every week seem on the average to be more intelligent than others. So she gets a research grant, and computes the average IQs of 2000 people selected at random from all over the world, the only thing that makes them a group is that they eat fish as a regular part of their diets, and another 2000 people who absolutely avoid eating fish. She measures all their IQs in some way that separates knowledge of their diet from computation of their IQ scores, and the result is that the average score of the fish group is 10% higher than the non-fish group. I am not saying that such a result would prove that eating fish improves one's IQ. But would you find those results interesting enough to favor doing some further work on the subject to try to find out whether the result was some kind of fluke or whether there was some explanation for the connection between higher IQ and a fish-rich diet? I'm thinking that maybe a teaspoon of cod liver oil per week for every human could make us enough smarter as a species that we could end poverty and warfare -- or maybe not. But I'd want to know. How about you?P0M 06:08, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sure, but think a bit on it. It could be a thousand other reasons that make that people eat fish (proximity to the sea, culture...) and all of them could have the same effect on measured intelligence and so we could be missing the real point and focusing on fish instead, and think about the damage you can make when people start asking you in a job interview if you regularly eat fish. Stating such things about races, it's not only stupid but dangerous. Doing so in an open project like the wikipedia is insulting. The scientific method is based on separating different changes for different experiments, so making experiments on groups that vary greatly on so many important aspects can't lead to scientific results. I don't know if I've made my point clear, but education on exact sciences gives you a clearer point of view regarding asumptions like these. This article needs lots of explanations and warnings before showing that graphic about IQ's that can incredible easily mislead non-critic people. -- Jorge Daza

A gentle reminder ... Ours is not to reason why; Ours is just to report and verify ... WP:NOR --Rikurzhen 06:53, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

Actually, Jorge, I did think about it. I zaid, "I am not saying that such a result would prove that eating fish improves one's IQ." The fact that one event follows another does not prove that the first event causes the second event. The fact that the neighbor's dog barks every time the lady turns her light out does not prove that the light going out angers the dog. But it may alert the lady to the fact that a snoopy neighbor heads over toward her house to peek in the window when he thinks she is going to undress to go to bed, and so he passes the watchdog on his way to her house and that makes the dog bark. Personally my guess is that the connection that has been noticed between [racial] identity and [intelligence] is not only already tending downward as people notice things mentioned in the article like the Flynn effect, but that it will probably go to zero. But the phenomenon is like the barking dog. Something is going on, and we should figure out what it is. One possibility (that I think is highly likely) is that the brain grows new connections at a terrific rate in the first three years or so of life, and if the kid is living in an intellectually poverished environment it may be analogous to malnutrition. Even if the individual can make up for early deficiencies in later life, theoretically, it may be that kids are so discouraged and feel so defeated by the time they can start taking charge of their own lives a little that they just never can catch up. (I had kids that I taught in disciplinary school that were high IQ and very low competency. I brought one of them from 4th grade reading level to 8th grade level (where he belonged) over a few weeks in the summer. But he definitely needed some external motivation to get the job done.) It may be that if you treat a person badly from birth you inevitably reduce his/her measured intelligence by some whopping factor. But we would never discover that unless we noticed that this whole group of people measured lower in IQ than other groups. Being given a real disadvantage in life is more important (to me at least) than having somebody point a finger at me and yell, "Moron!" (It does happen from time to time.;-) But these causal ideas are only guesses on my part. Not only have I not done the research myself, I'm only a little familiar with a small part of the relevant research that has already been done.

The fact is that people have noticed a correlation between [race] and [intelligence] and have made a big deal of it. (Personally I hate reading The Bell Curve because its language is soaked with special pleading and other affective components that tell me that the authors really want the reader to accept their ideology, but the book has still been a big deal and so have books written in opposition to it.) There is a controversy about both the findings and about what, if anything, they mean. So people are going to want information. "What is the deal about the connection between [race] and [intelligence]." (Except they won't put those two concepts in phenomenological epoche, they'll just take them at face value.) If we're going to try to answer that question we've got to say, "Here are the results of IQ tests. Here is what people who have spent a lifetime trying to figure out how to make accurate tests of intelligence say about the validity of the test results. Here is what people who have solid careers in trying to figure out the genetic connections among members of populations or of alleged [races] have to say about the genetic coherence of the groups being compared. Here is what the gap was 50 years ago when they made the first studies of this kind. Here is how things look after a couple of generations of social and other kinds of changes. Etc., etc.

Personally, I don't think our job is done if we just "report and verify", and that is because anything that is reported is like the way a photographer can focus in on the flower in the sewage plant or the dead bluebird in the flower show. Just reporting assertions is not enough because we could end up reporting assertions made by people who ought not to have any standing in a rational discussion of an issue. (The lady in the dried botanicals store with a little crystal on a pendulum may have an opinion on my skin cancer, but I think I'd better listen to a trained M.D.) We also need to try for balance and make sure that we are not overlooking important aspects of a problem just because they haven't made it into the mass media.

You say, "This article needs lots of explanations and warnings..." I agree with that statement. I made some remarks very much like yours on the basis of what I remembered when I read the article a year or so ago, and then I discovered that many of the things that I thought needed to be said had already been said. So let's concentrate on what remains to be highlighted, contextualized, warned against or qualified, etc. P0M 08:29, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hello Patrick, [2] I just copied the first link from the Notes section. That has to be said at the very beginning of the article. Before showing any graphic. It has to be said too that the article has no scientific base. And BTW I'm unable to find the paper where that study about IQ's was made. Also I'm unable to find those "many studies" that are mentioned at the beginning of the article. Please, state the sources. Sorry, but that was not to you. I'm a scientist and this article mentions lots of things without scientific base. I really think that the writer lacks real research experience. This article, as has been written and as it is shown, is real food for racists. Don't feed them, and BTW they're 10 points below average IQ ;)

All of that is in the article (as you must have noticed). But we cannot give a demonstrably minority POV, like that of R. Sternberg, veto power over the intro figure. We've quoted a big block of him in the background section immediately following the intro (as you must have noticed) and his POV does get described in the intro in the same summary style as every thing else: These results have sparked public debates concerning not only the reliability of the studies and the motives of their authors, but also the validity and fairness of intelligence tests in general. The role of the intro is to summarize the article. If anything, this intro is too light on the majority POV. --Rikurzhen 16:33, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

See "brass tacks" below for my response. P0M 17:38, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Socioeconomic status

Rikurzhen, perhaps you need to clarify the statement that you made a few days ago:

The consensus POV is that socioeconomic factors (or any of a large number of other factors) cannot account for the different average IQs of people of different races.

I see two problems with it:

It seems to imply that "race" (which I guess you define as shared genetic characteristics) can account for the different average IQs of different population groups.
It seems to suggest that not only will socioeconomic factors not account for the IQ differences, but an assemblage of factors other than [race] will not be able to account for different average IQs of different populations.

I don't know how you quantify things in a world where various people do different experiments that lead to results that don't entirely agree, but it seems to me that the gaps between the IQs of various populations have at least not been growing as experiments are refined. P0M 19:01, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sorry. I don't quite understand. Let me try to figure our your question is or you can try to re-phrase it. But this is what the consensus as of 1994 from the APA was: The differential between the mean intelligence test scores of Blacks and Whites (about one standard deviation, although it may be diminishing) does not result from any obvious biases in test construction and administration, nor does it simply reflect differences in socio-economic status. from the APA taskforce report --Rikurzhen 19:06, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

I have no problem with the APA statement. But it seems to reflect at least the indication of decreasing IQ gap. If that is indeed happening, one would like to know whether it is because of cross-group child production or because of changes in some environmental factor. And when it says that the result of these studies "does not simply reflect differences in socio-economic status," it leaves the possibility that there is some non-simple consequence of socio-economic status as well as the possibility that there are relevant contingent factors outside the socio-economic sphere.

I think we cover the decreasing/not decreasing question in section 2.3. Yes, I think there could (possibly) be a non-simple relationship between SES and race and IQ, but the work by Rowe (section 3.8.3) didn't find such an effect. --Rikurzhen 22:34, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

Is this it???... (1) while races are distinguishable on the basis of genetics, they also clearly have a range of biological and social factors that are statistically different between races; (2) socioeconomic factors basically mean shared family effects, but that doesn't exclude a Factor X that affects Blacks but not Whites (at a high level of statistical significance) -- candidates vary greatly in their plausibility -- that might be at fault. Micronutrients seem like a plausible Factor X to explain some of the gap. --Rikurzhen 19:12, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

Now I'm a bit puzzled, but I guess the answer is yes. I've noticed other X factors in the article and elsewhere, and one thing I'm wondering is how much gap is there before and after you've corrected for things like the brain structure that is grown in the first three years of life, the effects on motivation and perseveration when a child who is behind his/her white peers in first grade decides that "school is impossible or it is impossible to succeed in school," the effects on self-image that accrue when a black child of a stereotypical middle-class background is treated differently from a white child from an equivalent background, etc., etc.

I have no problem with the idea that the physiological basis for brain development and intelligence is coded in DNA. But the factors that are most obviously different among population groups are of two kinds: (1) things that fit the individual to his/her environment (skin color, body type, etc.) and (2) things that don't seem to have any practical advantage/disadvantage at all and are probably prevalent in one or another population because of founder effect. The competition for survival and reproductive success is, on a day-to-day basis, carried on within population groups. So it is hard to understand why individuals with higher intelligence would not excel in any environment. 30 generations or so should be enough for a single brighter individual to spread his glories over a continent. Could there be a thousand year lag in the intelligence level of an isolated population? That's assuming, of course, that every other brighter person who visited the isolated population maintained his/her celibacy while there and left no descendants to modify the gene pool. Besides, Africa is not exactly an isolated region, nor has it ever been. Is there any indication that lusty sailors visiting sub-Saharan Africa kept themselves to quarters on their ships? I think that assuming genetics to be the X factor is not a winning bet.P0M 22:24, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think the simple answer is... pargraph #1, we need transracail adoption data, but we don't have good data that everyone can agree on because adoption is always retrospective and so many variable are confonding. And paragraph #2, we don't know enough about the genetics of intelligence within populations to really be able to make any kind of educated guess about why evolutionarily they might differ between populations. Once we identify some genes, we'll be in a better position to speculate. --Rikurzhen 22:34, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and it would help if we could also finally work out a firm theory of human evolution. It's still an field in flux. --Rikurzhen 22:45, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

whites not homogeous

I think I've read somewhere that a disproportionate number of Americans of Russian descent are Jews. Wouldn't it be easier to just mention that Jews in the US have higher IQs than non-Jewish whites? That's a better supported piece of data. --Rikurzhen 19:45, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

Used Scots instead. Ultramarine 19:48, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Cool. --Rikurzhen 19:49, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

Race in the United States

Interesting, but should be moved to Race. Has very little to do with current research in this area. No mention of intelligence. Ultramarine 00:30, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

most of it is copied from race ... i added it because a few europeans said that they had no idea about race in the US and wanted it spelled out explicitly ... trimmed it down --Rikurzhen 01:08, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

I liked the longer version. (I'm the European.) I understand Ultramarine's objection, but for people outside the US the whole topic is opaque. I have tried over the past few days to find any written outsider's description of the US situation that we could cite (apart from the one I already found, see further up the page), but the best thing I could find was a paragraph in Dawkin's recent book. I actually want more: I want both a very brief historical overview of US racial classifications (pretty much like Rik's proposal) and a short description of the current situation, much like Rik explained it to me further up the page:

Race is reported on the Census, on job and school applications, in law enforcement, and for almost anything related to working for the government directly or indirectly. There are laws which require special treatment of minorities in some economic exchanges with the government (e.g., contracts). Also, voluntary affirmative action is practiced by many/most large educational and corporate groups.

In short, I want to be able to learn from this article that racial classification is ubiquitous in the US. This is common knowledge in the US, so it's never written about. Yet very important for understanding where this entire idea comes from. (Europeans are used to stating their nationality in such contexts. Never ever their race.) Do we need a straw poll on this? Arbor 07:41, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It would be much easier to write such a section with confidence if we could find a good secondary source to summarize things for us. --Rikurzhen 15:53, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

I read through the relevant Encyc. Brit. sections today (race, race and intelligence, etc.), but came up empty-handed. (By the way, this is an interesting comparison. The Wikipedia articles are much more informative, and much more neutral. Well done.) Arbor 16:16, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It will be difficult to find material that's neutral. Most of it will be opinion w/o any references. There are a tons of books on this subject, but I've never read any of them. --Rikurzhen 16:28, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

The 2 nubs of the issue

Ħ:The discussion/debate above is getting really cut up. Let's restart here. Please sign and please use indentation so that we don't unintentionally disconnect a user's contribution from his/her signature. (There is one point above where there is a signature and date that is just stuck in the middle of lots of stuff by other people. It's become totally meaningless.)

Ħ:There are two issues, which are getting smooshed:

Ħ:One is whether one could ever get to the question of whether there is a klados (family connections greater than the clan) connection with intelligence if you forbid the use of any categories that groups individuals into larger and larger groups in your research into why some people succeed in society on an intellectual basis and other people experience greater or lesser difficulties. I've written this in a dozen or so different ways, but it keeps getting ignored: You cannot discover whether factor X is relevant to factor Y unless you look at factor X. (For a very long time nobody even thought of looking at trace mineral intake when trying to understand how to help people keep their own teeth all their lives. Fluorine stayed totally unnoticed in the background until somebody asked why people getting their drinking water from a certain water source had fewer cavities than people who got their water from somewhere else.)

Ħ:The other is whether the casual use of the word "race" is appropriate when addressing an audience that is unsophisticated about the multiple and severe problems with that word -- both in connection with its multiple denotations, and in connection with its strongly negative and prejudicial conotations.

Ħ:Using the word "race" is asking for controversy and for misunderstanding. Using the word "intelligence" is not much better. Calling the article "Race and Intelligence" does create the impression that a causal connection between the two is being affirmed. The title needs to make it clear up front that the article is about the controversy over an as-yet unsettled issue. P0M 18:05, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The title is terse but accurate. Then it follows with a couple sentence expansion of the idea. Then we get a full-blow background section with all the caveats. If some relevant details are missing, we should identified the place in that chain where they are needed. The title seems fine to me, and shouldn't grow to be an essay itself. Intelligent design might be more accurately titled Intelligent design versus natural evolution controversy, but that would be an unencyclopedic title. --Rikurzhen 18:15, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

As somebody pointed out before, even the Encyclopedia Britannica has an article with the same title. I read it yesterday, including a lot of related sections. The only difference is that EB sets race in scare quotes when talking about homo sapiens, so the title is “Race” and intelligence instead. What is won by the scare quotes I do not know, and the contents of the EB article are much less informative. It is also heavily POV, and contains little in the way of references. It's still a good enough article, which I recommend to all who engage in this debate, but it pales in comparison to what we have here. (Even the POV of the EB is better represented here.) In any case, I cannot see why a WP article cannot have the same title as the EB. Arbor 18:37, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

ĦHow about Controversy over "Race and Intelligence"? P0M 21:10, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Unless you only read the title of the article, the first sentence should get that idea across. I'm not sure if there is a WP naming convention, but my intuition is that encyclopedia article titles should be as simple/short as possible, like Intelligent design versus Controversy over Intelligent design. --Rikurzhen 21:23, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

Rikurzhen's addition of survey responses

I don't think that the section on "expert's opinions" is important enough for inclusion here - it's unnecessary (perhaps a brief summary, but not such a huge wall of text), especially when the article is this long already. -Grick(^{talk to me!}) 20:38, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)

The survey is the only way to telling people about any consensus views. ... You're right about the length problem, but I think wrong about the solution. The expanded survey results, now summarized in a table, can take some of the weight of exposition out of the lengthy interpretation section. My plan is to move the now expanded opinions section higher in the article so we can trim the unnecessary bits from the rest of article. --Rikurzhen 21:00, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)

brain size

Is there anyway to trim down the brain size section? It seems to be the most disproportionate. Can we do a summary-style/main-article split on it? Brain size and intelligence could be used. --Rikurzhen 21:32, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)

Brass tacks, not lugs

Let's concentrate on what remains to be highlighted, contextualized, warned against or qualified, etc. P0M 08:29, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Let's avoid generalizations and remarks that tend to characterize the motivations of contributors, too. Even I, probably the least qualified of all of us, have a background in science, since I spent two years as a physics major in a relatively good university and have kept my interests in that and other sciences up over the years.

2

One of the things that bothers me as I read over this material is that the words "Blacks," "Whites," etc. have different meanings depending on what countries (and probably what times)you are talking about. It seems inconsistent to me that hybrid vigor would show up in Japanese-White offspring but not show up in Black-White offspring. The Black population is more hybridized in the US than is the White population (i.e., some mixed heritage individuals are classed as Black and some are characterized as White despite both being hybridized to some extent). If the genetic hypothesis is under consideration then it would seem to be inherently problematical to confuse, e.g., [Black race] Americans and [Black' race] Africans. It's also probably inherently problematical to compare [White race] Americans (with 30% having some African ancestry) with [White' race] individuals from some place where genetic equilibrium has been maintained for a few hundred or a few thousand years. If the genetic hypothesis is correct, one would expect to see increases in IQ varying with increases in hybridization. Has anybody pointed these factors out? P0M 01:48, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Analyses of admixture can only be done properly in the context of adoption, where you can control for genes and environment; in at least one adoption study (Minnesota adoption study?) Black-White mixed race children did better than 50% between the "White" and "Black" averages. But the admixture, adoption, etc. data is not all that clear because of uncontrolled confounding variables. "Blacks" in the US score intermediate to Europeans and Africans. "Whites" are seldom have more than 10% African ancestry. We could tell people about admixture, but it would only make things more complicated for them. Slightly admixed populations should not confound the overall conclusions. Most of the article uses data from the U.S. Is there any particular section that is problematic? --Rikurzhen 02:39, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

One of the things that occurred to me as I drifted out of sleep this morning is that in a place of genetic equilibrium it wouldn't be difficult to get comparable samples, but in a place of rather riotous disequilibrium you would probably have to take huge samples according to strict rules (and then check for equivalence of things like height that could be easily verified to make more sure that your samples weren't messed up somehow)to get any chance of comparing apples to apples.

Anyway, my point was that if hybridization is increasing and the average IQ measured for [Black race] individuals is not increasing, then that would be a powerful argument against genetic determination of IQ. P0M 15:30, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think this is not well studied, but the often mentioned idea is that most of the Black-White hybridization occured during slavery and that it has returned to a low basal rate. Can't be sure if that's true or just perpetuated speculation. ... On the other hand, someone speculated that heterosis was responsible for the Flynn effect. --Rikurzhen 15:37, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

Hybrid vigor doesn't produce results in the middle, as far as I know. The idea, as I understand it, is that due to founder effects and maybe the accumulation of random maladaptive mutations, an isolated population can end up with certain less than ideal characteristics. When two such groups hybridize, the problematical genes are matched with non-problematical genes much of the time, and often that means that the problems are not manifested in the offspring. I'm familiar with honeybees and seed corn. Also, pet authorities are now more and more telling people that mixed breed dogs, (e.g., collie and labrador retrievers) have much better hip joints. (Collies tend to have bad hip joints do to inbreeding.) It's not that they have hip joints of an intermediate quality. I guess I'll have to study some more about hybrid vigor. P0M 15:59, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Oh, we can't possible infer whether the IQ average of African Americans represents heterosis from European-African admixture. I don't think we even know what the IQ of non-admixed Africans living in the U.S. would be. (Someone linked a gov't site saying the GDP/captia of African Americans is like that of Poland; far above that of African nations.) I would not be surprised if the African IQ could be raised to 85 by environmental intervention and that the African American IQ could be raised to 90. (No one thinks the gap is 100% genetic.) --Rikurzhen 16:23, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

3

It's my opinion that one underlying reason that this article is so long is that most evidence presented is indirect. The reason for this is (1) the existing direct evidence is confounded by un-controlled variables making it very weak and (2) direct studies are few and far between (Gottfredson has documented attempts to avoid doing analyses that might shed light on this subject, even to the point of withholding data from others willing to do the math). Between 1969 and 2005 it should have been possible to do the correct direct experiments and repeat them a few times; molecular biology has advanced very far in that time. We should probably resign ourselves the the fact that this article will not change much in the next 5 years. Let's fix it up, tie a bow on it and ship it out to FAC. --Rikurzhen 16:23, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

Linking and referencing

An outstanding task on this page is to get the links in order. I have little else to contribute (but have become quite enamoured with this page and would like to help), so maybe that's sufficiently menial task for me. I have tried to understand the linking and footnoting procedure and fixed a single link. I am somewhat disappointed by the outcome. Previously, the APA report (Neisser et al. 1996) was in external link in the article to a HTML version of Neisser et al. One click. Now, the reference in the body text is a footnote, which can be followed to the Notes section, where it says "Neisser et al. (1996)". The reader then needs to look for an entry in the bibliography section with that author-year combination, at the end of which she will recover the external link. This is two clicks and a manual search through the bibliography. Not an obvious improvement.

Still, I understand the motivation of having this style. It improves consistency, and forces the article itself to be more self-contained by making external links less tempting. Barring opposition I will continue this process. This means that I will edit, heavy-handedly, the Notes section, moving lots and lots into the bibliography. After this process is completed, the Notes section will contain only very short article-year (and possibly page) references, which then must be hunted in the Bibliography section. What can I say -- I didn't make the rules. Arbor 08:17, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I thought we were allowed to have external links in the notes section. More specifically, that any external link that would have been in-line will have to be moved to the notes section. No? --Rikurzhen 08:25, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that would be fine. But many of our external links are to works that do (or ought to) appear in the bibliography anyway. So the footnote should refer to the bibliography, which then provides a hyperlink. For example, the Wall Street Journal summary should appear in the bibliography (or should it?). So it is to be removed from the external links section, and any reference to it from inside the body text is to be transformed into a footnote. At least, that's what I get from the Footnote3 proposal. Arbor 08:46, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Okay. So anything that should be a reference (but is currently a footnote) needs to be moved to the reference section? We'll follow your lead. --Rikurzhen 09:04, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

I continue to be frustrated by this. There is simply no precedent in Wikipedia for such an ambitious list of references, and very little infrastructure to support it. How about this: since we are beginning to break the article into Race and intelligence (XYZ) anyway, should we set up Race and intelligence (References)? The reasons are twofold:

they are many
many of them are probably used by several subsections, so it would be very difficult to maintain them on all those pages

The idea is as follows: We use footnotes in the body text for referencing. The footnote text contains a short "Author (Year)" text. The referred work itself appears in full detail on Race and intelligence (references). (Oh for a way to hyperlink that!)

Arguments against: orphaned references will be really hard to weed out. For that reason alone I am weakly opposed. The alternative is to have both a Notes and a Reference section on each page. Arbor 12:04, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I had proposed that a while ago, so about putting references in their own page, I'm cool with that. I don't think we need to switch every instance of (Author, Year), because there are so many of them. Footnotes seem great for external links or annotation while referencing. Otherwise, it would be real pain to switch every (Author, Year) to a footnote, wouldn't it? (Note some of them are written in-line as So-And-So (2005) reported that....) Wouldn't it also become painful to maintain? If you added a new sentence w/ reference, you'd need to add a new footnote exactly in order? Thanks for putting so much effort into this. --Rikurzhen 16:52, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

Well, the best way to test such things is to simply do it. I have footnote-vandalised sections 2.6 and 2.7 (because they were short). Looks much friendlier now, and shrinks a lot, too! As you point out, some rewording here and there will be necessary, but it's really no big deal, and the prose invariably improves. Arbor 12:26, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I found an article that might be helpful

Dear Talk page: I'm not a usual participant in this article (Race and intelligence), but I just today got an email on that subject relating a study that might be helpful, and I shall pass it along:

Found at: http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/jewishsociety/Are_Jews_Smarter$.asp the bottom line is that there may be evidence of certain Jews being smarter (or not), but that this is not the main issue that should be of importance to Jewish people. (The article is from a Jewsish site.)

I was just passing through and noticed this Wikipedia article. By the way, I agreed with the AISH.com article and responded as such in an email of feedback:

Subject: You forgot Jer 9:23, which summarizes your article
Date: 6/22/2005 6:56:36 A.M. Eastern Standard Time
From: Gww1210@aol.com
To: TellUs@aish.com

Regarding: "Are Jews Smarter?" by Rabbi Avi Shafran (Published Sunday, 19 June 2005), AISH newsletter:

I enjoyed this article, but you all forgot the "key" scripture that addresses and underscores the point of your article Namely, this scripture is Jeremiah 9:23 (shown here in the New International Version) - and it says: "This is what the LORD says: 'Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches'."

Even as your article says: "It should impel us to teach our children, whether they are grappling with school, marriage or children of their own, that it isn't genius that most matters but generosity; not the clever who deserve praise but the conscientious. Let us teach them, in other words, to not let intelligence go to their heads, when only goodness, in the end, is important."

("It" above referred to the paper published in Cambridge University's Journal of Biosocial Science that sought to better understand the prevalence of certain genetic disease among Ashkenazic Jews and its possible connection to intelligence.)

Gordon Wayne Watts http://GordonWatts.com

Regardless of whether this one article is useful, I hope it is interesting, and as well, I hope it reminds you of other cool stuff on the Internet. Take care, --GordonWattsDotCom 12:51, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

References

Why is "The Mismeasure of Man" not it the reference section ?. Ericd 22:25, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

good catch --Rikurzhen 22:42, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

Duly noted. I hope the references section will transform into the very model of comprehensiveness real soon now. I have a pending question on the Wikipedia:Footnote3 talk page about how this all is supposed to be done, and will plunge into a cleanup frenzy afterwards. Unreferenced works and their evil twin, orphaned references, will go the way of the Dodo. Arbor 06:59, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The disparity is abstract and WP should not use misleading language

Some folks seem not to realize or admit that "race" vs "IQ" or "wealth" vs "nutrition" may describe the exact same abstract disparity. Have you considered this possibility? Many scientists have, but, random joe wikipedia user would not know that after reading this article. Given this scientific fact that the disparity is larger and more abstract than just "race" vs "IQ" why do some people and this article repeatedly only focus on just one pair method of description? An abstract disparity does exist but words used to describe it have to be neutral and certainly shouldn't hint at unscientific conclusions by only framing an abstract issue one way. There is no scientific or otherwise consensus to present this abstract disparity exclusively in terms of "race" and "IQ". Why did someone hurriedly create redirects from Nutrition and intelligence to Race and intelligence when I offhandedly suggested it above? zen master T 05:58, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I wish you could communicate your position more clearly. All the concerns you express appear to be addressed in the article, and at great well-written length. Even issues about the validity of race as used in these studies are addressed. Hopefully, we have progressed beyond studies of this association, and on to the issues of identifying genes that explain some of the individual variation in intelligence. Hopefully, any variations in gene frequency between the races will speed discovery in this science that promises such benefits. I wouldn't be surprised if the wealth and nutrition influences you are curious about, to the extent they are also genetically influenced, have explanatory value for part of the genetic component of intelligence. Would you be surprised if there are genetic variations in the handling of nutrients, in risk taking or courage, in avariciousness? I wouldn't, the suprise instead would be if there weren't variations, not just between individuals, but between races or populations. For facts about such variations to be more than mere curiousities, they should contribute to the discovery and elucidation of the mechanisms of the relevant genes.--Silverback 08:50, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

I would love to read Nutrition and intelligence, and I assume most of the other editors on this page would, too. Zen, you seem to assume that the editors on this page focus on Race and intelligence out of malice. I'm not sure that is so (in any case, it's not a helpful position). There are a ton of related articles that I would love to read. Some are still in their infancy, others don't exist: Sex and intelligence, Genes and intelligence, Nutrition and intelligence, Nurture and intelligence (including Playing Mozart to your unborn child and intelligence) and whatnot. Oh for Education and intelligence! For some of these issues, there is quite a lot of scientific data, others are just hunches. Some of the articles will be as strong as the present one, others will be speculation. But by all means research them, write them; I am confident the editors from this page will help. And if you (or anybody else) is up to the task of writing a comprehensive overview of all factors that may correlate with (or even cause) intelligence, I will rejoice.

But this page is about Race and intelligence. There is a lot to be said, and a lot to be learned about it. It's important. And it's extremely well presented in this article. Arbor 07:11, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Why did someone create Nutrition and intelligence as a redirect to here? How can this article be "well presented" given the misuse of language? There is no scientific method here. zen master T 07:41, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

(Let me cut in here:) To answer your question: the redirect was made by User:gracefool, I don't know why. He vote keep on the VfD, but thought this article is very POV. Arbor 08:43, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm glad you mentioned scientific method, ZM, let's focus on that for a while. Can we have a discussion on that topic without your going off on what you feel are the demerits of this article? If you can't then I'll go back to working on my book. P0M 08:15, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ok, so let's focus on applying the scientific method to language neutrality. Do you see the potential for confusing cause and effect by describing a diparity only in X, Y terms when Y also happens to be a cause? Do you acknowledge the abstract nature of the disparity? zen master T 08:33, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think that is going off on what you think are the demerits of the article. What I had in mind was finding out whether it is your understanding that a theory can be proven. P0M 08:41, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Intervention

Please bring up any desired interventions here. It seems the main thing being requested is that Wikipedia policy regarding no personal attacks be enforced. That is something that's much simpler than reorganizing this entire page.--Nectarflowed ^T 12:05, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Moved from top of page:

Patrick's comment was asking you to intervene with zen master calling everybody nazis. That is ALL he asked. The article is 100% under control, as is the talk page. You're going against the wishes of the users of the page, as well as the wishes of the user who asked you to intervene.

The disparity is between races. Therefore, the disparity between races is discussed in terms of race.--Nectarflowed ^T 21:49, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"Races" is just one way of describing the effects of the unexplained disparity and just one way of dividing the population. Why do you and others keep repeating the same misuse of language over and over again? zen master T 23:41, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

If the disparity under investigation is not between racial groups, what is it between? Also, you're posts would be shorter if you didn't include accusations ;) --Nectarflowed ^T 23:51, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't think anyone now believes, nor does the article say, that the IQ disparities are caused by racial differences in and of itself. Rather, it's clearly something associated with race, whether only environmental or also genetic, that is the cause. --Rikurzhen 00:15, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

This article should not be about "beliefs", instead the scientific method should be utilized which requires using neutral language which does not needlessly commingle cause and effect. You say, "it's clearly something associated with race" but that is NOT a scientific conclusion. Only a Nazi would repeatedly frame the issue the way you do. Was my "accusation" accurate at least? What other plausible explanation is there for the psychologically misdirecting way you frame this issue? zen master T 01:18, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That's enoug ad hominem attack. P0M 01:28, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

What other plausible explanation is there for using psychologically tricking language to misframe this issue? zen master T 01:36, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't mean any of our beliefs, I mean the beliefs of researchers about which is this article is written. We don't get to decide what's true, only to report what major POVs exist and whether they are consensus or not. How many ways can I say it: WP:NOR!!! --Rikurzhen 01:22, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

Can you please explain how framing the issue objectively or requiring neutral language no matter what is original research? Wikipedia, as an encyclopedia, is bound by the scientific method in its quest of neutrality. We should indeed report the "major POVs" as you call them but that does not mean we should simply regurgitate psychologically tricking language, doing so would be unscientific at the very least. Most people accused of being a nazi would deny it... zen master T 01:36, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Start by absorbing the article on ad_hominem arguments. And besides, A -> B may be true, but that does not make B -> A true. You are smearing somebody as a Nazi. Are you aware of that?P0M 01:44, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Either this article lacks proper language neutrality or it does not. If my criticism of the way this article misuses language (needlessly commingling cause and effect) is valid then there are very few plausible theories that explain your motivations. Endless repetition used in support of a misuse of language adds to the plausibility of my theory. The sooner you explain how language neutrality is original research the sooner you diminish the plausibility of my theory that you are a nazi. If someone was just a random interested researcher of this subject (even if they dubiously concluded race is a cause) I don't believe they would defend and deflect away from the current misuse of language to the degree you have. zen master T 02:00, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

So now I am being accused of being a Nazi too? Let's be clear about what you are saying. P0M 02:16, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You two do seem to be working together to misdirect third parties away from doing any sort of mental analysis on the neutrality of language used in the article. So yes, I am accusing you both of being neo-nazis based on your posts on this talk page and based on the way you repeatedly defend or ignore the misuse of language. I will withdraw my accusations after you explain how striving for language neutrality is original research and/or after you explain how needlessly commingling cause and effect is scientific? zen master T 02:30, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

zen, you misunderstand the meanings of WP:NPOV and WP:NOR, and I don't have time to explain it to you. No one should waste time answering your questions. P0M, feel free to delete his insults if they bother you (Wikipedia:Remove personal attacks). --Rikurzhen 02:19, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

I repeat, I will withdraw my accusations after you explain how striving for language neutrality is original research and/or after you explain how needlessly commingling cause and effect is scientific? zen master T 02:30, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Agreed (although I'd prefer "populations" to "races"). And we've explained this reasoning a number of times in a number of ways, but the explanations continue to be ignored. P0M 22:19, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

They are populations, but they are also "races" as the term is understood in U.S. culture. The best distinction I've seen is that a "race" is a type of population that is related by ancient ancestry, rather than current geography or ethnic affliation. --Rikurzhen 22:46, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

2

One of the things that bothers me as I read over this material is that the words "Blacks," "Whites," etc. have different meanings depending on what countries (and probably what times)you are talking about. It seems inconsistent to me that hybrid vigor would show up in Japanese-White offspring but not show up in Black-White offspring. The Black population is more hybridized in the US than is the White population (i.e., some mixed heritage individuals are classed as Black and some are characterized as White despite both being hybridized to some extent). If the genetic hypothesis is under consideration then it would seem to be inherently problematical to confuse, e.g., [Black race] Americans and [Black' race] Africans. It's also probably inherently problematical to compare [White race] Americans (with 30% having some African ancestry) with [White' race] individuals from some place where genetic equilibrium has been maintained for a few hundred or a few thousand years. If the genetic hypothesis is correct, one would expect to see increases in IQ varying with increases in hybridization. Has anybody pointed these factors out? P0M 01:48, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Analyses of admixture can only be done properly in the context of adoption, where you can control for genes and environment; in at least one adoption study (Minnesota adoption study?) Black-White mixed race children did better than 50% between the "White" and "Black" averages. But the admixture, adoption, etc. data is not all that clear because of uncontrolled confounding variables. "Blacks" in the US score intermediate to Europeans and Africans. "Whites" are seldom have more than 10% African ancestry. We could tell people about admixture, but it would only make things more complicated for them. Slightly admixed populations should not confound the overall conclusions. Most of the article uses data from the U.S. Is there any particular section that is problematic? --Rikurzhen 02:39, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

One of the things that occurred to me as I drifted out of sleep this morning is that in a place of genetic equilibrium it wouldn't be difficult to get comparable samples, but in a place of rather riotous disequilibrium you would probably have to take huge samples according to strict rules (and then check for equivalence of things like height that could be easily verified to make more sure that your samples weren't messed up somehow)to get any chance of comparing apples to apples.

Anyway, my point was that if hybridization is increasing and the average IQ measured for [Black race] individuals is not increasing, then that would be a powerful argument against genetic determination of IQ. P0M 15:30, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think this is not well studied, but the often mentioned idea is that most of the Black-White hybridization occured during slavery and that it has returned to a low basal rate. Can't be sure if that's true or just perpetuated speculation. ... On the other hand, someone speculated that heterosis was responsible for the Flynn effect. --Rikurzhen 15:37, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

Hybrid vigor doesn't produce results in the middle, as far as I know. The idea, as I understand it, is that due to founder effects and maybe the accumulation of random maladaptive mutations, an isolated population can end up with certain less than ideal characteristics. When two such groups hybridize, the problematical genes are matched with non-problematical genes much of the time, and often that means that the problems are not manifested in the offspring. I'm familiar with honeybees and seed corn. Also, pet authorities are now more and more telling people that mixed breed dogs, (e.g., collie and labrador retrievers) have much better hip joints. (Collies tend to have bad hip joints do to inbreeding.) It's not that they have hip joints of an intermediate quality. I guess I'll have to study some more about hybrid vigor. P0M 15:59, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Oh, we can't possible infer whether the IQ average of African Americans represents heterosis from European-African admixture. I don't think we even know what the IQ of non-admixed Africans living in the U.S. would be. (Someone linked a gov't site saying the GDP/captia of African Americans is like that of Poland; far above that of African nations.) I would not be surprised if the African IQ could be raised to 85 by environmental intervention and that the African American IQ could be raised to 90. (No one thinks the gap is 100% genetic.) --Rikurzhen 16:23, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

3

It's my opinion that one underlying reason that this article is so long is that most evidence presented is indirect. The reason for this is (1) the existing direct evidence is confounded by un-controlled variables making it very weak and (2) direct studies are few and far between (Gottfredson has documented attempts to avoid doing analyses that might shed light on this subject, even to the point of withholding data from others willing to do the math). Between 1969 and 2005 it should have been possible to do the correct direct experiments and repeat them a few times; molecular biology has advanced very far in that time. We should probably resign ourselves the the fact that this article will not change much in the next 5 years. Let's fix it up, tie a bow on it and ship it out to FAC. --Rikurzhen 16:23, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)