Wikipedia talk:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2009-11-12/Race and Intelligence/Archive 2

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Archive 5

I've been bold

archiving old discussions
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I moved all the info from the article to existing articles (linked to from the resulting DAB page). Some work definitely remains (removing redundancies, assessing the need for content forks (NOT pov forks), better structure of the articles, etc.), but it's a start. Have a look and try to make it work, since I think we're actually moving in a productive direction right now. As far as I can tell, I didn't lose an text in the moves (aside from a bit of changes to transition text), but feel free to double check me on that. T34CH (talk) 01:08, 18 December 2009 (UTC) I applaud your boldness. As you can see, the Race (classification of human beings) article now has a "This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably." I will be similarly bold in try to fix this. David.Kane (talk) 01:49, 18 December 2009 (UTC) Doesn't Academic Debates on Race and Intelligence just perpetuate the problem of the title race and intelligence? I'm really not into that distinction... maybe if you can figure out a way to get all those debates from the race article together instead of singling out that one. T34CH (talk) 02:03, 18 December 2009 (UTC) Hmmm. Well, the information needs to go somewhere and both Heritability of IQ and Race_(classification_of_human_beings) were too long even before more material was added. But, let me try a different sort of boldness. David.Kane (talk) 02:12, 18 December 2009 (UTC) Can we try something? How about we play around with the information within existing articles first. Then we can see how to best deal with bloated articles instead of just removing the information that's just been inserted solely because it was just inserted--not because it's the best information to remove. Case in point, you've removed one contemporary debate from the race article... suggesting that the only real debate worthy of it's own article is weather blacks are dumber than whites. T34CH (talk) 02:21, 18 December 2009 (UTC) Of course! I will leave Heritability of IQ, Race_(classification_of_human_beings) and Intelligence and public policy alone for a day (I assume that is enough time). Feel free to do anything you like with them. (Obviously, I can't speak for other editors involved in those articles.) If you can come up with something that keeps those articles to a reasonable side and includes all the relevant scholarly literature, I will have no complaints. There is certainly tons of stuff worth cutting in those articles. By only request is that you leave the new Between-Group Differences in IQ until we have a chance to evaluate your edits on the other articles. Does that make sense? David.Kane (talk) 02:29, 18 December 2009 (UTC) No, that makes no sense. The between-groups article is being cited by editors as "awful" edits by me! You can't separate my changes from the new article, so working on my edits means working on (or reverting) the new article. Let's try this out (figure out what info goes where, what's redundant, and what needs a new home) before we try to create new articles. If you want to do that separately, there's nothing stopping you, but please don't pretend to do one thing when your aim is to achieve another. T34CH (talk) 20:00, 18 December 2009 (UTC) Oh, and can you please start being more straight forward with your reasoning? If you have an idea, just say so instead of pretending you're doing something else [1]. I don't think taking the issues related to race and intelligence out of the race article and then attempting to turn it into the Heritability hypothesis of intelligence topic is the way we should be playing here. T34CH (talk) 02:28, 18 December 2009 (UTC) Civility, gentlemen. Xavexgoem (talk) 20:43, 18 December 2009 (UTC) I am not "pretending" about anything. David.Kane (talk) 02:29, 18 December 2009 (UTC) Ambivalence isn't gonna help anyone, here. This dispute presents two options: talk endlessly, or do something. Anything. I've seen this happen. If you miss this window then morale is gonna plummet more than it already has, and everyone will be back at square 1. Or further back. Just roll with it. Do stuff till it works! Xavexgoem (talk) 14:36, 18 December 2009 (UTC) I’d say that my morale has plummeted quite a bit as a result of this newest development. We had worked out a list of issues to resolve about the original Race and intelligence article, starting with its scope, and you told us that you were going to post a straw poll about this first question. As Varoon Arya pointed out in his last comment, you never actually did, and instead allowed the discussion to be derailed further and further until everything we had discussed up to that point stopped being relevant. There are two reasons why the discussion here has lost relevance. The first is that everything we’ve discussed up to this point was about what should be in the Race and intelligence article, which is now nothing but a disambiguation page. And second, eliminating this article and splitting its content into several other articles is something we could have done at any point during the years of debate about the article, and the reason why it was never done is because most editors always felt that it was worth the effort to keep a central article about this topic. Sidestepping the dispute in this manner is not something we would have needed mediation for; the purpose of this mediation (and the past month of discussion here) was to find an actual solution to the disputes about this article. I think finding a solution to them would have been possible, but it would’ve required some effort from the mediator, such as complying with Varoon Arya’s requests for mediator involvement and following through with your own agreement to post a poll about the scope question. But you didn’t live up to your responsibilities in this case, so here we are. The reason I’m indignant about this isn’t just because of your failure to help resolve the issues with this article; it’s also because the past month of everyone’s time here has apparently been wasted. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:18, 19 December 2009 (UTC) I think your missing the issue of the holidays. I don't see a drop in moral other than in you. Varoon is out until the next full moon, Slr is constantly busy, DJ hardly ever edits anyway, Ramdrake has been very sick lately and I fear may not be in good shape, Dave is being very cooperative, and I'm dealing with lots of RL stuff right now. Cheer up; it's the holidays. Let's see if we can get this to work out since it's the closest thing to consensus we've had in a very long time. T34CH (talk) 02:12, 20 December 2009 (UTC) suggestion I'm throwing myself into the discussion a bit cold, so please forgive me if I cover old ground. I'm not sure that the move to make this a disambig page was the correct one, because it seems to me there is a specific topic here that ought to have a single article of its own. as I see it, it plays out as follows: whether actual differences in intelligence between social groups exist historical confusions between "race" and competence, e.g. "White Man's Burden" type arguments difficulty of determining the meaning of intelligence without importing cultural preconceptions actual statistical evidence for such differences (e.g., the statistical model which suggests that women are smarter than men on average, but with a smaller standard deviation) whether any such differences (given they exist) are due to genetic/biophysical factors or whether they are transmitted culturally/socially heredity research and arguments socialization research and arguments what public policies can/might/should be implemented to account for any such differences historical efforts, generally horrendous: oppression, apartheid, eugenics, exploitation, etc. what various scholars think is the proper way of responding to any such differences that exist If we can keep it to this outline, would this solve some of the issues that the article has suffered to date? probably a better title would be Intelligence and Social Groups, or something like that... --Ludwigs2 21:21, 18 December 2009 (UTC) Sorry for the long hiatus, but I had to deal with very serious health issues that kept me unable to be here in any way. I would tend to strongly agree tht turning this page into a disambig and moving its materials to other pages may be only disseminating the problem rather than solving it. About 3 years ago, this article was indeed split into about a half dozen articles, only to be remerged some months later. I think we need to review the important points we've discussed so far (scope, etc.) and achieve consensus on those. Only then can we really move forward.--Ramdrake (talk) 16:31, 6 January 2010 (UTC) Someone said: > This dispute presents two options: talk endlessly, or do something. Anything. "Do something. Anything." Why? Why not leave the perfectly good article alone? Oh yeah, it offends people who scratch their heads and JUST can't come up with an explanation why blacks do horribly on IQ tests. The now-dead article was not too long. It did not contain irrelevancies. It was not filled with uncited statements. There was nothing wrong with it. The sections fit together and were, uhh... integrated. When someone wanted to find out about "race and intelligence", all the relevant material was there in one place. I feel like creationists destroyed the "evolution" article by chopping it into pieces for no reason other than they don't like the (obvious) implication of serious academic research. This article should not include opinions by field anthropologists not working on the race/intelligence issue. Nor should it include bizarre apologia like "There really isnt any such thing as race. It's just a social construct". Do you want to put that statement in every other article about race, like [this one]? If it's true, it should CERTAINLY be included there. Or does race not exist only when we talk about one of them being demonstrably stupid? That question won;t be answered. It's far easier just to grab the kid who pointed out that the emperor is naked, ban her from Wikipedia for a month, and delete her comment as "unproductive". But that's my point. "Productive" is implicitly defined as "Doing something, anything" to change the article on race and intelligence. Why this is a bad thing? Here's why: In one Oregon(?) school district, they're eliminating high-school science labs and firing the science teachers because blacks all flunk it. See, since it CAN'T be that most blacks are too stupid for science lab, it must be some kind of racism. And since we don't tolerate racism, we'll fire all those racist science teachers. Bowdlerizing Wikipedia for political correctness actively promotes this egalitarianism gone mad. It makes me ashamed of being a left-wing Liberal. TechnoFaye Kane 05:06, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Heritability of IQ

archiving old discussions
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I believe Heritability of IQ has now become a POV fork of race and intelligence. I believe that heritability of IQ is a separate subject from supposed group differences. Wapondaponda (talk) 16:19, 7 January 2010 (UTC) Content fork yes, POV fork no. It certainly needs some work (though I won't touch it because i'm not a scientifically-inclined person), but it is a viable content fork. The WordsmithCommunicate 16:49, 7 January 2010 (UTC) I'm not sure it's a needed content fork, however. I really think this split & disambig was he wrong move, and I suggest we remerge the parts and get about writing the article correctly. --Ludwigs2 17:18, 7 January 2010 (UTC) I would say it is a POV fork. Heritability relates to the probability that a trait will (or will not) be passed down from parents to offspring. For example, there are articles such as the heritability of autism, causes of schizophrenia, or biology and sexual orientation which all discuss the heritability of complex traits. The issue of any supposed race differences in the occurrence of these traits is not central to the discussion of the trait's heritability. Wapondaponda (talk) 19:28, 7 January 2010 (UTC) Between-group differences in IQ is the latest POV fork of race and intelligence. It may be much better to simply recreate the article "race and intelligence" than to cut and paste the exact material into articles with a different name. This cat and mouse game is a getting quite ridiculous. Wapondaponda (talk) 15:37, 8 January 2010 (UTC) It's actually a recreation of the Race and Intelligence article. As such, it is both a POV fork and a portmanteau article. Can someone move the content back to Race and Intelligence so we can continue mediation rather than trying to hide the problem under the rug? Thx!--Ramdrake (talk) 15:47, 8 January 2010 (UTC) I agree that it’s essentially a recreation of the Race and intelligence article under a different name. As I expressed above in my comment on December 19th, I also think splitting the article was a bad idea to begin with. However, a question that I think we need to answer is whether it might be better for this article to exist under its current name than under the name it had before T34CH split it. I don’t have a strong opinion either way about this. On one hand, the current title of the article isn’t specific about whether it’s referring to an IQ difference between genders, races, or any other group. But on the other hand, it does address the concern that Varoon Arya raised about unclear scope—between-group differences in IQ is clearly a topic within the field of psychometrics, so everyone who reads or edits the article will know that it’s referring to the debate within this field. The title “race and intelligence”, on the other hand, has been interpreted by some editors as needing to cover the opinions of anthropologists and sociologists about what the terms “race” and “intelligence” even mean. I’m willing to move the content back to Race and intelligence if consensus supports that, but I think first we need to make sure the old title really is better than the new one. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:09, 9 January 2010 (UTC) The locus of this dispute was how much weight to give to hereditarian theories. Based on the principle of academic freedom, I am not opposed to the theories of Rushton and Jensen being in wikipedia in some shape or form, as long as they are not depicted as the mainstream position, but depicted as what they are, minority or sometimes fringe views. I do not agree with simply splitting the article into several sub-articles as this was unsuccessfully tried before. But I do support a revved-up disambiguation page which has links to other articles with hereditarian theories. For example there could be links to The Bell Curve and related articles where discussion of the hereditarian theories found in the book is not particularly controversial. This proposal has not yet been attempted. The subject matter is what is controversial, not the name of the article. Simply creating different names, such as Between-group differences in IQ, for the same material isn't solving the problem. Continued forking may soon become disruptive to the mediation process. Wapondaponda (talk) 05:51, 9 January 2010 (UTC) I support moving the article back to a single page. I think the page should be renamed "Intelligence and race" to put less focus on race in the title (I can craft even softer versions, but they start to sound manufactured), and I think we should restructure it along the lines I suggested at the R&I talk page about the time of the split. and I think you should each give me a thousand dollars, but I don't think that's likely to happen. I'd be bold and make the moves myself, but I'm relatively new to this page and I'd be worried I'd miss something. --Ludwigs2 06:54, 9 January 2010 (UTC) > "I am not opposed to the theories of Rushton and Jensen being in wikipedia as long as they are...depicted as...minority or sometimes fringe views." Say, that's mighty white of you, Cap'n! LOOK: Rushton's review of research, published in APA's journal, is not "fringe". The hundreds of academic research papers it cites are not "fringe". Fringe is: "Race doesn't biologically exist. It's just a convention, something that everybody pretends is real". Fringe is appealing to a semiotic distinction: "There are no races because that sounds like speciazation, and scientists only refer to us as a single species". And those are the two MOST credible contrary positions. Discounting the only obvious (and well-researched) explanation of something which doesn't have any other non-ridiculous explanation is just the kind of crypto-censorship that I expect from the sanitizers and Bowdlerizers when they can't just suppress the article outright. The worst they can do is put their POV spin on it. Whaddya know, there's another one right here: >"I think the page should be renamed "Intelligence and race" to put less focus on race in the title" Okay, now see if you can explain in words exactly WHY we should put less focus on race in the title of an article about two things: 1) race, and 2) intelligence. It's been called that for years. Changing the name is what needs explanation. --TechnoFaye Kane 01:10, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Should this be referred higher?

archiving old discussions
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I think this case has progressed beyond the point where I (or any other medcab volunteer) can resolve the complex and nuanced issues on this topic. I think all of you would be better off if I closed this case and one of you filed a request for formal mediation by MedCom. I don't think any of us really have the knowledge necessary to figure out how to attack this beast. So, i'm going to keep the case here open for 48 hours, and then i'll close it (barring any serious objection). You've made some progress, but I just don't think I can help you anymore. The WordsmithCommunicate 06:34, 9 January 2010 (UTC) Why abandon the mediation before any real mediation has happened? We came here with a relatively clear, solvable problem, but allowed a few individuals to derail the discussion with proposals which had no consensus and then let them go through with massive changes which turned the whole thing into a bigger mess than the one we started with. Let's get the mediation back on track by returning to the original points of discussion (i.e. before Slrubenstein's split proposal). In my eyes, the last constructive thing to emerge from this mediation was Ramdrake's observation - with which I fully concur - that the scope/title is the central bone of contention. I still feel that, once this issue is satisfactorily resolved, we can go back to editing in a normal fashion - which is what everyone here wants, I'm sure. --Aryaman (talk) 13:24, 9 January 2010 (UTC) I agree with Varoon Arya about this. I don’t see how you (The Wordsmith) can know that it won’t be possible for you to resolve this issue when you haven’t yet made a serious attempt to do so. We had a specific set of issues that we wanted your help resolving, starting with the article’s scope, and you offered to post a straw poll about that question. Posting a straw poll would have been helpful, and the fact that you offered to do this indicates to me that you could have helped us a lot more than you have, if you’d made a consistent effort at it. But for some reason, you dropped out of the discussion right after this, and ignored other editors’ requests for your further involvement in it, which is how we got to where we are now. This isn’t a question of whether you know enough about this topic; it’s just a question of whether you’re able to act as a responsible mediator. I’d have to say I’m a little skeptical of that at this point, but the fact that you haven’t lived up to your responsibility in this mediation case isn’t a valid reason to close it, and I would object to your doing so. Incidentally, I’ve moved the article back to its original location. Hopefully that’ll make it easier for us to resume the discussion we were having before Slrubenstein and T34CH sidetracked us. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:39, 9 January 2010 (UTC) That was me, actually. Christmas and stuff. Sorry I didn't inform. Xavexgoem (talk) 04:43, 10 January 2010 (UTC) There are a number of editors who support the proposals made by Slrubenstein and T34CH. Since they are part of the mediation process, their proposals are eligible for consideration. The purpose of mediation is to solve problems usually through new proposals. When CO states that Slr and T34CH "sidetracked us", I don't quite understand who "us" is referring to. I don't feel sidetracked by them, and I don't see any new proposals coming from anywhere else. The article has been restored, which takes us back to square one with no progress at all. Without any fresh propositions, future discussions will be like beating a dead horse because this particular controversy has been debated several times over. One thing we can learn from this mediation process is to distinguish between genuine concerns about content, and the periodic flare-ups this article experiences. Wapondaponda (talk) 05:25, 10 January 2010 (UTC) I’m not sure how what I’m referring to isn’t clear from Varoon Arya’s comment. What we were going to try and resolve here was the scope question, and there were several proposals related both to that and to other aspects of the article, such as DJ’s suggestion that it take a data-centric approach. While we were waiting for the mediator to post a straw poll about the article’s scope, Slrubenstein posted his suggestion to split the article, which is something that’s been tried (unsuccessfully) in the past. This proposal enjoyed no consensus, but T34CH went ahead with it anyway, which is what’s lately been preventing us from discussing the issues that we were trying to resolve through mediation in the first place. As has been pointed out by numerous other users, Slribenstein’s proposal hasn’t helped resolve any of these issues; it’s just added to them. At this point, consensus is also strongly against it. In addition to the mediation talk page here, this can be seen from the talk page for the race and intelligence article, for the heritability of IQ article, and for the new between-group differences in IQ article. In addition to me and Varoon Arya, users who have expressed a problem with this course of action are TechnoFaye, Ludwigs2, Victor Chmra, mikemikev, and GregorB. The only users who appear to approve of splitting the article like this are you, Slrubenstein and T34CH. That’s a seven-to-three consensus, which would be enough to undo this change even if it weren’t for the way it’s sidetracked us from the issues we were trying to resolve here. Whether this means we’re “back to square one” depends entirely on whether we’re able to resume discussing the issues and proposals that we were discussing before we got distracted by Slrubenstein and T34CH’s attempt to split the article. I’m willing to resume discussing them, but whether or not we can do that isn’t just up to me; it also depends on the cooperation of the rest of you and of the mediators. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:22, 10 January 2010 (UTC) First, I agree that mediation hasn't even been tried here. Who do we have to talk to to get an experienced mediator to lend a hand? Second, although T34CH bold editing was neither my first or second choice for how to handle the dispute, I thought it was a reasonable choice and that there was a chance for it to lead to consensus. At least I and T34CH were both working on it, and we have disagreed (I think) about this debate in the past. Why not allow his attempt a few more weeks to run? And then, before reverting it, test to see what sort of consensus, if any, has been achieved. I think that recent reversion was a mistake. But I don't want to get in an edit war about it. David.Kane (talk) 17:28, 10 January 2010 (UTC) The reason I didn’t wait longer before reverting it is because mikemikev stated here that he was about to revert the article, and if the article was going to be reverted, I wanted to make sure that this would be done by someone who was familiar with the mediation process and how the article had been split up. More specifically, you and DJ made some improvements to the article while it existed under the title Between-group differences in IQ that were definitely worth keeping, at least as long as consensus doesn’t oppose them. But since mikemikev hadn’t been following the mediation process, it looked like he was preparing to just revert Race and intelligence to the state that it had existed in before the split, which would have caused all of your and DJ’s recent work on the article to be undone. We were at the point where there was enough consensus against this split that it was inevitably going to be reverted no matter what; if not by me than by someone else. I couldn’t change whether or not this happened, but one thing I could do was make sure it was done in a way that preserved your and DJ’s recent work on the article. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:37, 11 January 2010 (UTC) For the record I was planning to incorporate any post split changes, but of course you didn't know that so your revert was justified. Sorry to butt in during mediation, but it seems to me that this split was not agreed upon. One of the main objections to 'race' here is that it is a vague concept. Surely 'group' is more vague and making the problem worse. I think that if this article was renamed it would then die a death of a thousand cuts, and end up buried. Since it is a real issue in academia, I think we have a duty to reflect it on wikipedia. mikemikev (talk) 11:14, 11 January 2010 (UTC) Mikemikev: If you would like to participate in the mediation (and you would be welcome), you should join us in a formal fashion. The initial bold edit by T34CH is an on-going project would should be allowed to run its course. My sense is that the new page is excellent because it allows us (mainly DJ) to avoid controversial discussion about What is Race? and What is Intelligence? while still allowing us to dive into the details of the scholarly literature. If you had more to add, that would be great. This page has been a mess for years and, as best I can tell, T34CH's bold edit offers the chance (but not the quarantee) for meaningful improvement. David.Kane (talk) 00:07, 12 January 2010 (UTC) I disagree. what we have here is one notable topic that should never have been divvied out over several pages, and T34CH's edit wasn't bold it was hasty, as well as undertaken without proper consensus over a holiday break when people weren't around to debate the issue. --Ludwigs2 00:34, 12 January 2010 (UTC) Just because you and Occam disagree does not mean that you should be stepping in the middle of this and blindly reverting the article. It's pretty clear that this subject needs further mediation, and that Occam's disruptive edits only exacerbate the problem. So far he's been suspended twice over his "bold" edits to R&I. Aprock (talk) 01:15, 12 January 2010 (UTC) I'm not interested in your dispute with Occam, and I am not interested in being criticized by you for doing what I think is correct. I am offering you the chance right now to discuss the issue politely so that we can reach a proper conclusion about which way to go with this. However, If you merely want to vent, please do that on my talk page so that we can reserve this space for productive discussion. --Ludwigs2 01:49, 12 January 2010 (UTC) Believe it or not, everyone is generally doing what they think is correct, which is why WP:AGF is a fairly good policy. In the case of Occam, doing what he thinks is correct has gotten him suspended twice. I personally have no beef with him, or you. I honestly think letting mediation run it's course is the correct way to go. Aprock (talk) 01:58, 12 January 2010 (UTC) (e/c) Why does no one ever seem to hear me when I say I want to talk about the topic rather than the editors? So far as I know mediation hasn't ended, nor was the decision to split the article a result of the mediation. I've told you why I don't think this article should be split. you tell me why you think it should be. we go from there. Sound like a plan? --Ludwigs2 02:57, 12 January 2010 (UTC) > "One of the main objections to 'race' here is that it is a vague concept." I trust that whoever asserted this will also put that little-known fact into Race in the United States whose first line is: The United States is a racially diverse country". He also needs to change Race and inequality in the United States, Affirmative action in the United States, and Racism in the United States, all of which would seem to be incomplete without inclusion of the very relevant fact that "races" don't exist. For that matter, I bet there are hundreds of articles that will need to be updated with this important new information. ...Unless the concept of races only becomes "vague" when one of them is shown to be less intelligent. Of course, that's not what's going on here, is it? Another thing just occurred to me, which I haven't seen mentioned. Even if we have to... uhh, whitewash the issue of race being correlated with intelligence because racial groups are just social constructs, nothing changes. The numeric data is still there, and needs to be explained. The question "why is one race so stupid?" has merely been replaced with "why is one socially-constructed group so stupid?" Remember that it's not sample bias or malnutrition or any of the other very carefully controlled variables that explain why this "socially-constructed group" is, on average, borderline retarded. if it were, then that would be the simple answer to the original question and we wouldn't be here talking about it. Yet no one seriously asserts that hundreds of studies, all showing consistent results, are biased by researcher racism (or whatever the excuse is). In theory, the Bowdlerizers would be completely happy if the original article in contention were changed only by replacing the word "black" with the phrase "one particular socially-constructed group". Right? (That's actually a serious question). TechnoFaye Kane Techno, you are confusing separate issues. No one denies that race as a social construct exists - people talk about race all the time, race is a factor in many social and political disagreements, etc. Scientifically, however, race is exceedingly difficult to define. Human genetic diversity is small compared to most animal species (the distribution of genes between supposed human races are much smaller than the normal distribution of genes you find in (I think the normal comparison is) robins). This raises serious analytical questions about whether differences between races are genetic or sociological in nature. That being said, this is not the place to engage in content discussions. once we get the page back on track, please bring your sources over to article space and start editing. --Ludwigs2 03:05, 12 January 2010 (UTC) Hmm... Okay, I agree that the issue of "why one particular socially-constructed group is, on average, borderline retarded" isn't what this mediation is about. That being said... You wrote that: "Scientifically, race is exceedingly difficult to define." But ONLY when the issue is intelligence! No one asserts this as a flaw in scholarly articles about other physical differences between the races. No one thought it was a problem when I was an anthropology major and Dr. Adler told us that racial differences extend to skeletal remains. I imagine few pathologists have been sued by the NAACP for citing those differences to establish race. Physical race ONLY becomes an issue when the issue is intelligence. > "Human genetic diversity is small compared to most animal species" With all respect, Ludwig, so what? Those genetic differences ARE sufficient to cause Asian skull volume to be 6% larger than black ones, Citations on request, but they're all serious academic journals. > "the distribution of genes between supposed human races are much smaller than the normal distribution of genes you find in robins." "Again, so what? There are noticeable differences between types of robins, too. In fact, there are six types, called "subspecies". At least, there were until they discovered a seventh a few months ago. And morthe differences involve more than just feathers. In fact, the plumage don't enter into it. All your statement seems to show is that whites and asians are a subspecies of negro. BTW, this simple but rigorously scientific chart (made by me) conclusively answers all of the issues of concern in this mediation. TechnoFaye Kane 05:05, 12 January 2010 (UTC) The decision to turn the article into a disambiguation was taken as part of the mediation process. The editors participating in that process may decide to revert it in the future. If you want to join the mediation process, then do so. You would be welcome. But you need to join it formally. In the meantime, the polite thing to do would be to avoid major edits on this article. Also, in case you care (and as the prior discussion makes clear) my own perspective on the underlying issues is probably close to yours. David.Kane (talk) 03:14, 12 January 2010 (UTC) what does 'join it formally' mean? I'm here, I'm participating - do I need to pay some kind of membership dues? so far, not one single response I have gotten on this page has involved the article at hand. hell of a frigging mediation process. if all you are going to do on this page is criticize each other and revert each other, you are not going to get anywhere. so what's it gonna be - are you going to bitch me out some more, or can we get down to business? --Ludwigs2 04:23, 12 January 2010 (UTC) Dude, it's alright. I basically gave the "go ahead" to create a disambig - actually, I said do anything - since we're in a talk-talk-talk loop. Yeah, I dropped the ball on this one. It's not an easy case, and there are at least a dozen issues, none of them disparate but enough to cause problems one way or another. Tell me what you'd prefer. You can email me, go to my talkpage, or reply here. If anyone needs a good bitch 'n moan, I'm always free for email. You can bitch and moan at me or anyone else. But we gotta keep that stuff off this page and any other. Xavexgoem (talk) 05:04, 12 January 2010 (UTC) eh, not a problem. I've had this page on my todo list for ages, and when I finally came off wikibreak and started to take a look at it I found myself ducking monkey poo (not a criticism - I've thrown my fair share of that stuff myself). a bit disconcerting, is all. . does 'join it formally' have a specific meaning, or is that just a turn of phrase? --Ludwigs2 05:53, 12 January 2010 (UTC) Essentially it means that you add your name to the list of parties. That's all, then you're in. We're not a process-heavy cabal. The WordsmithCommunicate 06:12, 12 January 2010 (UTC) is this BYOB, or is there an open bar? --Ludwigs2 06:27, 12 January 2010 (UTC) Our sekrit cabal paychecks aren't enough for an open bar. What do you think this is, Arbcom? The WordsmithCommunicate 07:04, 12 January 2010 (UTC) I think 'Race' is however it's defined for the purposes of that study. Therefore all studies about the subject are valid. If people want to know the results of such studies they can go to the 'Race and Intelligence' article, not the 'Undefined Groups and Intelligence' article. I'll stop reverting this in the interests of peace, but I think the current split is ridiculous, and an obvious attempt to bury the issue. I'll keep an eye on further developments. mikemikev (talk) 10:40, 12 January 2010 (UTC) It goes beyond that, really. whether or not race has a meaningful analytic definition, The term has been used 'as though' it has a meaningful definition for a very, very long time. People assume that there are differences between different groups of people, and that assumption is often used to claim differences in competence or ability (from garden-variety prejudice to complex apartheid-like social structures), and those differences are often cast in terms of cognitive ability. There is a long history of people making claims about the relationship between race and intelligence; the topic needs an article of its own. --Ludwigs2 18:13, 12 January 2010 (UTC) I think you are correct in this. I agree that there needs to be an article. The real question is what sort of article it should be. That's the basic problem right now, deciding what should go into such an article. Some people are very interested in including the research which shows that sociological race and intelligence correlate, and the related conjecture that there is a genetic link. In general, that line of research has reached a dead end, and there is little ongoing research into genetic race and how it relates to intelligence. The active research on the relationship between genes and intelligence has so far proven inconclusive, but is ongoing. I think the basic problem is that we're at that dead end in terms of research. Until we understand how genes relate to intelligence, there is unlikely to be any significant research into how genetic race relates to intelligence. I would personally fully support an article that described the history and ongoing efforts to investigate the relationship between sociological race and intelligence. Aprock (talk) 18:35, 12 January 2010 (UTC) I don't think we need to worry about that. Our job here is to report the history and the current understanding of the topic. If the current understanding is inconclusive, then we simply balance the various inconclusive theories and leave it as an open question. we can easily spell out the dimensions of the problem and the basic modalities that people have used to address it without making any claims about what is right and what is wrong. --Ludwigs2 19:43, 12 January 2010 (UTC) Yep, and that's exactly why mediation is needed. If this is to be an article about the history of academic investigations into race and intelligence, then I generally agree. But it's not clear that that's what the article is to be about. The many differing views as to what should be included in the article is one of the reasons why a disambiguation page was set up. I hope that it will be just a stop gap measure, but so far we can't decide what the article should be about. Aprock (talk) 22:05, 12 January 2010 (UTC) Off topic for mediation discussion. will resume when article editing recommences The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. Someone here just said "In general, that line of research has reached a dead end" How do you figure? The only plausible explanation for blacks, on average, scoring as borderline retarded is that blacks, on average, ARE borderline retarded, and every single study is consistent with that conclusion. The only other explanation anyone can come up with is that--suddenly and only for this topic-- we don't know how to tell the difference between blacks, whites, and Asians. That explanation is not only laughable, but because the only logical explanation is completely ignored, it's contemptuous of the integrity of science (and the integrity of my beloved Wikipedia, which is why I'm here). >"and there is little ongoing research into genetic race and how it relates to intelligence." There is also little ongoing research about whether the Earth is round. That doesn't invalidate the conclusive research which has been done, either. But why do YOU think no research is being done? Did everyone suddenly lose interest? Is the research being suppressed by the KKK? No, the reason is that if they even FUND such research, they'll be beaten to death by political (and sometimes physical) thuggery. The more intelligent of the Science Police merely attempt to censor Wikipedia. Look what happened to James Watson. He innocently pointed out that the Emperor has no clothes and now he's buried in the basement of the ivory tower. You think anyone else wants to join him down there? What IS allowed: 1) Describing Nazi eugenics and the pseudoscience of over a century ago, and 2) describing "smoking-gun-evidence" research as "inconclusive". An example would be the six percent deficit in skull capacity of blacks when compared to Asians as measured by three independent methods. No one calls these (duplicated) studies "racist" and the researchers biased, they just ignore the evidence and reassert that "no one really knows". They scratch their heads and announce that they just can't come with any explanation of why blacks might actually be as stupid as the intelligence tests indicate. That's why some people contemptuously call that position "Liberal Creationism"--and object to lies being put into Wikipedia. Research was done 20 and 30 years ago because well-intentioned smart people really believed that there probably WAS some other explanation, and they intended to find it. What they learned instead was: "be careful what questions you ask, because you might not like the answers". The purpose of Wikipedia is to PRESENT those answers, not further suppress them. The HELL with creationism--especially when it's promoted my my fellow liberals. You want to hand this up to the mediation committee? Sure. I vote yes. The exact same thing will happen there, until it is passed high enough for someone to issue a binding, politically-correct decision without consensus. TechnoFaye Kane 23:09, 12 January 2010 (UTC) Folks, please DNFTT. Thanks! --Ramdrake (talk) 23:06, 12 January 2010 (UTC) Another thing that will happen is that the arguments of those who object to the P.C. censorship will not be taken seriously, since there IS no serious rebuttal. Instead, they will be dismissed as "trolls", and an appeal will be made to ignore the facts they put on the table. TechnoFaye Kane 23:14, 12 January 2010 (UTC) techno, I'm archiving what you wrote above as off-topic for this discussion (which may be forward of me, but I think is appropriate - please leave me a talk page note if you want to discuss it). this page is for discussing what we are going to do with the article, not for discussing article content. if you have reliable sources for what you say, I'd be perfectly interested in seeing them and using them. but let's take that up when we work on the article itself, after we've finished discussing how we are going to approach the material. ok? --Ludwigs2 01:44, 13 January 2010 (UTC) > leave me a talk page note if you want to discuss it. The issue of political meddling in Wikipedia is too important. I will, however, keep any future posts (including this one) less ranting, much shorter, and to-the-point. > this page is for discussing what we are going to do with the article ...and THAT'S the point. I maintain that the article doesn't need to be changed at all. And that statement IS relevant to the issue of what happens to the article. The very fact that one group thinks there's something wrong with it should only be taken seriously when the article quotes fake numbers or is otherwise fraudulent. Do you think the people babysitting the evolution article take the shouts of "atheist bias" seriously? How about a vote on whether the article needs to be changed or not? According to Slrubenstein's opening statement: "The problem is when someone says that half of the difference in IQ between Blacks and Whites is genetic is tantamount to saying that Blacks are inherently inferior." But that's not true. It is not tantamount to ANYTHING but "blacks (on average) appear to be less intelligent, as measured by IQ tests", period. That statement only refers to test scores, not morality, virtue, or "superiority"--whatever that even means. This a huge error a lot of smart people make. Historically, the assertion that intelligence = superior has produced nothing but death, sadness, and a lot of nerds not getting laid. "What does this have to do with changing the article", you ask? I propose that a prominent disclaimer making that critical distinction be added to the top of the article. I think that will calm down some of the conflict. Further, I think it would be appropriate to add a section saying "Some people disagree about the relevance of...", and let them put their Apologia Negrogia there. TechnoFaye Kane 07:03, 14 January 2010 (UTC) PS: I doubt that I have changed anyone's mind, and I'm going to try really, really hard not to read this page anymore. "It is not tantamount to ANYTHING but "blacks (on average) appear to be less intelligent, as measured by IQ tests", period. That statement only refers to test scores," - I am afraid you misinterpret what I wrote. Had I written "The problem is when someone says averagre IQ scores of Blacks are lower than average IQ scores of Whites is tantamount to saying that Blacks are inherently inferior" you would be correct. But that is not what I wrote. What I wrote was, "The problem is when someone says that half of the difference in IQ between Blacks and Whites is genetic is tantamount to saying that Blacks are inherently inferior." What I wrote calls attention to the claim that the cause or explanation for the difference is genetic i.e. inherited i.e. inherent. The statement I am referring to does not refer solely to test scores. It refers to the claim that the explanation for the difference in test scores is genetic. Now, if you want we can have a debate as to whether IQ test scores measure intelligence. You seem to be suggesting that when you say that the only thing we are talking about is "test scores." But many people believe that IQ tests tests, well, "intelligence." What do you think IQ tests measure? I thought that this article was notable because IQ scores are held to measure intelligence. If it does not measure intelligence, what do you think it measures? But regardless of what you think, many people including most psychologists claim it measures intelligence. And if you claim that Whites are more intelligent than Blacks, well, yes, you are claiming that - in the field of intelligence - Whites are superior to Blacks. And if you claim that this is because of genetics, you care claiming that this superiority is inherant. I hope now that I have broken it down into smaller parts for you you can follow the ideas. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:52, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Discussion: Scope

archiving old discussions
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Before this mediation goes any further, I think it is vital for us to establish some kind of consensus regarding the scope of this article. In what follows, I shall make a proposal. Others may agree with it, ask for clarification regarding it, make suggestions for improving it, or make a counter-proposal. Whatever you do, please keep your comments, questions, etc. on-topic and constructive. The issue of scope is directly related to several key issues of this mediation, and involves (among other things): Title: Defining the scope helps us determine what this article should be called. Content: Defining the scope helps us determine what the article should discuss. Literature: Defining the scope helps us to determine which literature should be considered representative. I think the article should treat race as a factor in intelligence research. The main body of the article should discuss the results of research which has been conducted on "race and intelligence" (i.e. those two things in conjunction; cf. WP:SYNTH). The literature used for referencing the main body of the article should come from the field of intelligence testing, i.e. psychometrics and behavioural genetics. Criticism of specific aspects of race and intelligence research which is made by experts discussing race and intelligence should be included in the main body. Criticism of race and intelligence research in general, e.g. that made by scholars with either no expertise in race and intelligence studies or expertise in a field tangentially relevant, can be included but should be treated subsequent to the main discussion and should be allowed to neither pre-empt the issue nor outweigh it (cf. WP:SYNTH, WP:UNDUE). A smaller section, subsequent to the main body, should discuss both the impact this research has had on related fields as well as relevant discussion in the popular press. To summarize my proposal: Title: (1) "Race and intelligence", (2) "Intelligence and race", or (3) "Race in intelligence research". Content: The results of research on and theories regarding "race and intelligence" as a single issue, with subsequent discussion regarding the impact of this research and reactions to it. Literature: The primary sources should be those written by intelligence experts who consider race as a factor in their research. Secondary sources could include that written by scholars with expertise in tangentially related fields (sociology, anthropology, etc.) as well as the opinions of prominent public figures with no expertise but with, for example, political clout. Please comment below. --Aryaman (talk) 09:02, 14 January 2010 (UTC) personally, I think that's only a part of what the article needs to cover. The issue of race and intelligence goes back (at least) to the colonial era as part of efforts to understand the vast superiority of European technology over the (essentially) stone age civilizations colonials and explorers encountered (as well as helping to justify economic exploitation). The science arose primarily because western researchers were confronted with a de facto cultural assumption that other races were a bit dumb; an assumption that scientists went about trying to confirm or refute. going straight to the research would miss the fact that the idea itself springs out of white western/european presumptions of superiority. as I said over on the Race and Intelligence talk page, I think the body of the aricle should look more like this (cut and paste): whether actual differences in intelligence between social groups exist historical confusions between "race" and competence, e.g. "White Man's Burden" type arguments difficulty of determining the meaning of intelligence without importing cultural preconceptions actual statistical evidence for such differences (e.g., the statistical model which suggests that women are smarter than men on average, but with a smaller standard deviation) whether any such differences (given they exist) are due to genetic/biophysical factors or whether they are transmitted culturally/socially heredity research and arguments socialization research and arguments what public policies can/might/should be implemented to account for any such differences historical efforts, generally horrendous: oppression, apartheid, eugenics, exploitation, etc. what various scholars think is the proper way of responding to any such differences that exist That kind of structure should contextualize the issue properly. --Ludwigs2 10:11, 14 January 2010 (UTC) One could argue that the issue of "race and intelligence" goes back over 4000 years, but the question is whether we can write such a wide-scope article without indulging in synthesis or original research. This has been a constant problem with the article in the past. While it's true that this article is about two issues, i.e. "race" and "intelligence", we are not at liberty to bring together sources on "race" and sources on "intelligence" and evaluate them in a context foreign to their original composition. Discussing issues such as the "White Man's Burden", difficulties in defining/measuring intelligence, difficulties in defining race, intelligence as a factor in the race debate, etc., while certainly related to the issue of "race and intelligence", should not be the central focus of this article. Though this article should summarize those discussions in an appropriate manner, these issues are best covered at their respective articles, and we are prompted to make necessary assumptions when writing articles exactly such as this one. In my opinion, as long as the title is "Race and intelligence" or some variant thereof, our primary sources should be discussing "race and intelligence" in conjunction with one another. If an article about two issues cannot be written using sources which discuss both issues in relation to one another, then it is likely that Wikipedia should not have an article on it at all. In this case, we have enough literature from intelligence experts to write a competent and informative article about the single issue of "race as a factor in intelligence research". As for "contextualizing" the issue, we are limited to imitating the contextualization which takes place in that body of literature. To go beyond that in the attempt to provide "proper" context is to initiate a debate which will keep us firmly situated in the present dispute, as there is no objective standard for what is "proper". --Aryaman (talk) 15:14, 14 January 2010 (UTC) I think Aryaman has the right approach. This way, we can make good mention of the problems with this dispute (White Man's Burden, etc) without getting sidetracked by it. With that said, there will be an assumption by many readers expecting a greater critique of the subject, so it should be stressed somehow that this article is nearly entirely academic, as are the critiques within the field. Is this an accurate summary, so far? Xavexgoem (talk) 15:32, 14 January 2010 (UTC) As far as I'm concerned, yes. We should have a disclaimer at the top of the article which says something to the tune of: "This article discusses race as a factor in academic intelligence research. For information on related issues, see: X, Y, Z." Which articles need to be listed in that header is, of course, open for discussion, but obvious ones include Race (classification of human beings), Intelligence quotient and Achievement gap in the United States. --Aryaman (talk) 15:48, 14 January 2010 (UTC) The main problem in that summary is that you seem to want it to be a broad overview, but use a narrow set of sources. I'd be happy with either a narrow article from a narrow set of sources, or a broad overview emphasizing our current understanding. Aprock (talk) 16:40, 14 January 2010 (UTC) well, all I can say is that if you don't contextualize this article in terms of preexisting beliefs about European superiority, this article is going to continue to be plagued by POV problems. The question of whether there are identifiable differences in intelligence between races only arises because such opinions exist in the conventional mindset. Trying to head straight to the research makes it look as though racial differences are meaningful and true, because the research has to presuppose that for analysis. it's rather like spelling out the answer to a question without clarifying the question itself. --Ludwigs2 20:24, 14 January 2010 (UTC) I totally agree with Ludwig here. Starting by making the "necessary assumptions" (i.e. that races are valid biological categories and that IQ properly summarizes intelligence) goes xounter to the opinion of a large percentage of scientists in many relevant fields). While the article shouldn't dwell overmuch on these points, they need to be raised as they have been used as legitimate objections to the study of "race and intelligence".--Ramdrake (talk) 21:25, 14 January 2010 (UTC) The "necessary assumption" in this case is that both "race" and "intelligence" are highly controversial issues. We can safely assume that every reader approaching the article already knows this, and repeating it for the sake of political correctness or whatever is just plain silly. If a reader wants to find out about all the ways in which "race" and "intelligence" are controversial, he or she can read those articles. I've made it clear that I support including criticism as long as it's coming from literature which covers race and intelligence (and there's plenty of that), so there's no need for the straw man argument. I'm not attempting to "hide" the fact that race and intelligence are controversial. (As though that were even possible?) I am trying to create an article which abides by policy and discusses a clearly identified topic in an intelligent manner. This isn't a high school essay, and we should stop wasting our time by trying to write as though we have some moral obligation to ensure that none of our readers draw potentially offensive conclusions from the research results we are reporting. It's a controversial and potentially offensive topic, and it will be forever plagued by calls of "POV!" That doesn't mean it can't be dealt with in a sensible way. --Aryaman (talk) 22:16, 14 January 2010 (UTC) I really don't think you can assume that a reader understand that race and intelligence are both ill defined terms.Aprock (talk) 22:21, 14 January 2010 (UTC) Agreed, vehemently. I remember back in High School -- not that long ago, about 3-4 years -- I was watching a kid fill out that political compass survey (google it). One of the questions was, to paraphrase, "I believe that my race is inherently superior to others"... and four bullets: strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree. Kid clicked agree. Now, Wisconsin might seem like the boondocks to some, but this was an upper-middle class white kid in an upper-middle class white city. I'm not entirely sure what my point is here, but it raises an ethical question. Aryaman, you suggested the use of "Race in intelligence research" as a title. Perhaps this would mitigate this somewhat? It does appear to narrow the contextual scope. Xavexgoem (talk) 22:37, 14 January 2010 (UTC) (e/c) Aryaman, I think you've misunderstood me. I'm not suggesting you are trying to 'hide' anything, and I am not talking about criticism. I'm trying to tell you that this topic is not clearly defined unless you frame it in terms of greater societal contexts. if you don't, you make it look as though a bunch of scientists woke up one morning and thought (completely out of the blue) "Gee, I wonder if darker skin makes people dumber?" That isn't what happened at all: scientists have merely been trying to get empirical data and create theoretical frameworks to support or refute a set of pre-given social preconceptions about race. we need to lead with some discussion of the history that lead up to this kind of research, because without that history the research itself starts to look racist. --Ludwigs2 22:45, 14 January 2010 (UTC) (outdent) Aprock, I don't want to assume that my reader "understands" that "race and intelligence are both ill defined terms". If I did, I would be assuming my reader to be biased, which is a bad assumption for any editor to make. On the other hand, if I did want to assume such a thing, then I would be demonstrating my own bias (i.e. that I am of the conviction that "race and intelligence" are in fact "ill defined terms"), and would make myself unfit to edit this article without the closest of observation. Instead, I feel content in assuming that the reader knows this to be a controversial topic. I also see no problem in reminding him of this fact as a somewhat crude yet forgivable way of easing into the discussion. But the line must be drawn at rehashing the debates regarding the definition of "race" and "intelligence" in either the general academic community or in the public at large. The article should stick to informing the reader as to how the literature which actually discusses "race and intelligence" defines these things. Ludwigs, it seems to me that you are interested in "intelligence as a factor in the issue of race", i.e. a history of academic racism with a special emphasis on any claims of "intellectual inferiority" which may have been made along the way. As I hope is obvious, this is almost the exact inverse to my own proposal regarding scope. I have serious doubts regarding whether synthesis and original research can be avoided in such an article, but it is one solution to the question of how "race" and "intelligence" can be discussed in the same article. Here's the dilemma: The wider you make the scope of this article, the more inadequate it becomes for presenting the results of psychometric research on the issue of race and intelligence. If you bury it or marginalize it by bringing in historians, anthropologists, sociologists, biologists, etc. who will tell us that research on race is "fundamentally flawed", that intelligence is "impossible to quantify", and that the study of race and intelligence is "the product of the White European man's attempt to dominate the world", it will eventually split off into its own article, thus defeating all the effort spent on "contextualizing" the discussion in the first place, and the cycle of split-merge-delete-recreate-disambiguate-merge-split that has gone on for years will simply continue. Thus, the only viable solution in my eyes is to narrow this article down as much as possible. But, seeing as we have two options, I suppose we should put it up for a vote, no? If the mediator would do so, I would be grateful. --Aryaman (talk) 03:51, 15 January 2010 (UTC) I agree with Varoon Arya for the most part. There needs to be a "race as a factor in intelligence research" article as s/he puts it. Let other articles cover broader topics if they're appropriate topics, perhaps including an article under the namespace of "race and intelligence". There are innumerable academic works with corresponding research-only focus (e.g. the APA's report), which serve as the predicate to establish the scope of such an article. Brief summaries with links out to related articles may of course be appropriate for context. --DJ (talk) 08:43, 15 January 2010 (UTC) Varoon: that's not quite how I would put it. Scientifically, the way one has to approach this issue is to say: "Here is a set of races defined by such-and-such measurements, and here is a measure of intelligence. let's see if there's a relationship between them." Then one does research that categorizes subjects according to measurements of race, runs the subjects through measures of intelligence, and runs statistical analyses (ANOVAS or regression analysis in the simplest cases). Unfortunately, measurements of race suck (and yeah, I know that no one ever talks about measuring race; That just speaks right back to the problem). Race is invariably measured by self-report or by inspection (s/he says he is ... of s/he looks like s/he's...); I have never heard of an intelligence experiment that classifies people according to genetic markers (which is the only meaningful way to classify people into 'races'), nor do I know if that kind of classification is even possible. by ignoring the social context in which race is defined, race gets reified as a pre-given (through the assertion that the conventional way of measuring race is accurate). You cannot understand the answers given by research into race and intelligence without understanding the questions that the researchers asked when they did their research, and that goes straight to social and political preconceptions. --Ludwigs2 11:22, 15 January 2010 (UTC) Ludwig, the issues you’re raising here are actually discussed by a lot of the research that’s specifically about race and intelligence, so you don’t have to worry that these questions will be overlooked if we follow VA’s suggestion about a narrow scope. I know I’ve stated this earlier in the mediation case, but I also agree with VA that the scope of this article should be “race as a factor in intelligence research”. That isn’t to say the historical background of this topic shouldn’t be mentioned at all, but it shouldn’t be the focus of the article, and it only be presented as a way to contextualize the psychometric debate. The reason I feel this way (which I’ve also stated before) is because if we take the wide-scope approach, we’re going to end up duplicating information that’s in a lot of other articles, such as Race and genetics, Social interpretations of race, Scientific racism, and so on. That in itself isn’t a problem, but Wikipedia also currently lacks any article which focuses on the debate in psychometrics over race as a factor in intelligence research. If we have a choice between an article which rehashes information that’s already in other articles, or an article which presents a topic which is not covered anywhere else on Wikipedia, I think it’s pretty clear that Wikipedia would benefit considerably more from the latter option. --Captain Occam (talk) 11:41, 15 January 2010 (UTC) ok, I'm fine with keeping it restricted so long as it is contextualized. really, my main worry is that presenting the research without context will present race fait accompli, which would be (IMO) a misrepresentation of the literature. --Ludwigs2 12:42, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Archiving

archiving old discussions
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Page is getting quite large and probably needs archiving. What is the normal practice for archiving mediation talk pages? A few comments, such as those about some racial incidents that have happened, are quite forum-like and do not appear to be relevant to the mediation process. Wapondaponda (talk) 10:34, 15 January 2010 (UTC) I usually just collapse them, instead of archiving. Otherwise it takes me a bunch of pageviews to get all the context. I'll see what I can do.Xavexgoem (talk) 10:46, 15 January 2010 (UTC) Collapsing will reduce the vertical space, but it won't reduce the size of the article, which is currently over 350kb. Such large pages become a problem for low bandwidth connections. Wapondaponda (talk) 00:54, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Straw-poll, heaven forbid!

archiving old discussions
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
It seems our current dilemma is not as bad as it seems. Right now, principally between Aryaman and Ludwig, we have a fairly specific problem of scope: Should "Race and intelligence" be broad, and cover all fields -- which will inevitably weigh towards the idea that race is essentially an unfair metric in intelligence (which others will argue is an unfair metric itself) -- or will it cover material under the assumption that there are researchers who study race (however defined by them) as a factor in intelligence research. It should be noted that Aryaman has already expressed that it's worth having some explicit discussion within the narrow-context article about some of the basic problems others have with the use of race in intelligence, while not skewing the discussion towards race. interjection: I have to object to the phrase inevitably weigh towards the idea that race is essentially an unfair metric in intelligence which is not true, and not what I was saying. Fairness has nothing to do with it. Either the measures made of race and the measures made of intelligence are valid and reliable or they are not; it's a question of whether the conclusions drawn are reasonable or spurious, not whether they are right or wrong. --Ludwigs2 11:31, 15 January 2010 (UTC) It's my opinion that both the wide-context article and the narrow-context article are worthy of inclusion. The former covers a huge area: Sociology, achievement gap, and white supremacy (the system, e.g., White Man's burden); the latter covers a narrow area: the academia that includes race within discussions of intelligence. I use my own opinion in this paragraph just to point out that there may be a middle ground. A brief glossary: Wide-context refers to race in all or nearly all possible contexts (like the political aspects) and how that could relate to "intelligence"; narrow-context refers to race only as it's used academically in the study of intelligence, regardless of the definition or connotation of race - tacit or express - used by those academics (although, naturally, mentions will be made about the controversy). Xavexgoem (talk) 10:08, 15 January 2010 (UTC) If I got any of this wrong, particularly the glossary, please correct me. Here's the straw-poll. Feel free to add a short comment on why you think what you do (see WP:Consensus statement for tips on brevity), but please don't make a comment so big that you just know someone'll have to reply to it. There's an "other" section. Use it only if the parts above don't even come close to what you have in mind. Race and intelligence should cover both the wide-context and the narrow-context Note: the consensus is that wide-context will outweigh narrow-context, so only sign here if you understand that support. Any other solution is nothing more than creating a pov-fork. " POV forks usually arise when contributors disagree about the content of an article or other page. Instead of resolving that disagreement by consensus, another version of the article (or another article on the same subject) is created to be developed according to a particular point of view. This second article is known as a "POV fork" of the first, and is inconsistent with Wikipedia policies." Support. Again, the research need to be presented in full context, which includes reception from other venues of science. As I said earlier, limiting the scope to just psychometricians runs the danger of building a walled garden.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:57, 21 January 2010 (UTC) Race and intelligence should cover the wide-context; another article should more exclusively cover the narrow-context What should it be called? Support: I suggest creating Race and IQ (currently a redirect to Race and intelligence) as the article which will focus on discussing race as a factor in intelligence research. "IQ" is (a) more specific than "intelligence", though it can be seen as a sub-set of it, and (b) clearly indicates the distinction between "intelligence" in a general (social/political) sense and "intelligence" as it is used in the field of psychometrics (which is usually carefully defined and not nearly as "nebulous" as in the broader discussion). Both articles should have a header which explains the specific scope (e.g. "This article treats the issue of race as a factor in academic intelligence research. For a treatment of the historical, social and political context in which this discussion takes place, see: Race and intelligence, etc."). --Aryaman (talk) 19:20, 15 January 2010 (UTC) Support': Race and IQ is a fine suggestion for the narrow article's title. The broad article can be at Race and intelligence. "About" tags at the top of the pages can keep the two linked. The motivation is empirical -- there is a coherent "narrow" focused literature on IQ that can stand on its own as an article. This approach is consistent with the current state of affairs where Achievement gap in the United States is also a separate article. I believe this will accommodate what are otherwise two different but equally valid visions for what a single Race and intelligence might contain. Evidence that these two visions can practically co-exist in one article seems severely lacking and contradicted by years of problem with the article. We can being by copying the current Race and intelligence content to Race and IQ and setting up the stub for the new Race and intelligence with the appropriate links out. --DJ (talk) 09:40, 16 January 2010 (UTC) Support: I think creating a Race and IQ page is a perfect way to handle dealing with separating the research issues from the general sociological ones. Aprock (talk) 18:38, 19 January 2010 (UTC) Support: Also agree Race and IQ article is a good idea. David.Kane (talk) 04:34, 20 January 2010 (UTC) Race and intelligence should cover the narrow-context; another article should be made for the wide-context Ditto above mikemikev (talk) 17:12, 15 January 2010 (UTC) - Believe wider context goes under 'Race' and 'Intelligence'. TechnoFaye Kane 10:29, 1 February 2010 (UTC) This article should be about objective measurables and research, not about "the historical, social and political context", which is crypto for "what a raw deal the negro has gotten from the white man." That's not the topic of this article. Other (please be brief) But if you have an opinion about the above issues, please add them above I think we can (and should) cover both the wide and narrow context in the same article, where the focus is on the narrow context of research but the wide context is covered thoroughly enough to put the research into proper context. --Ludwigs2 19:51, 19 January 2010 (UTC) Question: Ludwigs, can you give us some kind of objective standard for what provides "proper context"? We agreed that even the narrow scope article will cover context, as this is covered in the literature. In what way do you see that context as being insufficient? Some concrete examples might help clarify things. --Aryaman (talk) 02:20, 20 January 2010 (UTC) Comment: This is essentially the first option, as I had it figured. Maybe the small text is too misleading; I added it because it's likely to get a smattering of UNDUE comments as balance is created and maintained. With that said, I think Aryaman is asking the right question. (Actually, I'd rephrase the question: what is the minimum acceptable context? We were having a long and dreadful discussion above about percentages (...I think this was the mediation that happened, anyway...) between wide-scope and narrow-scope) Xavexgoem (talk) 04:45, 20 January 2010 (UTC) Ludwig: Covering both was my first choice as well. But, now that I have studied the archives ad listened to other editors, I can understand why covering both in one article has never worked despite years of good faith efforts. If you have just one article that WP:UNDUE complaints dominate everything. Why not give this new idea a try? David.Kane (talk) 04:54, 20 January 2010 (UTC) Here's the way I see it (not sure if this qualifies as an objective standard, but...): before the research can make sense, the reader has to be able to understand that the scientific question arose out of a set of social/political questions. These don't need to be gone into in great detail (because I'm sure there's already plenty on those questions elsewhere on wikipedia), but enough has to be lain out so that readers can see that scientists aren't asking this question out of a peculiar sort of curiosity. Scientists are asking this question because the ideas of race and intelligence overlap on a number of different social and political fronts (observable differences in wealth, status, criminality, educational achievement, etc., etc.). the R&I question is harped on both by those who want to use intelligence as an excuse for minorities' poor performance in society (e.g. Bell Curve type arguments) and by those who want to suggest there are no differences in intelligence (to show that society is racially oppressive in subtle but enduring ways). we might be able to do this to an extent through the research (some research I've read on this subject lays out the political and social aspects explicitly), but we probably should have a short section laying out the history of the field. more than that would probably be unnecessary - we surely do not have to find any answers to these questions, since scientists themselves don't yet have a clear view on the issue. does that makes sense? --Ludwigs2 07:11, 20 January 2010 (UTC) I really do think that can be covered in the narrow scope article, as the research often does the same. However, you won't often find presentations of context in that body of literature going back much further than the beginning of IQ testing itself (ca. World War I). We can speculate as to why that is, but I think the most obvious reason is that this research is conducted by experts in intelligence looking at race as a potential variable in their work. Their field began with inception of psychometric testing, and it makes sense for them to start there. As a result, one can and does often find presentations of the history of the "Race and IQ" issue examined from that point forward (of course, with mostly inadvertent emphasis on the developments in the US). If we attempt to go beyond that, I'm afraid we're heading into uncertain territory, with synthesis, original research and plain old speculation lurking at every turn. For example, I don't think it's wise for us to attempt to examine the motivation behind studies which discuss race and IQ. I know people love to do it, and some of the speculation can be "reliably" sourced, but I've yet to read anything of that sort worth reporting on, as most of it boils down to a carefully crafted ad hominen argument. In opposition to most, it seems, I believe there are fully respectable scientists who have - out of nothing more than the pursuit of knowledge in their field of study - come to conclusions which, when taken out of the context of that field, appear alarming or even offensive to others. I'd like to believe that it is possible to write this article without catering to either "side" in the wider debate, and that we can do so by simply reporting on the results of research and the interpretations of those results. Metadiscussion of the type "Why do these people study this in the first place?" is inherently loaded as it operates on the assumption that their interest in the subject is something other than scientific. --Aryaman (talk) 09:45, 20 January 2010 (UTC) You misunderstand me, and you misunderstand the scientific point I'm making. I'm not suggesting that we deal with the motivation behind these studies (motivation being commonly understood as a fuzzy affective state). I'm suggesting that we cannot present the research without some clear insights into the questions being asked. Science without context is little more than propaganda, since by framing the question correctly one can (superficially at least) get research to say just about anything one wants it to say. It's a common failing among wikipedians to reach for some 'pure' form of science - that effort might pass muster on the physical sciences (it's still a mistake even there, but one with few ramifications), but it's a sure road to misrepresentation in any research that involves human beings. this is not about the motivations of individual scientists, this is about the way the questions that lie behind the research are framed. --Ludwigs2 19:04, 20 January 2010 (UTC) I think I understand you just fine, it's just that we have two diametrically opposed ways of viewing this. While you've said "Science without context is little more than propaganda", I would say "So-called 'context' is often exactly that which turns science into propaganda". Regardless of whether or not there is such a thing as "pure" science, there is such a thing as unbiased, unprejudiced reporting upon the results of legitimate scientific inquiry, and "couching" those results in any fashion is to be done with extreme caution, if at all. With that being said, how do you propose we discuss "the way the questions which lie behind the research are framed"? It sounds like some kind of investigative reporting to me, not an encyclopaedia entry. I'm willing to hear your suggestions, though. --Aryaman (talk) 19:20, 20 January 2010 (UTC) Heavens... I think wikipedia was invented as my own personal hell, where I am forced to discuss basic principles of scientific methodology ceaselessly and without end. I suggest that we have a Background or History section that points out some of the surrounding dialog. for instance, I am sure there are journalistic and social scientific sources that talk about the political and sociological ramifications of the intelligence/race issue - they may even be referenced from some of the more analytical research that we already have, so that would just be a matter of following the citations back. I know for a fact that when the book 'The Bell Curve' came out, half of the critiques were analytic and half were socio-political, and that the authors themselves (what the heck were their names? - slipping my mind) came out with both analytic and socio-political defenses of the work. those right there are probably sufficient to give a good description of the cultural climate from which the research stems. --Ludwigs2 21:31, 20 January 2010 (UTC) I love the second paragraph, but it's effect may be somewhat diminished by the first ;-) Xavexgoem (talk) 22:07, 20 January 2010 (UTC) lol - point taken. In the future I'll keep my hellish musings to a minimum --Ludwigs2 22:54, 20 January 2010 (UTC) Well, I have no problem with what you've just described. In fact, one of my first suggestions when I became involved with this article was to do exactly that. But I have to say, this sounds radically different from your earlier descriptions. (I mean, "contextualizing in terms of preexisting beliefs about European superiority"?) As I've said, I think that even by sticking to the core psychometric literature, we can cover the history from the first World War forward, which of course includes all of the "Bell Curve" material. --Aryaman (talk) 09:40, 21 January 2010 (UTC) PS: Ludwigs, it seems we agree on quite a bit, and our main point of disagreement is whether or not the narrow article can accommodate sufficient context. I think it can, but I don't see a way to demonstrate that without getting concrete. Would you object to the creation of "Race and IQ" as a narrow-scope article with the caveat that the History/Context section be adequately developed? --Aryaman (talk) 15:24, 21 January 2010 (UTC) I don't want to step into the 'separate article/article name' confusion here. let me say that I would definitely agree to a narrow-scope article where the History/Context section was adequately developed. I'd prefer not to create a content fork, and we can go on to debate the merits of different article names, but I think we're on the same page with respect to substance. --Ludwigs2 16:23, 21 January 2010 (UTC) (outdent) Well, that helps considerably in moving things along. It seems, then, that we have 7 editors in favour of a narrow-scope article with an adequately developed section on History/Context (I don't think there will be any objection regarding the context as we've just discussed it, as apparently I was alone in my concerns regarding possible problems with synthesis/original research). That's remarkable, all things considered. Now, it remains open whether this article should be named "Race and intelligence" (favored by mikemikev) or "Race and IQ" (favored by DJ, Aprock and myself; Occam has indicated that doesn't necessarily object to either title). Seeing as we're agreed upon a narrow scope, I think "IQ" is to be preferred over "intelligence". But now I'm just repeating myself. sneaking this in here: let me toss Intelligence and race into the mix, since it seems to me that the intelligence question was applied to pre-existing racial issues, not vice-versa.--Ludwigs2 18:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC) No problem as far as I'm concerned, as I made the same suggestion in the section Discussion: Scope above a few days ago. --Aryaman (talk) 19:01, 21 January 2010 (UTC) To the moderator(s): What's the best way forward here? Should we try to establish a stronger concensus on the title? Do we need a new section and/or poll? Or can we move ahead with actual editing? --Aryaman (talk) 17:59, 21 January 2010 (UTC) I don't support the creation of two articles. I was thinking of one, focused on the narrow context (but obviously with significant discussion of the wider). Whether this is called Race and Intelligence or redirected from there to Race and IQ is not a major issue. mikemikev (talk) 23:16, 21 January 2010 (UTC) Straw-poll meta discussion I think this poll is a good idea. I have one question though. Isn't 'just the wide-context' the same as 'both wide and narrow'? mikemikev (talk) 11:52, 15 January 2010 (UTC) ugh. I'm not sure we (or at least I) am ready for this poll yet. I look at these categories, and what springs up in my mind is: The scientific question is whether intelligence is a function of race; the political question is whether race predicts intelligence. I don't know how to translate that into the wide/narrow framework given above. --Ludwigs2 12:31, 15 January 2010 (UTC) @Mike - I defined what I meant up above. The narrow option excludes the wider one. @Ludwig - I owe it to a bunch of editors to at least narrow down the scope of this mediation; I promised a straw-poll a long time ago. You actually defined the wide/narrow scheme better than I have: science question is narrow, political question is wide. Make sense? Xavexgoem (talk) 12:39, 15 January 2010 (UTC) ok. my own knee-jerk preference, then, would be that it should cover the wide-context but focus primarily on the narrow context (and yes, I am genetically obliged to be a pain-in-the-ass ). let me think about it a bit, though, and decide whether I want to choose one of the given options or add in an 'other'. --Ludwigs2 12:50, 15 January 2010 (UTC) Xavexgoem: The point is whether the wide includes the narrow, thereby rendering 'both wide and narrow' equivalent. mikemikev (talk) 12:59, 15 January 2010 (UTC) (e/c) Ludwigs: I'll be honest, and I think you've been hinting at them: We've got much bigger problems if we can't at least acknowledge that a good portion of the wide-context needs to be included in the narrow-context article. I don't think this has gone unacknowledged by any editors, though :-) Mike: It would include the narrow-context, but it would be swamped. That's Aryaman's worry, I believe. Xavexgoem (talk) 13:00, 15 January 2010 (UTC) To be clear: the narrow option just means the academic research is more exclusive within the article So you need to remove the 'both' option, or votes for the wide/both option will be halved. mikemikev (talk) 13:15, 15 January 2010 (UTC) I'm fairly sure this is an equivocation on what I mean (not with intent, but I rarely get to use the word equivocation :-p). Would it be better if I used academic and political + academic instead of narrow/wide? That's all I'm getting at. Xavexgoem (talk) 13:29, 15 January 2010 (UTC) And remember, I'm just talking about the content of that article. The other option moves to... wait, I see what you mean. Before I vote, let me ask something: Would it be possible (both in an article-naming protocol sense as well as in terms of people's views) to have one article named "Race and intelligence" and one named "Race and IQ"? I might be overlooking something, but that strikes me a good solution which would help make it clear that the two articles, while discussing related issues, have two different focal-points. Could we live with that? --Aryaman (talk) 17:17, 15 January 2010 (UTC) I really like the idea of of using "Race and IQ" as a place where the more scientific aspects are described. Aprock (talk) 18:01, 15 January 2010 (UTC) Yeah, that'd be #2 on the poll :-) Xavexgoem (talk) 18:28, 15 January 2010 (UTC) I think the main article R&I should cover the broad understanding, but I really think a detailed survey of recent and ongoing research need to be prominently featured. I think the best way of doing that is to have a sub article which goes into the nitty gritty and a reasonable summary early in the article. In fact, I personally like the idea of making this more of a meta-disambiguation page which summarizes many of the other related articles. But most importantly, I think the scientific research needs it's own page with a narrowly defined scope so that it can escape the various POV issues that R&I currently has. Aprock (talk) 17:43, 15 January 2010 (UTC) With Aprock's vote, it's good to see people have not entirely forgotten about this mediation. However, I'd really like to get this thing to a point where we can resume editing again. Since I don't want to do any canvassing, could the mediator(s) please 'gently prod' those who have not voted yet? :) Thanks, --Aryaman (talk) 19:10, 19 January 2010 (UTC) I think the best way to go is to go ahead and create the Race and IQ page, and move most of the scientific discussion from R&I into there, changing the redirect from the silly GD&I page to Race and IQ. I think it's still not clear what R&I should be exactly about (since it's supposed to be "broad"), but editing on R&IQ shouldn't be hindered by content questions. That's just my opinion though. Aprock (talk) 19:22, 19 January 2010 (UTC) Please, let's not get ahead of ourselves. We're discussing what to do with the Race and Intelligence article. We don't need to launch in an effort to create another article yet. Also, we need to be careful not to make any new article into a POV fork, which seems a real possibility, according to some of the comments I've seen here. Just my tuppence.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:29, 19 January 2010 (UTC) I don't agree with the Race and IQ article for two reasons: I am trying to prevent the research from being separated from the social context it developed in; creating a separate article will just shift that basic problem to a different page IQ is a technical term relating to a particular way of measuring intelligence - using it in the article title is potentially misleading. --Ludwigs2 19:53, 19 January 2010 (UTC) I'm not at all worried that Race and IQ would constitute a POV fork. I think the social context question is a fine one, and should probably be addressed in both articles, with the bulk of the coverage in the more broad article and with the research minded one clearly summarizing and referring to those issues. With respect to using IQ in the title, I view it as clarifying, not misleading. Most of the research has been done with respect to IQ (or values which the researchers hope act as proxies). Because IQ is generally known to be a limited representation of intelligence, including that constraint in the title makes it much more clear that any results discussed in the article only apply to this one aspect of intelligence. Aprock (talk) 20:07, 19 January 2010 (UTC) I agree with Ludwigs here. We don't need another article which will just potentially shift the problem. We need to resolve the issue, not move it.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:25, 19 January 2010 (UTC) I don't think the problem of people wanting to elevate the hereditarian hypothesis is going to go away. Aprock (talk) 00:51, 20 January 2010 (UTC) The reason I haven’t voted in the poll is because I don’t have a strong opinion either way about whether or we should create “Race and IQ” as a separate article from “Race and intelligence”. I definitely agree that we need at least one article which focuses on the debate in psychometrics (that is, the narrow scope), but I also think we already have numerous other articles which address most of the social questions that would go in the wide-scope article. I think it would be fine for “Race and intelligence” to be about the narrow scope, while leaving the wide-scope content to other articles which exist already. However, I’m not going to stand in the way of creating an additional article about the wide-scope content, if that’s what consensus ends up supporting. All that really matters to me is that we have an article which covers the psychometric debate with sufficient focus to explain all of the data it involves, which the current article doesn’t. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:20, 20 January 2010 (UTC) Ramdrake: We have been trying to "resolve" the issue for 2 months now. Perhaps I am just a pessimist, but splitting the overall article up (i.e., moving some parts elsewhere) is the only idea, in various permutations, that has received anything other than narrow support. Why are you against even giving this a try? What is the worst thing that could happen? David.Kane (talk) 04:39, 20 January 2010 (UTC) David, I've been around the article for years (quite litterally) and have seen it split into several articles, only to see the articles fused back together after a few months. While the idea seems tempting, I don't think it can work that way. People will always push to present this kind of research as standard run-of-the-mill academic research whereas in fact it is marginal. This marginality needs to be pointed out, in order for the article to be neutral (relative to the real world). I'm also concerned with several editors' depiction of including information from other venues on the subject as giving a "social" context. There are many venues of science which have considered and rejected the subject, and that is in great part why there are so few scientists studying the matter, and why they are just about all confined tomone sub-specialty of psychology (psychometrics).--Ramdrake (talk) 14:36, 20 January 2010 (UTC) I do not find the distinction between narrow and broad context useful. Certainly, there are different contexts, but which one is narrow and which one is wide is perhaps contentious or vague. Let's just label whatever contexct we mean. Now, my understanding is that the debate over race and IQ is largely a public policy debate, led by scholars who are experts in education, the institution with which policy-makers are concerned. These scholars (like Jensen) are academics and have PhDs but are concerned primarily with public policy. I certainly see room for an article on these debates, which would include those researchers addressing public policy debates. I agree with Ramdrake that many of these are psychometricians. Race is a social construction, and from what I have read racial identity of IQ subjects is usually determines through self-identification. There is a good deal of research on the heritability of IQ conducted by those scholars who are experts on heritability, i.e. geneticists. As far as I know, most of them are not concerned with race. I can see this research in another article. this would not be a POV fork, but a content fork, and it would enable us to cover those debates that geneticists actually are concerned with, which have to do with the fetal environment for different kinds of twins and none of the stuff sociologists looking to explain racial differences in IQ look at. As far as I can tell those who claim that races are unequal (in IQ) for largely genetic reasons are a fringe. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:42, 20 January 2010 (UTC) Slrubenstein, you're arguing for the wide-scope article, which is fine. You want to see this as a public-policy debate. For psychometricians, the debate revolves around the reliability of data sets and the statistical evaluation of that data. Can you see the distinction here? To present modern psychometry as being driven by public policy is to misrepresent their intent. Does anyone really believe Jensen conducted his research on the g factor to influence public policy? Right now we have at least 6 editors willing to support the creation of a narrow-scope article. Of those 6, 4 have said they would not object to the creation of an article which explores "race and intelligence" from a wider scope. I think we're finally making some progress, and that this proposal could resolve the outstanding issues with this article. Ramdrake has made it clear that s/he thinks an article devoted to "Race and IQ" equates to "pushing this kind of research as standard run-of-the-mill academic research whereas in fact it is marginal". Other than its hotly contested subject matter, what makes this research so "special" (read: non-academic and undeserving of a neutral presentation)? We have an article on Near death experiences, despite the fact that it is quite "marginal" within the professional psychological community, and no other field of science would seriously entertain it as anything other than an effort to substantiate the psychological needs of the religious and the socio-political needs of their institutions. We seem to be able to discuss that narrow field of research neutrally and intelligently without providing the reader with reams of "context" on "the historical factors contributing to the emergence of NDE research", and without discontented editors harping that the subject needs to be presented as "marginal", "fringe science" or even "pseudo-science", or that we need to include the views of anthropologists, biologists, and sociologists in that discussion. It is my firm belief that if this were about anything other than "race", we would have resolved this issue long ago and moved on to more productive editing. Yes, both Slrubenstein and Ramdrake have been actively involved with this article for several years. Many other editors have come and gone, yet both of them have remained - as have the problems. We now have some agreement in this relatively "new" group of editors that splitting this into two clearly defined articles is a good way to proceed. I'd rather we move forward than sit and listen to the same arguments which fill several years worth of archives. --Aryaman (talk) 18:07, 20 January 2010 (UTC) I think it is pretty obvious that Jensen's research was driven by a desire to contribute to or inform public policy. This is true of much research and I see nothing wrong with it, nor do I see anything wrong with saying so. If your point is that there are also debates about the reliability of IQ tests, well, I have no quarrel with that or with covering that in an article. My main problem is with people who wish to include fringe views about genetics and IQ - views that are not considered mainstream by geneticists and that misrepresent debates among people who study inheritance and IQ. There is a big difference between the matter at hand and NDE, which I am sure even you can see: so far, research on NDE has not sought to influence public policy. Research on race and IQ scores is of great concern to policy-makers. That said, if you are suggesting to model an article relating to Race and IQ on NDE, well, fine by me. But to my mind that calls for multiple articles (as we have with evolution and creationism and intelligent design) because there are people who research race and IQ who are not fringe scientists. You seem to be confusing an object of study with a point of view. Near death experiences are objects of study, the view that they reveal something about an afterlife is a fringe view. Race and IQ is an object of study, the view that average differences are largely due to genetic factors is a fringe view. I'd like to see an article - or articles - that do justice to the legitimate research on race and IQ. If you are saying we should have another article for the fringe views, well, okay, but we would need to do so in a way that does not create a POV fork. These fringe views are notable as far as I can tell only outside of the scientific community, i.e. in public debates. Why not cover it in an article that is about public debates over race and intelligence? As to "the same arguments," it cuts both ways and I do not see how comments like that express any assumption of good faith. I am trying to respond to your comments reasonably and expect the same. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:19, 20 January 2010 (UTC) Let's stick to the facts. There are specialized journals and scholarly conferences in which all of these topics, including the evidence for and against a genetic contribution to IQ differences between races, are discussed with academic detachment -- and not simply as fringe theories like intelligent design but as empirical and scientifically answerable questions. That should be all we need to substantiate the topic of race and IQ research for inclusion in its own right. Further, the volume of this literature and the context in which it typically appears does not make it especially well suited to be put into the same article as a socio-political debate -- the psychometricians certainly protest that they're empirical conclusions should be evaluated as science first, not politics. Further, as a practical matter, the integration of these two approaches (science on the one hand and politics on the other) just doesn't seem to be able to be accomplished by editors of Wikipedia. For the sake of making a distinction that will lead to lasting agreement, and a distinction that is rooted in a real-world difference, we need to put the psychometrics in its own article. --DJ (talk) 18:37, 20 January 2010 (UTC) OK, let's drop the political background. The historical background itself would be interesting, but maybe not necessary to include. However, presenting it solely from the viewpoint of a few psychometricians is building a walled garden. If we present the science, we need to present the science as it is also seen by geneticists, anthropologists, etc. We need to present the subject in its entirety, and not selectively choose those who debate the subject a la Rushton (or Jensen, or whomever). If we do that, we are doing nothing but building a POV fork. And even local consensus cannot override Wikipedia community policies.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:26, 20 January 2010 (UTC) We've agreed in the past that the Neisser et al. report is probably the best single piece of literature for presenting the academic context in which this debate takes place, as well as for presenting the "mainstream" views on the individual issues concerned. Using it as a guide in framing the article is something I think everyone either has or would agree with, and I don't see how doing so could be considered "building a walled garden" in respect to other disciplines. --Aryaman (talk) 10:04, 21 January 2010 (UTC) When DJ mentions sociological debates, she conflates two different debates. One is on the social causes of IQ differences between races. I agree that this belongs in a different article than the one on psychometrics. There is a separate debate on the sociological and political forces shaping psychometric research. This cannot be detached from our coverage of thpsychometric literature. If there is too much material for one article I suggest doing what we do elswhere: have an ommibus article, that summarizes psychometric research and debates among psychometricians, and that also summarizes sociological analysis of tpsychometrics, linked to separate articles that go into detail on these to related topics. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:36, 21 January 2010 (UTC) Question: we already have an article on heritability of intelligence to cover research by geneticists. Why shouldn't the article on g-factor of intelligence be our main article for covering psychometrics and debates among psychometricians? I agree the article neds work, but hey, isn't that one purpose of talk pages, to figure out ways to improve articles (the article on the inheritance of intelligence also needs work). It seems to me that we already have a great article that covers psychometric research on intelligence. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:39, 21 January 2010 (UTC) g factor is not the place for this debate. Neither are the articles on Heritability of IQ, Psychometrics, Psychometric approach to measuring intelligence, Environment and intelligence or any of the articles listed in the Category "Race and intelligence controversy". Those issues play a role in "Race and IQ", but we can't shift this debate into those articles. (And isn't it odd that we have a category titled "Race and intelligence controversy", but we can't seem to write an article on the actual science which lies at the root of this controversy?) --Aryaman (talk) 14:59, 21 January 2010 (UTC) I assume you agree with my other point, I am glad you did not find it objectionable. As for "the actual science that lies at the root of this controversy" can you clarify just what you meant? I thought that the science covered in Heritability and IQ and General intelligence factor are the "actual science" at the "root" of this controversy. What science at the root of this controversy is not covered by these two topics (or the other three you added to the list)? Slrubenstein | Talk 18:09, 21 January 2010 (UTC) With your "other point", do you mean that in which you refer to DJ? If so, I prefer to let him/her say whether or not s/he is "conflating two different debates". As far as their being a "separate debate on the sociological and political forces shaping psychometric research": do you have reliable sources which discuss the "debate on the sociological and political forces which shape psychometric research"? I'm not aware of such debate within the psychometric community, though I suppose there may be well be such debate in other disciplines and/or in the general public in regards to psychometry. Psychometricians take their research seriously, and they debate the data sets, statistical analyses and various interpretations of that data. For example, Flynn, an "environmentalist", does not agree with Jensen, a "hereditarian", in regards to the interpretation of the data, but maintains respect for him as a scientist and for his work. To get sweeping criticism akin to "the results of psychometric studies which claim to demonstrate that at least some of the difference in average IQ between racial groups is due to genetics is just academic racism under a different name", you have to go outside the discipline. Within psychometry, this is a perfectly "valid" option, and cannot be ruled out categorically. By "actual science", I mean the studies which have been conducted on "race and IQ". Heritability is one aspect, IQ is another, and the g factor is yet another. All of these and more play a role in studies on race and IQ - which is why we can't file this debate under any one of those headings. --Aryaman (talk) 18:36, 21 January 2010 (UTC) (ec)Well, since race is a social construct I would think that the core scientific research on race and IQ as such would be by sociologists. As for a "separate debate on the sociological and political forces shaping psychometric research," yes, I do have reliable sources which discuss the "debate on the sociological and political forces which shape psychometric research." You are right that there is no such debate within the psychometric community, but why would anyone expect there to be one? Psychometricians are not trained sociologistds or political scientists, so I would not expect them to conduct research on sociological and political forces shaping their work. The research would be conducted by sociologists and others - aside from the sociology of science there are a number of historians and anthropologiss who study scientists and play a leading role in Science and Technology Studies. By the way, the question of whether psychometricians take their work seriously or not is not an issue, as best I can tell, in the research os social scientists who study science and scientists. Shamans take their work very seriously and when they enter an altered state of consciousness and heal someone, they believe that they are working within the most serious traditions of their vocation. Physicians take their work very seriously when they do their work too. That both sets of actors may be subject to social and political forces is something medical anthropologists and sociologists are concerned with, not shamans and physicians. The same is true for psychometricians. I did not know that Flynn or Jensen had degrees in genetics, and am still not sure how genetics is a branch of psychometrics.Slrubenstein | Talk 19:31, 21 January 2010 (UTC) Why are we going over this again? "I would think..." Well, the fact of the matter is psychometricians are the folks to go to when you want to know about race as a factor in intelligence research. Psychometricians are the experts in intelligence research, and they can tell you about numerous factors involved in the development of intelligence, including socio-economic status, health, and yes, even some claim to tell us about race. Now, are you going to tell me that we need to get an economist in here to "balance out" what a psychometrician says about the role of SES in IQ? Seriously? Give me a break, Slrubenstein. --Aryaman (talk) 19:42, 21 January 2010 (UTC) You are joking aren't you? You keep arguing AS IF I am saying psychometricians have nothing to say about race. Where have I ever said that? What I have pointed out is that they are not qualified for research on genetics. Don't you know that psychometricians use statistical methods applied to their data, and the data they get on race is almost always self-reported? Yes, yes, yes of course they can make claims about race and IQ, understanding that race is a social construct. This still is not close to doing research on genetics. I once again point out that neither Flynn nor Jensen have degrees in genetics, and genetics is not a branch of psychometrics. Of course they can analyze the relationship between IQ score and the race of the respondent. That is asking a question about intelligence and race, a social construct. That is not research on genetics. That is my point. And given that sociologists (and anthropologists, although they research different questions about race) are the experts on race, you should not be surprised that sociologists study the relationship between race and IQ.Slrubenstein | Talk 20:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC) this proposal is a pov-fork I don't buy the premise that there is a "wide context" and a "narrow context". What you're saying is that you want to create an article that only covers the work of hereditarians as if this work is a subject in it's own right. But who says this? What supports this conclusion? From my point of view this split represents nothing more than a pov-fork. Can anyone explain to me why this is not simply a pov-fork? It's not justified in the literature on this subject. Can someone point out where there is a consensus in the academic literature that this division exists? This is not content forking, it is pov-forking plain and simple. I'm totally opposed, this proposal amounts to saying that those who support the hereditarian hypothesis should have their own article. This is totally against wikipedia's normal content policy isn't it? Alun (talk) 19:27, 21 January 2010 (UTC) I think you've misunderstood the proposal. This is not about "creating an article that only covers the work of hereditarians". I'm not quite sure where you got that, but it should be evident from the above discussion that we're discussing limiting the scope of the article to the psychometric debate. In other words, including both "hereditarian" and "environmental" POVs. So, no, it's not a POV-fork. --Aryaman (talk) 19:33, 21 January 2010 (UTC) Actually Arya it is clear that the proposal is not to limit "the scope of the article to the psychometric debate". Read the proposal, it is to split the article into two, with one article covering the so called "narrow context" and the other article covering the so called "broad context" neutrally. That is a pov-fork and should not be allowed. There is nothing in the literature that would suggest that the academics who research this ever split the field into two in this way, it's an invention of wikipedia editors to allow this pov-fork. I suggest you read the proposal again because it clearly suggests splitting the article and you don't seem to understand that. Alun (talk) 04:13, 22 January 2010 (UTC) Wobble has a point, in the sense that in the field of psychometrics alone, the hereditarian hypothesis is taken seriously. However, it isn't really taken seriously in any other relevant (population genetics, anthropology, sociology, etc.) venue of science. This needs to be pointed out, lest we frame this research improperly.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:54, 21 January 2010 (UTC) break Slrubenstein: Races are not 'social constructs', they are examples of genetic clustering as a result of divergent evolution. You might as well say that apples and oranges are social constructs because we do not (yet) have a precise genomic definition, and that a sociologist would be best placed to measure the relative concentrations of malic acid in these fruits. mikemikev (talk) 21:06, 21 January 2010 (UTC) That is totally incorrect, do you have any sources that are reliable that say this? I don't think any reliable source would ever claim that "races" are the same as genetic clusters. Likewise no reliable sources have ever claimed that genetic clusters are the result of divergent evolution (most claim that the clusters represent ancestral populations, i.e. founding populations), that is genetic bottleneck followed by founder effect. Every source I have read avoids making claims about divergent evolution, simply because they are interested in neutral polymorphisms, that's because we cannot infer the relatedness of populations using genetic markers that are under selection, and divergent evolution clearly means traits that are under different selective pressures in different environments. Alun (talk) 06:45, 22 January 2010 (UTC) It make no difference to the issue whether racial genomic differences are caused by genetic drift or selective pressure. Do you really think that differences between races are not caused at least in part by selective environmental pressure? Ludicrous. mikemikev (talk) 12:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC) Actually it makes a great deal of difference whether differences between populations are due to selective pressure or are neutral. It's one of the fundamental concepts of microevolution that we can only measure population history and/or partitioning by using neutral genes. Using genes under selection would produce erroneous results. That's why all studies use STRs or SNPs that do not change amino acid sequences, because these are considerd to be selectively neutral. Or are you trying to say that populations in malarial regions that have selective pressure for haemoglobin S are a different "race"? That would mean that some Africans, some Europeans and some Asians are the same "race" because they live in malarial regions with strong selective pressure, but these populations are clearly not close either geographically and they all live on different continents. Alun (talk) 18:16, 22 January 2010 (UTC) We're not looking at population history, we're looking at intelligence. And of course I'm not saying people with one trait in common are the same race. We're talking about many genes, thousands, distributed unevenly. mikemikev (talk) 22:04, 22 January 2010 (UTC) Sorry Mike, but current scientific consensus is that races are social constructs. I can supply many refs to that effect if you wish.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:09, 21 January 2010 (UTC) Please do if it's not too much trouble (on my talk page). mikemikev (talk) 21:26, 21 January 2010 (UTC) Ramdrake, we’ve been through this before when we were debating about the Race and genetics article. Yes, races are social constructs, but they’re social constructs that correlate quite strongly with genetic clusters based on biogeographical ancestry. This fact is important in medicine, because races often have varying rates of reactions to certain drugs. For doctors to assume that race is “biologically meaningless” would not only be erroneous; it would be somewhat dangerous. And most of the references that you and other have provided about race and genetics acknowledged this. Bringing up the “social construct” point here is really a red herring. If the correlation between social races and genetic clusters is strong enough for races to vary significantly in one biological trait (reactions to drugs), then it’s possible—at least in theory—for them to also vary in another biological trait (average IQ). That doesn’t necessary mean they do, but as Nisbett points out in Intelligence and How to Get It, whether or not this is the case is an empirical question which can’t be answered A priori. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC) Actually Captain what you're saying is not accurate. Concepts of "race" only sometimes "correlate with genetic clusters based on biogeographical ancestry", and often it's not strong at all. Most medical researchers fully acknowledge that using "race" as a proxy for biogeographical ancestry is often imprecise and inaccurate, and can lead to bad medicine, but argue that "race" can serve as a useful proxy. They argue that inthe future when individuals can be screened genetically routinely, then the use of "race" as a proxy will be irrelevant. So I think you're being less than accurate in what you're saying. Alun (talk) 04:13, 22 January 2010 (UTC) I'm also a little confused why you think the fact that clustering analyses represent fundamental divisions within the human population. No one has ever made this claim. See Rosenberg et al. (2005) Our evidence for clustering should not be taken as evidence of our support of any particular concept of “biological race.” In general, representations of human genetic diversity are evaluated based on their ability to facilitate further research into such topics as human evolutionary history and the identification of medically important genotypes that vary in frequency across populations. Both clines and clusters are among the constructs that meet this standard of usefulness... The arguments about the existence or nonexistence of “biological races” in the absence of a specific context are largely orthogonal to the question of scientific utility, and they should not obscure the fact that, ultimately, the primary goals for studies of genetic variation in humans are to make inferences about human evolutionary history, human biology, and the genetic causes of disease.[2] So they're saying that clustering does not support any "race" concept. Clusters do not represent homogeneous genetic pools. Witherspoon et al. (2007) for example show that people belonging to different clusters are often genetically more similar to each other than they are to people in their own "cluster", so clusters are not homogeneous gene pools, they simply compare individuals with a "typical" genetic type. So I don't understand why you think that the fact that some constructs of "race" sometimes correlate with statistical clusters supports the conclusion that "race" is valid. Besides when one looks at clustering analyses, the majority of people in the world belong to more than one cluster. Furthermore there are plenty of geneticists and anthropologists who do not accept the validity of clustering analyses, and we can find sources to support that claim. This is because clustering analyses are dependent upon the assumptions made by the scientists. So for example one will produce different results depending upon the type of genetic element one decides to include in the analysis, STR vs SNP vs indel vs Alu etc. One will get different results depending upon the sampling strategy one uses, e.g. does one only include people who have four grandparents from the same geographical region? Does one sample small numbers of people over smallish geographic distances (continuous sampling), or does one sample large numbers of people in geographically distant locations (discontinuous sampling). Finally the result will be highly dependent upon the software used and how it infers human evolution. For example Waples and Gaggiotti (2006) use a computer simulation to model population splits, then use some methods for clustering to see how the clustering compares to their model populations, because their populations are perfectly defined they can evaluate the performance of the clustering analyses, they conclude that Structre, one of the most widely used software packages for clustering analyses, often underestimates the number of ancestral populations, especially when slow mutating elements like SNPs are used. That just goes to emphasise that the software used to analyse the data make certain assumptions that may be incorrect. So please don't confuse clustering, which may well be a statistical artifact, with natural divisions of humanity. Furthermore you need to understand that biogrographical ancestry is not the same as clustering, clustering often clumps groups together that are biogeographically distant, whereas modern genetic analysis can be extremely accurate in determining the geographic ancestry of a person. So there are two fundamental problems with what you say, firstly your claim that "race" correlates "quite strongly" with genetic clusters is not accurate, even most medical practitioners who advocate the use of "race" as a proxy (and many medical practitioners do not) for biogeographic ancestry would say it is a loose correlation, though they do claim that it can be useful. Secondly your assumption that these clusters represent natural divisions of humanity is erroneous and not supported by either the evidence or any reliable sources. Mostly what you're saying is OR actually.Alun (talk) 06:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC) OK, so there's 0.1% genetic difference between races. Is that enough to cause significant intelligence differences? We don't know. That's why we need to present the data of psychometricians. Actually 0.1% is a big difference. The genome contains 3 billion base pairs, and changing ONE of these can result in phenotypic effects. mikemikev (talk) 13:41, 22 January 2010 (UTC) This has no bearing on the article, this is just OR. Alun (talk) 18:16, 22 January 2010 (UTC) I'm not saying it's 0.1%, maybe it's 0.0001%. I'm just saying that a small difference in the genotype can have a big effect on the phenotype. That's not OR. I mention this because you assert that members of different groups are sometimes more similar than those of the same. Yes, for a small number of genetic markers (and even then not usually). For many markers this never happens. mikemikev (talk) 22:36, 22 January 2010 (UTC) Clearly a small difference in genotype can have a big difference in phenotype, a single bp change can produce sickle cell disease. But that's irrelevant, right, we're not talking about phenotype, we're talking about whether humanity can be sensible categorized into groups based on genetic similarities/differences. Witherspoon et al. show that it is indeed true that people from different statistical clusters can be more similar to each other than people from the same cluster, even when thousands of loci are used in the analysis. You claim that this is only true for a small number of markers, but that's not true, humans are a very homogeneous species genetically (that's a fact), so the opposite is true, only a very small number of genes vary between human groups. Indeed you acknowledge this, indeed you contradict yourself, you say that the differences between people from different clusters may be only 0.001% (presumably meaning we share 99.999% base pair homology between groups), then say the opposite, that differences between clusters vary only for a "small number of genetic markers (and even then not usually)". You are right first time BTW, though I don't know the actual percentage figure for base pair homology. But to the point, clustering analyses only use genes that vary between populations and ignore genetic similarities between population groups. Witherspoon et al. wanted to measure similarities between randomly chosen individuals within and between populations. They show that using 10 loci individuals from very separated populations (Europe, Africa and East Asia) are more similar to a person in another population 30% of the time, when 100 loci are analysed the similarity is 20% of the time, but when 1,000 loci are analysed the similarity is 10% of the time. That means that even when 1,000 loci are measured there is a one in ten chance that two people classified into different clusters are genetically more similar to each other than they are to another individual in their own cluster. They conclude that "many thousands" of loci would need to be evaluated for two individuals within the same cluster to always be more similar to each other than to an individual in another cluster. But the larger point is that this is true of people from very distant parts of the world (Europe, Asia and Africa). Witherspoon et al. show that when intermediate populations are included (continuous sampling) even more genes would be required, they conclude that On the other hand, if the entire world population were analyzed, the inclusion of many closely related and admixed populations would increase [the chances that two individuals were more genetically similar to someone outside their cluster than to someone within their cluster]. This is illustrated by the fact that [the chances that two individuals were more genetically similar to someone outside their cluster than to someone within their cluster] and the classification error rates, [the chances that the clustering analysis puts someone into the wrong cluster], all remain greater than zero when such populations are analyzed, despite the use of >10,000 polymorphisms (Table 1, microarray data set; Figure 2D). In a similar vein, Romualdi et al. (2002) and Serre and Pääbo (2004) have suggested that highly accurate classification of individuals from continuously sampled (and therefore closely related) populations may be impossible. However, those studies lacked the statistical power required to answer that question (see Rosenberg et al. 2005).Genetic similarities within and between human populations Witherspoon et al. Genetics. (2007) 176(1): 351–359. doi:10.1534/genetics.106.067355. Sorry it's such a long response but I thought a comprehensive response was required. :-) Alun (talk) 13:47, 23 January 2010 (UTC) So there are genome pattern differences between races. It doesn't matter how much, because we don't know what they are doing. The similarities could be all junk. Until we know you cannot say 'race is just a social construct'. There's no evidence for that. mikemikev (talk) 14:58, 23 January 2010 (UTC) Let's please stick to the science: "Yes, races are social constructs, but they’re social constructs that correlate quite strongly with genetic clusters based on biogeographical ancestry." The accuracy of this statement depends largely on the size and history of the population we are talking about. If you define the Black race based on studies of Blacksliving in the US, and then do drug tests on different populations in the US and discover that one works better with Blacks, this is because you are really using "race" as a proxy for a population in the US and as long as the drug tests and prescription of that drug are on African Americans, it all works out. When you move to peoplewho are also consider members of the Black race but who are part of a population the drugs were not tested on (say, Kenyans) you can and often do run into trouble because you are no longer working with the same population. In short, as long as Americans are talking about Americans, it can appear as if the self-designated term correlates very highly with certain biological traits. The fact is, this kind of association has to be handled cautiously and there have been members of the medical community who have called attention to times when assumptions about the correlation between race and biogenetic "clusters" does not work at all. In other words, what you are presenting as straightforward science is not. (1) it is more controversial than you suggest and (2) when there is no controversy, people are using the terms in far more restricted senses than you seem to be. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:39, 21 January 2010 (UTC) I'd also like to point out that we need to be very careful with ascriptions here. clearly there are genetic markers that distinguish between different races. however, the move from saying there are genetic markers that distinguish between races to saying that races are genetically distinct is highly contentious. there are, for instance, genetic markers that distinguish redheads, that distinguish people of Nordic descent, that distinguish Koreans from Vietnamese, and none of these unique marker clusters are used to indicate separate races. Koreans are an excellent case in point, incidentally - they were largely reviled by the Japanese before and during WWII (to the extent of being considered a separate and lesser race, if I remember correctly), but that racial segregation was largely wiped out by the American occupation of Japan and the Korean war, and only remains today as a distinct form of prejudice. --Ludwigs2 22:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC) "clearly there are genetic markers that distinguish between different races."- Seriously? Where do you get this information from? I think this would be news to any serious geneticist. If you want to make wild claims like that in an article then I'm going to demand an extremely good source. I know of no reputable scientist who would make such a claim. Indeed there are hundreds, probably thousands of published works from both geneticists and anthropologists that say the exact opposite. I know of no one who is reputable who would make this claim. Can you support this with a citation? Alun (talk) 04:13, 22 January 2010 (UTC) See Tang (2005) We have shown a nearly perfect correspondence between genetic cluster and SIRE for major ethnic groups living in the United States, with a discrepancy rate of only 0.14%. mikemikev (talk) 14:07, 22 January 2010 (UTC) Clusters are not genetic markers. All Tang et al. have done is show that in the USA genetics can be used to identify some groups with a priori assumptions about "race" ethnicity. What Tang do not claim is to have found specific genetic markers that are reliable in determining someone's "race". What was the original claim? Oh yes it was "clearly there are genetic markers that distinguish between different races", Tang et al. do not make that claim. Your source doesn't support Ludwig's claim. Alun (talk) 18:16, 22 January 2010 (UTC) Cluster in this sense is a set of genetic markers. Several subjects reported "other" for race and were correctly categorised, verified by follow up. Therefore genetic markers have been used to distinguish races. Whether or not Tang makes this claim is no matter, it is evident from his work. mikemikev (talk) 21:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC) No a cluster is not a "set of genetic markers". A cluster is a statistical construct. (see Lewontin's Fallacy for more information, there's even an infobox that I made that explains how clustering analyses work here). Tang et al. do not make a claim in their paper that they have produced a set of genetic markers that "distinguish between different races". In the case of Tang et al. (and I know the paper very well), they only sample from the US population. The statistical construct they produce is only applicable to the population they sampled (the USA), it is only applicable to the set of alleles they measured, and it is only applicable to the statistical analysis they used. Change these variables and the whole construct will change. This is even true of ancestry informative markers (AIMs), and AIMS are deliberately chosen because they vary significantly between populations. But even when one uses genes that vary significantly between populations, a large number are needed before biogeographic ancestry can be inferred by statistical analysis. Even then AIMs often produce strange and clearly erroneous results. Furthermore clusters do not represent genetically homogeneous populations, in most analyses the majority of people belong to more than a single cluster (I suppose making most people "multiracial" if one believes that clusters are races), and it is true that people from different clusters can often be more genetically similar to each other than they are to people within their own cluster. The problem with what you say is that on Wikipedia you can't say what you believe in an article, you have to say what the research says. Tang et al. make some interesting observations, but it is erroneous to claim that they have produced a set of genetic markers that identify people by "race", they do not make this claim. You may believe this to be true, but that's not actually what they say, and your quote (taken out of context I might add) does not support the original statement. Alun (talk) 13:13, 23 January 2010 (UTC) "No a cluster is not a "set of genetic markers". A cluster is a statistical construct." It's both. "The statistical construct they produce is only applicable to the population they sampled (the USA)," They would get the same result in any location. "it is only applicable to the set of alleles they measured," Obviously. This is not a counter argument. "and it is only applicable to the statistical analysis they used." Obviously. This is not a counter argument. "But even when one uses genes that vary significantly between populations, a large number are needed before biogeographic ancestry can be inferred by statistical analysis." Tang used 326 microsatellite markers. "Even then AIMs often produce strange and clearly erroneous results." Tang got a 0.14% error rate. "Furthermore clusters do not represent genetically homogeneous populations, in most analyses the majority of people belong to more than a single cluster" Here you assume what you're trying to prove. (I suppose making most people "multiracial" if one believes that clusters are races)," Most people are multiracial? Are you allowed outside? "and it is true that people from different clusters can often be more genetically similar to each other than they are to people within their own cluster." I love the way you refer to Lewontin's fallacy then commit Lewontin's fallacy. "You may believe this to be true, but that's not actually what they say, and your quote (taken out of context I might add) does not support the original statement." I do and I believe it does. mikemikev (talk) 14:22, 23 January 2010 (UTC) I don’t think anyone here is arguing that races are “genetically distinct” in the sense that there’s a clear boundary between one and another, or that a person can only belong to a single race. The idea of races as distinct, platonic categories is one that definitely lacks any basis in biology, and I don’t think anyone who supports the herediarian position claims to advocate this idea. The only thing which matters here is that certain alleles are distributed unequally between races, and that some of these alleles can have biological effects (as in the case of drug responses). Until more of the genes which influence IQ have been identified, this is about the most that genetics can tell us on the topic of race and intelligence—that it’s possible in general for genetic traits to vary between races, and that it’s an empirical question whether or not they do in any particular case. For this reason, while the social and genetic meanings of race might be relevant to provide some background information for the narrow-scope article, they can’t provide much evidence either way in the debate (among psychometricians) about whether the empirical evidence indicates that the genes whose distribution varies between races include genes which influence IQ. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC) There is a slippage here. Anyone can tell you that genes can vary among humans. I still have trouble making the link to race and intelligence. Geneticists use twin studies to measure the heritability of IQ and there are plenty of things that they can speak to, and are still debating - race and intelligence just doesn't seem to be one of them. And I have yetto see any evidence that any debates among psychometricians concerning variation in IQ scores among races indicates ánything about genes. As I said above, psychometricians are not geneticists; genetics is not a branch of psychometrics; their research on race and IQ has not demonstrated anything about genetics. It is not their field. Slrubenstein | Talk 01:59, 22 January 2010 (UTC) Why are allowing this (meta-)discussion to derail the mediation? Slrubenstein doesn't like the fact that psychometricians make statements regarding potential genetic factors in the development of intelligence - because they are not geneticists. So? The fact is, they do. They also talk about gender, the physical environment, economics, nutrition, brain chemistry and a whole slew of other factors despite the fact that they do not hold degrees in those specialized fields, either. They have the responsibility to do their own literature research and apply those results to their area of expertise - psychometry. Slrubenstein thinks they've done a poor job. So? Since when are Wikipedia editors supposed to let those kinds of personal opinions guide their editing practices? I personally don't care if psychometricians started reporting on a potential correlation between average nose length and placement on Maslow's hierarchy: if they do it in respectable scientific journals and have their theories taken seriously by their colleagues, then it qualifies for coverage on Wikipedia, even if I personally think they're full of it. Let's please move forward with something more constructive. --Aryaman (talk) 02:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC) Aryaman - no need to make it personal. I'm having one helluva time figuring out where to go from here. The straw-poll established nothing, and I'm surprised to see the level of anger among some of you. I still have the suspicion that there's an undercurrent here that I'm not aware of. It's fairly obvious to think of what that would be. Anyone care to fill me in? Xavexgoem (talk) 04:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC) Something I find problematic here is the extent to which users are getting involved in this debate without having consented to the terms of the mediation. When this mediation case first began, those of us who were involved in it needed to agree to certain terms regarding our conduct in this case. But when people involve themselves in this case without having agreed to behave here the way you’ve asked us to, this page is more likely to just become a replacement for the article talk page, which is what seems to be happening now. I’m thinking of Alun in particular. Although it looks like he objects to the proposal that we split the article into “narrow” and “wide” scope sub-articles, I’m not able to tell what solution he actually advocates to this article’s problems, because he hasn’t posted an opening statement or answered any of the mediators’ other requests for us to explain our positions. These requests of us were made for a reason, and if people are going to debate here without having complied with them, it’s going to make it very difficult for the mediation to resolve anything. I would suggest that the users who are new to this mediation case go back and post opening statements, as well as responses to the mediators’ other demands for all of us to explain our positions, except that so much of the discussion here has been a result of what was originally posted in response to these requests, I’m not sure someone posting an opening statement now would be able to serve the purpose for which these statements were intended. Something I think you might want to consider doing is restricting this mediation case to the nine of us who originally consented to it and posted opening statements. Otherwise we’re going to continue having people dropping in like this to say that they dislike any new idea that’s been proposed, without having provided any explanation of what solution they would suggest instead. --Captain Occam (talk) 05:51, 22 January 2010 (UTC) Actually Captain you can see clearly that I support keeping a single article that includes the full range of debate on the issues at hand. That's why I wrote 'support next to that proposal. I do not support creating pov-forks. That is simply a bad idea. There is no justification for doing this with respect to the literature, or with respect to the subject matter. This is simply a means to produce an article that does not cover the substantive issues raised by anthropologists and geneticists regarding the non-existence of biological "race". When one considers that this is central to having a balanced article with respect to the subject matter, then it is clear that this is a pov-fork. Indeed it's clear that any article that did not contain a substantial debate with respect to the validity of "race" could never be neutral, and obviously neutrality is one of the core policies of Wikipedia. Alun (talk) 07:02, 22 January 2010 (UTC) More importantly Captain, you cannot breach Wikipedia's core policies with a consensus. So I'm saying that the proposal to split the article is a breach of Wikipedia's core content policies and can never happen. The solution is to discuss the issues on the talk page of the article. In my view those who believe in the existence of "race" and the research of hereditarians seem to be implacably opposed to including a great deal of the research that contradicts their beliefs, and so have sought to exclude that research from the article. Now they seek to create a new and different article without the research that they object to. Well that is not how Wikipedia works, you have to accept that this research on the non validity of biological "race" does belong in the article, that many geneticists and anthropologists have used the work to counter the racialist (I use the word in the traditional sense of "believing that race is a biological reality") perspective of hereditarians (i.e. that the work on the non-validity of race has specifically been used to argue against the assumptions that hereditarians have made regarding the existence of "race"). It is a breach of our neutrality policy to seek to exclude research you don't like, it is a breach of our neutrality policy to seek to create a pov-fork article that excludes that research. Basically you need to accept that other points of view do actually exist, do actually have validity, and do actually belong in the article. If you can't accept that, then you are rejecting one of Wikipedia's core content policies. Alun (talk) 07:22, 22 January 2010 (UTC) Alun, you’ve been quite clear that you don’t approve of Varoon Arya’s proposed solution to the problems with this article, but you haven’t told us anything about what specific solution you would propose. Over the past two months, we’ve been discussing a lot more than just whether or not to split the article; we’ve been trying to come up with a long-term way to stabilize it. Your saying you want an article “that includes the full range of debate on the issues at hand” is not specific enough to be useful here—it’s not even clear how this would differ from the current version of the article, which is the one that’s proven so unstable. By dropping in like this to criticize VA’s proposal about how to stabilize the article, without offering any alternative of your own about how to accomplish this, the only thing you’re doing is making it more difficult for the mediation to reach a resolution. Your involvement here is disrupting the mediation for another reason also, which is that a lot of the points you’ve raised in your last few posts have been addressed by other users (and VA in particular) earlier on this page. It seems pretty clear that you haven’t been following this case as it’s progressed, but that now you expect other users to re-explain these things to you before you’re willing to compromise. (Another possibility is that you have no intention to compromise and that you’re just stonewalling here, but I’d rather assume good faith.) Xavexgoem, if Alun isn’t willing to change his conduct here, I think it’s necessary for you to do something about it if you wish for this mediation case to continue. As long as things stay the way things currently are, nothing is being discussed here that couldn’t be discussed on the article talk page, which is a more appropriate place for this sort of thing. If you either can’t or won’t do anything about this, then the mediation case ought to be closed—we won’t be losing anything by moving this argument to the article talk page, and at least that way we can resume editing the article normally. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:56, 22 January 2010 (UTC) "but you haven’t told us anything about what specific solution you would propose." Yes I have, I refer you to my above statement "The solution is to discuss the issues on the talk page of the article." "you don’t approve of Varoon Arya’s proposed solution to the problems with this article" whether I approve or not is irrelevant, the proposal is a breach of our neutrality policy and is a pov-fork. therefore it cannot go ahead anyway. If it were to go ahead I would simply put it up for speedy deletion as a pov-fork. It wouldn't last very long. It's a bad proposal that breacher policy. "the only thing you’re doing is making it more difficult for the mediation to reach a resolution" Whatever resolution the mediation reaches cannot breach Wikipedia policy on neutrality, so it's better that mediation takes longer and a decent resolution is reached, than we end up with a pov-fork that is only going to be speedy-deleted anyway. Besides mediation is not the end of the road. "you expect other users to re-explain these things to you". Where have I asked for anyone to "re-explain" anything to me? I understand this subject matter very well. I also know that you can't resolve a situation by ignoring our content policies by introducing a pov-fork that is not neutral. That's policy it has nothing to do with expecting others to explain anything. indeed it seems I'm the one explaining to you that your proposal is a non-starter simply because pov-forks are not allowed. Go and check the policy if you don't trust me. "Another possibility is that you have no intention to compromise and that you’re just stonewalling here, but I’d rather assume good faith." This is a bad faith comment though isn't it? "Xavexgoem, if Alun isn’t willing to change his conduct here, I think it’s necessary for you to do something about it if you wish for this mediation case to continue." Please, no appeals to authority. Xavexgoem cannot put asside Wikipedia policy regarding neutrality and pov-forking any more that you or I can. Policy is policy. You might as well accept it, arguing about it, or trying to intimidate me with threats of "it’s necessary for you to do something about it" won't change that. Alun (talk) 18:32, 22 January 2010 (UTC) I am very disturbed by this turn in the discussion. Alun has participated in these discussions from the beginning and is one of the best-informed contributors to the article, and an important person in this mediation. Arya writes, "Why are we allowing this (meta) discussion to derail the mediation?" But what can this possibly mean? That he does not comprehend my or Alun'sposition or why we consider them central to the issue? Well, Arya, is that not precisely what makes this a conflict requiring mediation? Arya and Captain Occam seem to believe that "mediation"simply means confirming their views. It is not. It is a place to take a conflict and seek assistance in resolving it. No one should be surprised if people participating in mediation present conflicting views - if we did not, we would not need mediation, would we? The idea is to pinpoint th key conflicts, so we can address them constructively. But when Alunor I try to do this, we are accused of derailing mediation? All we have been doing in this meta-discussin is to respond to claims made by Arya to Captain Occam that are either unclear or contentious. Above, Arya insisted that there by an article that represents deates among psychometricians. Can w compromis on this? Yes, I am all for such an article and asked why the article n the G-factor was not such a placeWikipedia can cover this. Is this an unreasonabe question? Arya's reply: g factor is not the place for this debate. Neither are the articles on Heritability of IQ, Psychometrics, Psychometric approach to measuring intelligence, Environment and intelligence or any of the articles listed in the Category "Race and intelligence controversy". Those issues play a role in "Race and IQ", but we can't shift this debate into those articles. (And isn't it odd that we have a category titled "Race and intelligence controversy", but we can't seem to write an article on the actual science which lies at the root of this controversy?) Now Arya move from wanting an article on psychometrics, to one on race an intelligence. I point out that race is a social construct and that sociologists study this, and I also accept that psychmetricians can study the relationship between IQ nd race (a social coflict). Then Arya, Captain Occam, and others add "genetics"to their understanding of race, and I think here we get to one of the core points of conflict, where we need mediation: race is not a genetic term, and psychometricians are not experts on genetics. I have no problem with psychometricians making claims based n the study of IQ results. But when they make claims about genetics, they are leaving their sphereof expertise. In some cases they simply produce fringe science (you may as well ask a physicist what he thinks about race; he may have an opinion, but it may not be scientific and his opinion is certainly not a notable scientific opinion). When psychometricians make claims about genetics that geneticists do not make, I think we have a problem that any article at least eeds to address. But whenever I or Alun or others try to explain why, we are accused of derailing mediation? Well, what do you tink we need mediation for?!? Slrubenstein | Talk 08:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC) Agree, but I'd add that you cannot have an article on "race and intelligence" that a priori assumes that "race" is a well established and accepted biological/genetic construct. The very fact that hundreds of scientific papers have been published that show that "race" is not a scientific concep, that it is "fuzzy" and poorly defined just emphasizes the point (and I have provided many sources to both Arya and Captain Occam many times to show this, but they have a habit of dismissing sources that they don't like). But we are being asked to put the debate about "race" aside, as if it were somehow irrelevant to the subject at hand. In other words what we are being asked to do is create an article about "race" and intelligence that treats "race" as a "resolved biological fact" and only deals with research about group differences in test scores. That is a clear breach of our neutrality policy. It's obviously a pov-fork. It's clearly an attempt to say lets remove the uncomfortable and massive body of work on the subject that deals with "race", and only cover the section of work that treats "race" as a concrete entity. From my perspective then what we're seeing is the same as always, an attempt to remove those parts of the debate about "race" and intelligence that are not accepted by some editors. But I think those editors just need to accept that this debate is a legitimate part of the subject. Whatever they believe, the article does not exists to support that belief, it exists to give all relevant points of view. And yes, it's true that there is a massive body of work that has been written that specifically deals with the non-existence of biological "race". That body of work includes anthropology, sociology, population genetics, classic genetics, biological anthropology, molecular anthropology, medicine, medical ethics and probably much more. The proposal is simply an attempt to bypass our neutrality policy. Alun (talk) 18:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC) Wobble, I tend to agree with what you say, if not quite the lengths you go with it. This is pretty much why I keep pushing for an expanded history and background bit. let me just clarify things as I see it: RACE clearly, 'race' exists as a cultural and social construct: people were using the term as a reference to supposed sub-sections of the human population long before the dawn of modern science. clearly, the cultural and social construct of race has significant cultural and social (and thus political) ramifications. being assigned to a race will (within most societies and transnationally) mean dramatic differences in social and economic prospects, life conditions, life expectancy, and numerous other personal issues. clearly, the cultural and social construct of race has some genetic tie-ins: we evaluate race socially by observing things like skin color, facial features, body type, and hair type, all of which are inherited genetically. (don't read more into that than I said -that's meant to be a comment on social perception, not on race). INTELLIGENCE intelligence (poorly defined as it is) is usually assumed to be a mix of inheritable qualities and opportunities. most people assume that smart people have smart children; most people recognize that children need to be raised and educated in the correct circumstances to develop their intelligence. Speculation has arisen (mostly in the general population, not in the scientific world) that there's a relationship here - perhaps one of the genetic tie-ins noted in #1.3 above or some condition of upbringing might relate race to intelligence - this is offered as an explanation for the differences noted in #1.2 above. (let's leave aside the poor logic of this - smacks of equating correlation with causation) Scientists from many fields (psychology, sociology, anthropology, genetics, political science, etc) now enter into the debate to try to deal with the speculation in 2.2 - some are trying to show it's true, some are trying to show it's false, and they are all approaching it through different methodologies - psychometrics, sociological studies, genetic analysis, critical historiography, conceptual deconstruction, and many more. so far as I can tell, science has come to a few conclusions on the topic but hasn't yet resolved the issue. It's clear to me that this article wants to be about #3.3, but I don't think we can actually discuss #3.3 without going through the other points first. the real question for this mediation is how much time we spend on those other points, no? --Ludwigs2 19:59, 22 January 2010 (UTC) Ludwigs, this is helpful but I would add two clarifying points. First, under "race," I would not say that the social constuction of race has "genetic" tie-ins - you are right, I just would not word it this way since people made these tie-ins befre anyone knew anything about genetics; I'd say that in the US race has biological markers (it is much more complicated in Brazil and Latin America where to a degree SES and langage can change one's race). The critical point here is that historically, some people have also considered low-intelligence to be one of these biologcal markers of race. Now, there is a big difference between a prejudice - basically an assumption - and a conclusion reached through scientific methods. But as Arya points out below (in reply to a query from Xavexgoem) this is one of the major sources of undercurrents of anger and suspicion haunting these discussions. To your section on ïntelligence"I would also add a point: researchers in different fields including genetics and psychometrics have also been conditing research that is not responding to or driven by popular beliefs about race and intelligence. I think it is very important that articles give full weight to these other bodies of research. personally I think there may be value in having separate articles on what I see as properly scientific debates, versus scientists responding to popular debates (I would consider this to be a content rather than POV fork). But i think there is a serious issue here of whethr certain scientists are coducting independent scientific research or are simply reproducing popular positions and again, as Arya suggests below in response to Xavexgoem, this is another issue haunting discussions which may be a source of anger or hostility, especially if any of us are geneticists or psychometricians for whom this becomes a matter of professional pride. There ought to be an "encyclopedic" wiki-way to handle these underlying sources of tension but here, I'd say the help of a facilitator is needed. Slrubenstein | Talk 04:15, 23 January 2010 (UTC) I think your analysis is very good Ludwigs. When you say "the cultural and social construct of race has some genetic tie-ins" the important word is some. Let's put it another way, The majority of African-Americans have European ancestry, some even have more European ancestry than African ancestry, and others have significant Native American ancestry. But they are universally classified into the same "race" as Africans, even though genetically they may be more closely related to Europeans and/or Native Americans. The current US president is a good case in point, he's no more African than he is European, but I've never heard him described as "white". Now a decent genetic test would not classify him as African, or as "black", a decent genetic test would show that he has equal African and European ancestry. Maybe even more importantly his African heritage is from east Africa, whereas most African Americans trace their African ancestry from west Africa, from a genetic point of view east African are not identical to west Africans. So a genetic test designed for African Americans that have west African ancestry might just give the President (who does not have west African ancestry as far as we know) a result nobody would expect. The same reasoning applies to intermediate groups, right? So because of US demographic history there have not been significant numbers of Middle Eastern and South Asian peoples in the USA. So the US has not developed a classification system that includes these intermediate populations. Well come to think of ti it doesn't have significant numbers of Indigenous Australians, so the US "racial" classifiaction system does not include these people either. So what "races" a society recognizes varies tremendously in time and place. Most geneticists and anthropologists understand that the physical markers that are used to socially classify people are only fuzzily and vaguely related to genetics. Or to put it another way Africans, people from the south of India and Indigenous Australians all have very dark skin, and have all been understood to be "black" in various times by various societies. To claim that these geographically distant groups share a more recent ancestry with each other than they do with neighbouring groups that may be less dark skinned, or in other words, to claim that these groups are all part of a single "black" race that is genetically homogeneous just because they all look "black" would be a very wrong conclusion to draw. But I think your general analysis is spot on. Alun (talk) 14:05, 23 January 2010 (UTC) Alun, you appear to be doubting the validity of SIRE here. Is it reasonable to imagine that a South Indian in the USA would classify himself as black, after the categories were explained? Or that mixed race people would not be aware of that? And that people studying Race and Intelligence are not well aware that African Americans have some European ancestry? The classification system is developed ad hoc for the study in question. mikemikev (talk) 16:44, 23 January 2010 (UTC) I'm confused as to what you mean by that. You appear to be referring to Tang et al. again, which is the only source I am aware of that uses the term "SIRE" (self identified race/ethncity). They use it as a shorthand for their specific way of classifying people in a single paper. As a classification system it is not scientific and is not based on genetics. But besides that I don't mention either Tang et al. or their classification system at all, so how you draw the conclusion that my analysis is only applicable to a single paper is beyond me. As you point out, classification systems are developed ad hoc, which must mean that the systems are not natural divisions of humanity (or else they would be stable and constant, rather than changeable between different studies), and therefore not "biological races", but social constructs (for example my self identified race/ethnicity is Welsh). Certainly "SIRE" is a social construct because it encompasses ethnicity, and "race" and both are social constructs. You seem to contradict yourself a lot. Above you reply to SLR that "races" are not social constructs, but here you say that classification systems are "developed ad hoc", which shows that you do understand that these groups are porous and fluid, and so are not based on immutable genetic difference, after all if they were constant genetic entities then new classifications would not need to be developed ad hoc, indeed if they were strict biologically defined entities, we wouldn't be having this argument because it would be settled. The very fact that much research draws the exact opposite conclusion to you, and that even the research you cite rarely actually says what you claim it says, speaks to the fact that biologists, geneticists and anthropologists do not claim that "races" are genetically defined populations.see here for a good essay on this Alun (talk) 18:31, 23 January 2010 (UTC) "Is it reasonable to imagine that a South Indian in the USA would classify himself as black?" I don't know, how is this relevant? We're not talking about the USA, we're talking about whether the human species can be classified into discrete entities called "races", and I point out that what a "race" is or is not is dependent upon time and place. "Or that mixed race people would not be aware of that?" Aware of what? Of the fact that they have ancestry from different continents? Many people who do have ancestry form different continents aren't aware of it, obviously. But even if a person is aware that they have ancestry from Europe and Africa, it does not mean that they identify as being of "mixed race". Most African Americans have ancestry from Europe, but the overwhelming majority do not describe themselves as being of "mixed race". So they self describe as African-American or Black, and are classified in the same "race" as Black African people. Why are you pretending that most African Americans describe themselves as "mixed race"? "And that people studying Race and Intelligence are not well aware that African Americans have some European ancestry?" So you're claiming never to have heard of the "one drop rule"?[3][4] Take for example the children of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, Sally herself had a White father, and her children also had a White father. And yet they were still slaves, and were still classified as Black. But they had at least 75% White ancestry. Besides those who study intelligence and who are aware that African American people have European ancestry have asked the sensible question "if Europeans are genetically 'more intelligent' than Africans, then why is it that light skinned African Americans, who have more European ancestry, and therefore more European genes, do not display greater intelligence than dark skinned African Americans?" Which is a sensible question that addresses the issue head on. All one needs to do to resolve the question is to measure the skin reflectance of those sitting the tests and calibrate IQ by skin hue. But when that is done we find no difference, because being African American, or Black is a social construct, and however much European genes an African American has makes no difference to the discrimination people who are classified as Black get when it comes to education and social exclusion. Indeed people who study intelligence differences between White and Black people who have taken the European ancestry of Black people into account find that degree of European ancestry does not correlate with IQ. Only those who do not take degree of European ancestry into account, but lump all Black Americans into a single group (i.e. who classify acording to the "one drop rule"), as if their ancestry (and therefore genetics) were homogeneous, continue to claim that the test score gap is genetic in origin.[5] Then we have the White American population, about 30% of White Americans have genetically detectable African ancestry, but I'd bet most are completely unaware of this ancestry, which is probably due to some ancestor passing as White.[6][7] Indeed the White American population is also interesting regarding the amount of Native American ancestry it has, I heard the other day (and I can't remember the source but it was a reputable scientific radio programme) that about 40% of people born as "American Indian" in the early 20th century, dies as White Americans. Alun (talk) 19:19, 23 January 2010 (UTC) I'd suggest that putting on hold the detailed Race and genetics debate or moving it to a more appropriate context would be appropriate. That will allow us to stick with higher-level questions. --DJ (talk) 19:27, 23 January 2010 (UTC) DJ, do you agree that claims about genetics do not belong in the Race and intelligence article? Because if you do, then I can easily agree with you that this debate between Alun and mikemikev belongs in a different context. But you cannot have it both ways. Other editors, like Arya and Captain Occam, eventually end up making a claim about genetics. If they think that such claims have a place in the R&I article, well, then the above points made by Alun are highly relevant. Maybe here too we come to a place where the issue in need of mediation is clairifed. Does genetics belong in the Race and Intelligence article or not? Here comes Alun saying that it does not, and he provides many reasons that come directly from verifiable sources. Then you say that his comments belong elsewhere. Well, in a way, isn't that Alun's point? Are you agreeing with him, that discussion of genetics does not belong in the R&I article? Well, maybe this is progres, but i am not sure that Arya and Captain Occam agree.... Slrubenstein | Talk 21:27, 23 January 2010 (UTC) I merely mean that we should stay focused on one question at a time, and I don't think that's the question we were currently focused on. --DJ (talk) 20:19, 24 January 2010 (UTC) Hmmmmmm.... I thoght the question of whether psychometric analysis involving race (self-defined) is relevant to genetics was one of if not te core issue of the edit conflict and thus mediation. Now I am perhaps confused about what you think this mediation is about, what we are in conflict over. What are you thinking? If you thought this is a tangent, why did you not tell mikemikev in the first place, to spare us all this talk? Did you or did you not consider mikemikev's question relevant? Slrubenstein | Talk 22:47, 24 January 2010 (UTC) clear disagreement If ever there were a clear expression of our disagreements, the exchange immediately above captures it. I would suggest that we as a group have expressed at least two very different opinions about the scope and content of the article. I hesitate to define what those two opinions are precisely, but I'd note that they look something like two different academic disciplines addressing a related topic, and perhaps we could call them the psychology approach and the sociology approach. So I would ask, can we agree that at least two very different ideas are being expressed? --DJ (talk) 03:57, 23 January 2010 (UTC) DJ, I am glad you say this, because I think one of the points of this discussion should be to identify the core issues that require mediation. Obviously many diffrent issues are at play, and a close reading of this entire talk pages shows that there are some places where we all agree, or are close to agreement. Very good! But we came here because we need mediation, not because we agree on many things. So identifying the core issues of contention is ery important. I agree with you that this is one of them and while a good deal of talk has been expended in this meta/break sections, if the mediators could review these and try to rticulate what they see to be the core conflict, and perhaps facilitate a discussion that leads to some agreed-on principles, I think the mediators could be very helpful here. Slrubenstein | Talk 04:03, 23 January 2010 (UTC) The problem, as I see it, is that the subjects are intertwined. Ludgwig's 2.2 and 2.3 above capture this. We have the science (one thing), and the background to the science (the other thing). Way above, we had discussed percentages over hereditarian/non-heriditarian views. It hadn't worked. Could these two issues be the reason? Should we step back? Xavexgoem (talk) 04:11, 23 January 2010 (UTC) Is the undue/fringe argument over genetic causes of IQ differences a reflection of the underlying psychology/sociology problem or is it a separate issue? Or perhaps to put it another way, would undue/fringe issue still be an issue in the hypothetical situation that there was a psychology (psychometrics, IQ) focused article of some name? --DJ (talk) 19:30, 23 January 2010 (UTC) I'm not sure what this comment means, or where this 'undue/fringe' label comes from. the question of whether different racial groups show differences in intelligence that are genetic/heritable is a perfectly valid scientific question, one that researchers have worked on and continue to work on. most evidence to date suggests that there are no racial differences, but the scientific question is still open and the people who advocate that there might be racial differences are neither a fringe viewpoint or a tiny minority viewpoint. Fringe viewpoints generally require a divergent and unsupportable ontological presumption (e.g. the assertion that minorities are actually separate species, as some of the more loony white supremacists have done, would be a fringe theory). you can't accuse one side in an ongoing argument of being fringe. --Ludwigs2 21:08, 23 January 2010 (UTC) I'm not sure if DJ means exactly the same thing, but the "fringe/undue" issue which has been referred to before, both in this mediation and in the discussions immediately preceding its inception, refers to the following chain of events: Slrubenstein, Ramdrake and others wanted (and continue to want) the article to have a wide scope. They feel that only by including the views of anthropologists, biologists, sociologists, etc. can any discussion which touches upon the issue of "race" be done "properly" and "according to Wikipedia policy". Other editors, including myself, were fine with that as long as we were allowed to make an adequate presentation of the psychometric research which has been conducted on race and IQ including hereditarian research. However, to do justice to the research (e.g. to cover the data gathering methods, data sets, various interpretations, criticisms, etc.), a good deal of space is needed. As this section began to grow, it was claimed that we were violating WP:UNDUE, and this included claims of WP:FRINGE, e.g. "you can't have so much space, especially for such a 'fringe' theory as hereditarianism". It was worried that, by attempting to present hereditarian arguments on more or less equal footing with environmentalist arguments (as is practically required if you want to make a coherent presentation of how the debate developed and continues to progress), we (me, in particular) were pushing a "racialist agenda" - regardless of the fact that we never tried to suppress or eliminate any of the criticism of the hereditarian position. This is what led to this particular mediation, and that's why the opening statements largely revolve around the question of a "percentage" of coverage the discussion of these issues could be allowed. I personally think setting a "percentage" is a rather childish way to deal with this, and have argued nothing other than that Wikipedia should provide fair and coherent coverage of the academic research involved, regardless from which "side" it stems. --Aryaman (talk) 22:45, 23 January 2010 (UTC) That leaves me scratching my head bit, I'll confess. are the 'the views of anthropologists, biologists, sociologists, etc.' not considered to be valid research? I mean, I know... wikipedia tends towards a funky perspective on science that privileges 'cool toy' science (e.g. a fascination with tech-based, number-producing research), but there are reams of social scientific research on this topic. or is the problem that people are engaged in synthesis, trying to qualify and argue with the empirical research on heredity? unfortunately, the article has been moved around so much that I can't see the issue you're talking about. can you provide a link to the problematic section? --Ludwigs2 23:16, 23 January 2010 (UTC) In answer to your first question: Yes, of course. As I said, there was no real argument about whether the results of other disciplines should be included, as we were all working towards one article with a relatively wide scope. The problem was that the level of detail required to make sense of some of the psychometric material was interpreted as giving it undue weight in proportion to the article as a whole. Prior to the mediation, there was no coherent presentation of the so-called "hereditarian" positions and none of the criticism scholars have made against the so-called "environmentalist" positions appeared in the article. When this was brought up on the talkpage, we were scolded for "POV pushing". My proposal to create an article limited to the psychometric debate, including ample coverage of both "hereditarian" and "environmentalist" research, was made as an attempt defuse the WP:UNDUE dispute. I'm willing to grant that, in a wide scope article, we can't go into the psychometric research in any detail without putting the proportions out of whack. But that doesn't mean that such a detailed presentation cannot or should not be allowed to happen in an article of its own. It's a significant, notable, bona fide area of research, the literature fits the WP:RS requirements, and it' a complex enough issue that it deserves adequate coverage. Other editors, however, feel that this would represent a "POV-split", because by limiting the scope of such an article to psychometric literature, the article might not be able to make it amply clear that most if not all scholars outside the fields of psychometrics, medical research and criminology no longer consider "race" meaningful except as a social construct. Apparently, we need to convince the reader that the psychometric debate is not a real academic debate at all, but simply a bit of socio-political posturing done by some crackpot psychologists who no one likes much anyway before we can venture to present them with any discussion of what the debate is actually about. OK, that last bit what somewhat pointed, but that sums up how it looks from where I'm sitting. In answer to your second question: For me, WP:SYNTH only becomes an issue when one attempts to go about this article as "Race" and "Intelligence" instead of "Race and intelligence". When we bring in "experts on race" and "experts on intelligence", and then see how well their views match up, we're committing WP:SYNTH on a grand scale. Of course, it's very tempting and easy to do because this is an "X and Y" article, and there is a ton of literature on both "X" and "Y". To prevent this, we need to stick to literature on "X and Y", with both topics being discussed in conjunction with one another. Admittedly, most of this literature comes from psychometricians, as should be expected given this particular "X and Y" constellation. But requesting that we stick to such literature is shot down as "POV-pushing". Given the Neisser et al. report (undertaken by a panel of scholars, commissioned by the APA, and presenting what is considered to be the majority consensus among qualified scholars on all the major issues), particularly the sections "Genes and Intelligence" and "Summary and Conclusions", I can't understand how editors can seriously argue that limiting this to psychometric literature would render us incapable of treating this issue in a sensible, fair and circumspect fashion. The mantric "Psychologists are not geneticists" does not phase the APA, and it shouldn't phase us, either. As for finding a diff to point to, I'm as lost as you are, to be frank. You can go back to late October to see how it was when I became involved. T34CH created some havoc in the editing history a few times, so finding a representative version of the article during then and now is quite difficult. Occam has links to some of the better incarnations of this article, and if he's reading this, I invite him to drop a note here. --Aryaman (talk) 03:18, 24 January 2010 (UTC) It looks like I am damned if I do and damned if I don't. I have several times sugested breaking these interrelated but diverse topis into divers aticles e.g. one on heritability of IQ ne on public policy debates, one on ebates amoing psychometricians - and I have been accused of undermining mediation by pushing a proposal no one wants. Okay. But now I am accused of wanting one article that covers all things. Come one guys, which one do you wish to criticize me for? One thing I am adamant about is that the cntent of articles should reflect what scholars actually do in their role as scholars, and proportionately. I have no problem with an article on psychometric debates cocerning intelligence. The thing is, Wikipedia already has one: it is called "the g-factor of intelligence." This is solely about psychometric research. Now, why would Arya reject this? Arya insists we have an article on "race and intelligence." here w get to one of thosecritical issues in need or mediation. My view is this: We have an article on psychometrics, an on the g-factor. If actual debates among psychometrics on IQ and race are just a small fraction of the work they do, well, it is only reasonable that a discussion of race occupy a small fraction of the article, right? And if dbates about race are actually fringe in relation to all the work psychometricialns do, well, then it just dosn't rise to our standards. Arya's desire for an article on race and intelligence from the psychometricians POV is, well, a POV fork, because he cannot get wht he wants into the many articles we already have on psychometrics. So then he says we need an article specifically n Race and IQ. Well, okay, but f it is the toic (race and IQ) rathe than the discipline (psychometrics) that defines the scope of the article, it is just a plain old fact that other people aside from pyschometricians have discussed race anintelligence,certainly socioogistsand anrhropologists. But Aryadoes not like this either.. The mor we discuss this the more it appears that Arya wants an rticle one, well, what Arya wants. So are we to create an idiosyncratic article ment to represent Arya's specific interest which, I guess, will have to be policie by him since only he really kows what he is intereested in? We shouldn't be working this way a Wikipedia. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:24, 24 January 2010 (UTC) Slrubenstein, is that really fair? This is not about Arya. There are obviously several editors here who agree, big picture, with Arya's position above (although we may disagree on the details). The key issue is that we think this topic (Race and IQ covering the work by folks like Jenson, Lynn and others) merits lots of coverage in Wikipedia, so much coverage that it would be too large to fit in another article. So, the issue for us is where to put it? Arya is just one voice among several making this point. David.Kane (talk) 14:43, 24 January 2010 (UTC) If it is unfair, I apologize. But I did not think Arya wa being fair to me, and honestly, I am struggling to make sense of his position. I made a proposal for covering different debates concerning these two issues (race and intelligence) and Aryaoffered provisional suppo9rt, so Arya knows full well that I favor articles with justifiably narrow scopes, yet hebegins by writing, "Slrubenstein, Ramdrake and others wanted (and continue to want) the article to have a wide scope." In fact, when discussing my proposal it turned out that Arya wanted a narrower scope than me! So for him now to be represeting me as wanting a wide scope is perplexing and I don't know how o interpret it as meaning either Ara lacks good faith or, if he is acting in good aith, I really do not understand him and I am just tring to express my onfusion. Above, Alun DJ and I all agree that discussion of genetics elogs in a different article than one on psyhometrics. This seems to me to involve linked articles with clearly defined scopes, and narrower than what Aya is calling for. No one is objecting to n article on psychomentrics, and no one is objecting to presenting the data on average differences in IQ score in an article on race and intelligence. Yet Arya thinks we have a fundamental disagreement. Well, if it is not "Whatever Arya wants to lump together," well, okay, what would it be? Slrubenstein | Talk 15:44, 24 January 2010 (UTC) From what I have gathered through the course of this mediation, DJ, Occam, David, Mike, Aprock and possibly Ludwigs agree that the psychometric debate on "race and IQ" is a real academic debate which deserves adequate coverage on Wikipedia. Ludwigs raised the point that the discussion needs to be put in context, and I don't think any of the listed editors would disagree. We all have slightly different views on what exactly the article should look like, which is to be expected and even welcomed, but we agree on that core point. Of course, if I have misunderstood or misrepresented their positions, I apologize. I'm not sure how to summarize the positions of Slrubenstein, Alun and Ramdrake, or what exactly their core objection is. The central concern seems to be that of a potential POV fork. It's been argued that an article on the psychometric debate would represent such a fork, as it would unfairly represent the issue from the perspective of psychometrics over and above those of other disciplines. Yet when we tried including the views of all relevant disciplines, were faced with objections of WP:UNDUE when it came to editing the sections specifically relevant to psychometry. Let's imagine, for the sake of illustration, that everyone here agrees that the psychometric debate is an issue which deserves adequate coverage. Further, let's imagine that we have in hand a body of text which covers the psychometric debate to everyone's satisfaction, and that the question is simply what to do with said body of text. Now, if we propose to put this text in an article devoted to it, we receive complaints of POV. If we propose to put this text in an article which treats not only psychometry, but also all other disciplines potentially relevant to the issues of race and intelligence, we receive complaints of UNDUE. Chopping the text up into pieces and scattering them across other articles is not an option, as we've already agreed (hypothetically) that the psychometric debate is an issue which deserves adequate coverage. My question to Slrubenstein, Alun and Ramdrake is this: Given the hypothetical situation above (which is not very far from reality), what do you suggest we do? Where can we put our coverage of the psychometric debate on race and IQ without, in your opinion, violating either POV on the one hand or UNDUE on the other? (And please try to just answer the question. I'm done "debating" this with any of you; I'm trying to find exactly what it is you want so we can establish common ground and move forward.) --Aryaman (talk) 17:16, 24 January 2010 (UTC) look, Ary, if I can be so bold: I think the problem here is that no one wants to give the impression that the psychometric studies are the only or even the major perspective on race and intelligence. The worry with making a separate article is that the separate article will be taken as the primary view on the topic (which is why, I think, there's less of an issue with using the 'g-factor in intelligence' article, since that article name clearly restricts the scope of the article). If you move it to an article called Race and IQ, well... in the common mind, Race and IQ is indistinguishable from Race and Intelligence, and so it will look as though we have two articles on the same subject with different viewpoints (i.e., a pure POV fork). if we're going to use a separate content fork on psychometrics, it has to be clear that it is only an expansion on a minor technical subfield of the larger issue - then I think everyone will be happy. see what I mean? --Ludwigs2 20:27, 24 January 2010 (UTC) The existence of Achievement gap in the United States gives me hope for a similar solution. --DJ (talk) 20:43, 24 January 2010 (UTC) Yes, I agree that we don't want to mislead readers into thinking that there isn't more to this issue than the results of psychometric research - and I hope others are willing to see that this was never my intent. I had hoped "IQ" was sufficiently distinct from "intelligence" to indicate this difference, but I see this is not the case for several editors. I had also hoped that the idea of placing a header at the top which specifically stated that the psychometric article would deal only with "race as a factor in academic intelligence research" could satisfy those concerns, but, again, I see that this is not clear enough. I have also proposed "Race in intelligence research", but there has been no noticeable support for this title, either. Regardless, I remain entirely open to any suggestions for a title which would make the nature of the article clear. --Aryaman (talk) 22:16, 24 January 2010 (UTC) well, how about the obvious (if ungainly) Psychometric research into race and intelligence, with a {{main}} template at the top linking back to the appropriate section of the Race and Intelligence article? --Ludwigs2 22:29, 24 January 2010 (UTC) If others agree, I could live with that (though, I also wouldn't object to a more felicitous formulation if one can be found). --Aryaman (talk) 22:57, 24 January 2010 (UTC) I think you hit the nail on the head earlier Ludwig. The people who study the subject in greatest detail believe that intelligence has a significant genetic component. But we're then expected to cater to a never ending collection of lame sociological/genetic arguments to the contrary. However, cater we must. I propose simply making clear the result of race IQ studies, and then having two sections: 'Genetic/Environmental Explanations' and 'Environmental Explanations', of unlimited size. Other sections can be added if agreed on. mikemikev (talk) 22:34, 24 January 2010 (UTC) please don't misrepresent my position; I said no such thing. please refactor my username from that statement. --Ludwigs2 00:09, 25 January 2010 (UTC) mikemikev, you are not a party to this mediation and I am tarting to wonder whether you are just tryin to disrupt it - DJ pointed out, above, that your question opening the section "break" was just a big unproductive tangent. Now you make a blatantly false claim:"The people who study the subject in greatest detail believe that intelligence has a significant genetic component." The people who study genetics, that is to say, geneticists, make no such claims about gees being a signiicant component of the difference in IQ scores between races. And psychometricians, who are experts on IQ tests, but not on gentics, have pointed to a gulof in average IQ sores among races - but races are social constructs, and not genetically meaningful. My main objection is to any article that introduce pseudoscience or fringe science (for exampe - and mot notably - Rushton). Arya wants an article that does justice to psychometric research and we have several aticles on psychometrics, espeially theone on the g-factor of intelligence which can easily be expanded to include all major debates among psychometricians on intelligence. Every once in a while someone accuses me or someone else of trying to keep genetics out but I fully upport the article on the heritability of IQ which is ALL about the genetic component of intelligence. People agree that ace is a social construct and I suspect there is a lot of reearch by sociologists on raial inequalities that still isn't on Wikipedia. That's the shame of it all. Slrubenstein | Talk 23:03, 24 January 2010 (UTC) Slrubenstein, I would appreciate it greatly if you would answer the question I posed to you above. --Aryaman (talk) 23:16, 24 January 2010 (UTC) You mean, Where can we put our coverage of the psychometric debate on race and IQ without, in your opinion, violating either POV on the one hand or UNDUE on the other?" Well, understanding that rae is a social construct and that psychometricians are looking at race as a self-defined or self-designated category, I first hae to ask: is this debate primarily among academic psychometricians, or is it occuring primarily among a more specific group of people concrned with social policy e.g. in education but conceibably other areas. If the answer is, academic psychometricians, I would just make it onesection within the article on psychomerics, which right now can be longer. If the answer is, debates relate to education and to various formsof social inequality, then I would make it a separate article and clarify the context in which the research and its results are important, maybe call it Psychometric research on race and IQ although I wouldave to ask, why not "social groups and IQ" - I ask because I assume that part of the analysis is ruling out other factors (where pople live, income, etc) so the analysis is no fixating on race but asking how IQ varies with a range of factor. I am just asking the question. A genral article on race and IQ would have to include research by sociologists insofaras there is research on the topic. I would be against anythin that violate OR via SYNTH meaning, when I say include sociologists I mean only those who are explicitly looking at rce and IQ (it ould indeed be messay and inappropriate to add stuff by sociologists on race independent of research on race and IQ). We still need to discuss criteria forpseudocience or fringe science. Slrubenstein | Talk 23:28, 24 January 2010 (UTC) SLR - I think ary was talking about the comment just before mikemikev made his unfortunate comment. please don't let that little bit of misdirection derail an otherwise productive conversation. --Ludwigs2 00:12, 25 January 2010 (UTC) Luds, Arya asked me o answer the question he asked me so I looked hrough the talk and found the last instance of his directly asking me a quetion, and I quoted his question and answered it. Arya, if this is not what you eant i hope you can understand my miustake as reasonable. But until Arya says so I assume I was doing what he asked me to which was to answer the question he asked me. Ludwigs2, if you do not like that please fault Arya for asking the question and insisting I answer it. Do not blame me for answering a question I was asked. Slrubenstein | Talk 01:48, 25 January 2010 (UTC) No blame intended; I was a little annoyed at mike for throwing in a completely off-base comment, and I was just trying to keep it from having too much impact. sorry if I misinterpreted. --Ludwigs2 08:25, 25 January 2010 (UTC) Aryaman: From what I have gathered through the course of this mediation, DJ, Occam, David, Mike, Aprock and possibly Ludwigs agree that the psychometric debate on "race and IQ" is a real academic debate which deserves adequate coverage on Wikipedia. Ludwigs raised the point that the discussion needs to be put in context, and I don't think any of the listed editors would disagree.... I'm not sure how to summarize the positions of Slrubenstein, Alun and Ramdrake, or what exactly their core objection is No one has a "core objection" to presenting the subject neutrally. But there is an objection to attempts to give undue weight to what is a fringe pov. I find it odd that after months of being told that, you still don't seem to be able to summarize the argument of those you disagree with. Indeed if you really don't understand what our argument is, then how can you disagree with it? My main objection is that the genetic hypothesis is a fringe hypothesis, there is a massive body of work that explicitly disputes the genetic hypothesis (i.e. gives many other points of view), which is based on discussions surrounding the validity of "race" as a biological construct, the validity of IQ in terms of measuring intelligence, just what intelligence is, the genetics of screening for genes associated with "intelligence", environmental factors affecting test score achievement, psychological factors such as stereotype threat etc etc (as I say somewhere else on this page, there is work from anthropology, genetics, population genetics, psychology, medicine, public health and many more). This body of work composes a massive and comprehensive counter argument to the genetic hypothesis, and is significantly larger and more robust than the genetic hypothesis, and therefore will, and should, take up a very large portion of the article. The objection then, is that some editors want to remove this massive body of work apparently because they personally believe the genetic hypothesis is true. Because they cannot do this, now they want to create a pov-fork so they can avoid WP:NPOV. We all as editors have to accept that Wikipedia must contain information that we disagree with, that's what makes it neutral, we are not here to advocate for any given point of view, our goal is to provide a neutral environment and let the reader decide. Alun (talk) 08:13, 25 January 2010 (UTC) Wobble, maybe I'm misunderstanding as well. I had thought (this is the scientist in me, maybe) that the research refuting the genetic hypothesis was part of the research on the genetic hypothesis. are you saying we're debating a section that explicitly promotes one side of the scientific debate? --Ludwigs2 08:29, 25 January 2010 (UTC) I would also have thought that this was the case. But clearly an article that only discusses the psychometric data will leave a great deal of the evidence against the genetic hypothesis out, because a this work is not based on psychometrics. Alun (talk) 11:41, 25 January 2010 (UTC) mikemikev: "The people who study the subject in greatest detail believe that intelligence has a significant genetic component. But we're then expected to cater to a never ending collection of lame sociological/genetic arguments to the contrary." Which just goes to emphasize my point that for some editors this is about promoting their own beliefs rather than trying to include the opinions of all experts. I'll try to explain simply: "The people who study the subject in greatest detail believe that intelligence has a significant genetic component." Quite, and no one disputes this. But no one knows how environment affects genes or how genes affect environment, and no one has ever been able to identify specific genes associated with intelligence. Some scientists think there are no such thing as genes for intelligence. I think you have made two common mistakes. (1) You've fallen into the trap of thinking that heritability is a measure of genetic contribution to intelligence. It is not, heritability does not measure how much genes contribute to intelligence, it estimates how much genes contribute to the variation in intelligence within a given population. There are a great many papers that criticize the use of heritability and question it's validity, and these too have a place in the article. But we do not know how much genes contribute to intelligence, but anyway environment is all important. A child with mediocre genes who gets a good education is always going to do better than a genetically gifted child who has no access to education whatsoever, and no expert who studies the subject would ever deny that either. It is inconceivable that the % contribution of genes vs environment is ever going to be an absolute, and these are certainly not the dichotomies that they are sometimes claimed to be, it's unlikely that genes alone, or environment alone, have any sort of contribution, and that all contributions are the result of interactions between these two things. (2) You fall into the trap of implying that "races" are well defined genetic groups. But they are not, there is no evidence that there are any genes for intelligence, let alone that they are distributed differentially between the social constructs we call "races". "we're then expected to cater to a never ending collection of lame sociological/genetic arguments to the contrary." Well ignoring the blatant bias in your post, and the fact that none of the arguments have ever claimed that there is not a significant genetic component to intelligence, yes. That's because we have a neutral point of view policy. Wikipedia does not care whether you personally think that sociology/genetic arguments are "lame", as long as they are from reliable sources then we include them. That's what I mean when I say that all editors have to accept the inclusion of points of view they don't like. Alun (talk) 11:41, 25 January 2010 (UTC) "But we do not know how much genes contribute to intelligence, but anyway environment is all important." Anybody who actually attempts to calculate comes out with 50-80% genes, the rest environment. Identical/Non-Identical twins raised apart provide the most compelling evidence. Your argument appears to be we don't know exactly, therefore we have no idea. "You fall into the trap of implying that "races" are well defined genetic groups." Galaxies are not well defined collections of stars. Should we not mention them? Planets? What's pluto these days? Races are valid biological categories, like species, family, individual. None of them are perfectly defined. You don't like mentioning race, so you pretend it doesn't exist. That's fine, just find somewhere else to fantasize. mikemikev (talk) 14:53, 25 January 2010 (UTC) And another thing, above I expressed my opinion on the R&I controversy. I then expressed a disconnected and completely neutral policy proposal. You are now objecting most strongly. However you are constantly expressing your opinion, mainly "Races do not exist", an opinion contrary to current scientific consensus and based on a thirty year old statistical error, and then using that opinion to try to influence policy. I hope you can see the hypocrisy here. mikemikev (talk) 15:48, 25 January 2010 (UTC) Mike, I do not think you understand the concept "heritability." Alun provided a perfectly good explanation, practically textbook. Also, races are not biologically meaningful concepts. I think every attempt to define race to make it biologically meaningful ends up equating it with population, which is not at all what psychometricians are looking at when they test for relationships between race and IQ score. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:54, 25 January 2010 (UTC) I understand heritability just fine. And keep repeating that mantra. mikemikev (talk) 19:28, 25 January 2010 (UTC) Mike: "Anybody who actually attempts to calculate comes out with 50-80% genes, the rest environment." That is incorrect, it is impossible to calculate, you're confused about heritability, an estimate of the contribution of genes to the variation within a population It does not measure the contribution of genes to intelligence. You should really know the difference.Alun (talk) 08:12, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Mike: "Races are valid biological categories, like species, family, individual." I don't dispute that in some instances race is a valid biological classification, though most biologists use the term subspecies. But it is well accepted by anthropologists and taxonomists that the human species is not divided into biological "races"/subspecies. There are many reliable sources to support that, and the most obvious example is the fact that we are all Homo sapiens sapiens, different subspecies should have different tripartite names, and humans don't. Wikipedia doesn't exist so you can give your opinions about the validity of biological "race" with respect to the human species, it is only interested in the opinions of reliable sources.Alun (talk) 08:12, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Mike "However you are constantly expressing your opinion, mainly 'Races do not exist'". I don't think I ever said "races don't exist", I think what I said was that "races" are social constructs. That's what experts tell us, that's what reliable sources tell us. So that's what we write here. Alun (talk) 08:12, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Mike: "an opinion contrary to current scientific consensus and based on a thirty year old statistical error, and then using that opinion to try to influence policy". Actually the claim that current scientific consensus agrees that "race" is real is hardly news. "Race" is real, it's clear that "race" is a social construct that can have a massive impact on the quality of life a person gets, from whether they get a job, to whether thet get decent heath care. But I guess you're talking about biological "race". Well anyone who claims that the current scientific consensus is that biological races are real needs to support that claim with a really exceptional source, because exceptional claims require exceptional sources. indeed the reason that we do not consider that "race" is a biologically valid category within the human species is not because of Lewontin's observations (I think you are alluding to that), although what Lewontin says is very convincing, but much more to do with the wor of people like Franz Boas and Ashley Montagu. As for influencing policy, how can that be true? I'm not saying that we should change wikipedia policy because I believe biological races are not real, which is what you are accusing me of, but that accusation doesn't make sense. I can't change policy by myself. What I said was that I think creating a new article to avoid the neutrality policy is a pov-fork. That policy already exists. Your argument is more than a little confused at this point. Alun (talk) 08:12, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Alun, I'm not going to waste any more time knocking down strawmen. I think we'll just have to agree to disagree here. I would like to continue this discussion, but other editors have expressed concern that this is not the place for it. I think you will contribute to this mediation and I encourage you to stay involved. mikemikev (talk) 13:43, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Ummm, good, I'm glad you're not going to use straw man arguments. Alun (talk) 08:52, 28 January 2010 (UTC) Yeah, yeah. I should have said "knocking down strawman arguments". 146.179.209.207 (talk) 17:40, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Undercurrents, hostility and what Zeus wishes he had thought of...

archiving old discussions
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Xavexgoem wrote: I still have the suspicion that there's an undercurrent here that I'm not aware of. It's fairly obvious to think of what that would be. Anyone care to fill me in? Part of the underlying hostility here has to do with the (usually) latent though always immanent accusation of racism. To be accused of "pushing a racialist POV" for wanting to see Wikipedia cover the psychometric debate on race and IQ in a way which does justice to the research is, as should be obvious, frustrating in the extreme, not least of all because, once that accusation has been made, there is absolutely nothing one can do to prove the claim false - except, of course, cowing down and letting the person who made the accusation have their way. The other major component which contributes to the hostility is that the move to either eliminate centralized coverage of the psychometric debate on race and IQ (e.g. deleting the article or creating a disambiguation page and breaking the subject down into disjointed components to be scattered across various articles) or to make sure it gets put into an article with a scope so wide that it cannot possibly be covered in any depth without calls of WP:UNDUE comes across quite easily as a particularly nasty form of manipulative censorship, to which no one enjoys being subjected. When to this is added the fact that you have editors hotly denying any personal interest in this issue, washing themselves clean in the holy waters of Wikipedia policy, as it were, maintaining "good faith" becomes an ordeal fitting of Prometheus. I personally find that there is a kind of hysteria surrounding the race issue in modern times which is the exact Hegelian counterpart to the race fanaticism of the early 20th century, and the shouts of "Race is a social fabrication!" have become practically indistinguishable from "Race is the one true reality!" in regards to their intent. The truth resides somewhere in between. Be that as it may, I think even the casual observer can see that Wikipedia has fallen in line with the academic journals which now refuse to review works or publish articles and the publishing houses which refuse to publish or even recall published works from shelves because of the threat of being accused of proliferating academic racism by the media. That's something I did not want to believe, but which seems more or less inescapable to me now. In short: I don't see this mediation reaching any constructive conclusions without a clear structure and firm guidance by the mediator(s). Continuing the present state of things is, in my opinion, rather pointless. --Aryaman (talk) 18:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC) “In short: I don't see this mediation reaching any constructive conclusions without a clear structure and firm guidance by the mediator(s). Continuing the present state of things is, in my opinion, rather pointless.” At this point, I think I agree. From Xavexgoem’s last comment here it also looks like he’s intending to take a break from mediating here, so I think for the time being we can resume editing the article normally. (As long as he doesn’t have a problem with us doing so.) Just because there’s not enough consensus to split Race and intelligence into multiple articles doesn’t mean that it can’t be improved. DJ’s suggestion that the article take a data-centric approach, rather than dividing everything into pro-hereditarian and pro-environmental viewpoints, seems promising. Even if that idea ends up not working out either, something I’ll want to at least do is rewrite the few paragraphs that the article currently gives to the hereditarian hypothesis (while not making this section any longer, so as to make sure I don’t violate WP:UNDUE.) When I suggested this last idea earlier, most other editors agreed that this section of the article was unclear and improperly cited, but Ramdrake wouldn’t accept my changes to it because it was difficult to compare them to this section’s previous version in the side-by-side view. I haven’t worked any more on changing this while the article was under mediation, but I guess at this point we can try either rewriting that section or using DJ’s proposal. I think we should discuss the data-centric proposal first, since I think that idea could result in a much better article than just keeping the current format while rewriting the sections which aren’t clear. Would other people prefer to discuss that idea here, or on the article talk page? --Captain Occam (talk) 11:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC) I agree. The IQ data is not in dispute. We all agree it should be presented. The explanation is disputed. I would suggest 50/50 genetic/environmental. But 25/75 I could live with (in either order) mikemikev (talk) 22:11, 23 January 2010 (UTC) What do you mean, yousuggest "50/50" or "25/75?" Where are you getting these figures from? mainstream research puts the heritability of IQ in the United States between .4 and .8, tht is the best science we have now, but this describes variation within the population (US) not between populations. We don't have a clear way of calculating what percentage of difference between groups owes to genes or environment. We certainly cannot just make up figures. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:50, 23 January 2010 (UTC) You're not even on the same page as Mike, Slrubenstein. Please re-read his comment. --Aryaman (talk) 22:57, 23 January 2010 (UTC) Slrubenstein: I was refering to relative levels of coverage of the positions. I can see why you misunderstood, I should have been more clear. I've since realised that weighing up these levels is not exactly appropriate to DJ's proposal, so I retract that comment, pending a further review of the proposal. mikemikev (talk) 12:37, 24 January 2010 (UTC) mikemikev, thank you for clarifying, I appreciate it. Still, this stuff needs to be driven by verifiable souces so could you tell me whch sources you use? A couple of sections above, in a thread ou prticipate i quite a bit, DJ and Alun agreed that genetics oes not belong in the article, but here you seem to wish to put it back in. Myabe you should address Alun and DJ's points first.... Slrubenstein | Talk Genetics has little to say at present regarding R&I. Above I was objecting to the anti-hereditarian claim that race has no biological validity, a genetic claim based on Lewontin's fallacy. mikemikev (talk) 19:08, 24 January 2010 (UTC) Here's where I have arrived over the course of mediation: We should focus on long-term stable rather than (short-term stable but long-term) unstable solutions. An agreement between present parties that relies on some non-self-evident deal will not be stable. (An example of a non-self-evident deal would be an arbitrary allotment of space.) Uninvolved parties will not recognize such a deal in the future. In time, they would simply raise the same objects we're currently seeing and thus no lasting progress would be made. The only solutions I can imagine which satisfy this criteria are structural in nature. An example of a seemingly stable solution would be dividing the content into more than one article with specific article titles appropriate for their scope. Setting aside specifics, I imagine that all structural solutions are less than ideal. Indeed, I imagine they will make everyone a little unhappy. Thus, in order to choose one, we need to first agree that we have to set aside perfection in order to obtain something lasting and good enough. Let's try to see if there's agreement that a lasting solution is needed. --DJ (talk) 20:32, 24 January 2010 (UTC) DJ, would you be so kind as to provide a skeleton for your data-centric idea, identifying the main areas. It sounds proomising but I can't visualise exactly where you're coming from. mikemikev (talk) 00:52, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Notes on the straw-poll

archiving old discussions
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The straw-poll: Even if this isn't a POV fork, there are enough voices worried that it is indeed. Therefore, we will solve nothing by forking the article (unless continuing to piss each other off is the goal, here). So it looks like we're stuck with Race and intelligence. There simply isn't enough consensus to say the proposal isn't a violation of NPOV. Now, a note to the people who are saying a fork is a violation of NPOV: There is no policy god that comes down and deems an article a POV fork. Policy is open to interpretation (e.g., people claiming a POV fork or not, QED), and heaven knows this is an extremely contentious subject matter, so nothing is cut-and-dry. Nevertheless, no-one has done a good job of convincing anyone that this isn't a POV fork. To pre-empt anyone saying there was a consensus based on !votes: A) this was a straw-poll, B) there wasn't any clear consensus. As a mediator, I would have been more than happy were there a clear consensus so that we can move on. Instead, we're back at square 1... and, in the meantime, the same concerns that began this mediation have been brought up again. We also have very little capital left to float a fork that seeks to give psychometrics its own article on race. You can try, but by every estimate it will be reverted and will only compound the problem. In the meantime, talk amongst yourselves. I need to start back at the beginning and read eeeeeverything before I can even pretend to start to get my ducks in a row :-p There will be a lot of archiving going on as I go through the sections. Xavexgoem (talk) 19:10, 22 January 2010 (UTC) I can't agree, our content policies are non negotiable. POV forks usually arise when contributors disagree about the content of an article or other page. Instead of resolving that disagreement by consensus, another version of the article (or another article on the same subject) is created to be developed according to a particular point of view. This second article is known as a "POV fork" of the first, and is inconsistent with Wikipedia policies.Wikipedia:Content forking "Neutral point of view" is one of Wikipedia's three core content policies, along with "Verifiability" and "No original research." Jointly, these policies determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in Wikipedia articles. They should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should therefore familiarize themselves with all three. The principles upon which these policies are based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, or by editors' consensus.Wikipedia:Neutral point of view I'm all for "ignore all rules", but not when it comes to our core content policies, they are robust and make sense. As I said any attempt to create this pov-fork would lead me to put it up for deletion. Obviously there would be a discussion about deleting the article, but I think it would be a no-brainer, it's so obviously a pov-fork anyway. Cheers, Alun (talk) 14:21, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Recent attempts to overhaul the article

archiving old discussions
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Over the past day or so, three editors have attempted to perform a major overhaul of this article by restoring a version from some point before the mediation. (I’m not sure exactly how old the version they’re restoring is, but I think it’s around two months.) These edits have been made without any attempt to seek consensus for them. I’m not sure I understand their justification for doing this, but Verbal’s edit summary while restoring the earlier version was “The WP:BURDEN is on the one making the changes, not those reverting”. This is the case for reverts to individual edits, but it seems like it should be obvious that when you’re reverting around 50 edits that were made by multiple users over more than a month, the burden is on the person seeking to restore the earlier version, rather than the person trying to keep the article in its current state. I think most of the users here understand this, since you were all aware that when I proposed reverting the article to a version that existed in December of 2006, I couldn’t do this without obtaining a consensus for it. If Verbal’s justification for reverting the article applied regardless of how old the version is that you’re reverting to, or how many changes have been made to the article during the time since then, then when I proposed reverting the article to a version from three years ago the burden would have been on the people who wanted to stop me from doing so. I think most of us would agree that this interpretation of WP:BRD would not be reasonable. What this looks like to me is a lot of wikilawyering in an effort to avoid the normal process of seeking consensus for major changes. Could the people who want to restore the article to its November version please explain here why they consider this version better than the current one, and seek consensus for these changes, the same way that you expect from the rest of us? --Captain Occam (talk) 23:25, 23 January 2010 (UTC) There's no wikilayering here, the article has just been reset to what it was when the mediation began. I would contend that most of the changes since then were reverts and reverts of reverts. Also, the rewrite of the intro did not, to the best of my knowledge, have consensus. Therefore, the article go rolled back to the state it was in when the mediation began. And yes, the burden is on those adding material, not on those revertng, no matter how many edits lie in between.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:38, 23 January 2010 (UTC) The changes to this article that have been made since November included a lot more than just reverts. You’re also rolling back absolutely every edit that was made to the article while it existed as Between-group differences in IQ, of which there were around 60. It looks like what you’re doing here is digging back through all of the talk page archives of the past two months, and retrospectively deciding that every change which was made to the article during that time didn’t have consensus, so that the burden is suddenly on the rest of us if we wish to keep them. Yes, this is wikilawyering—I’ve never seen anyone else interpret WP:BRD this way. What’s more, you’ve argued against this type of behavior yourself after T34CH made all of his changes to the article in mid-October. These edits lacked any semblance of consensus, but you still supported him in demanding that other users obtain a consensus for undoing each individual one of them before reverting any of them. The version of the article to which you’re reverting contains several of these non-consensus changes added by T34CH, and many of the edits which were made to this article during the time since then were to undo them. If you think it’s acceptable to undo two months’ worth of edits because you consider them to have lacked consensus, then why can’t we undo T34CH’s non-consensus edits also? And for that matter, why stop there? A large portion of the edits that you’ve made to this article since 2006 were also made without consensus, and became entrenched only because there weren’t enough other users involved in the article for anyone to be there to revert them. If you think our philosophy for editing this article ought to be that we can revert edits from any amount of time ago if we think they were made without consensus, and the burden will be on whoever wants to stop us from doing so, then there are some much larger changes to the article which should be made as a result of this policy. Is this policy the one that you think we should use? Unless you’re going to apply a double standard here, and apply this standard only when it panders to your POV, then you can’t have it both ways. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:21, 24 January 2010 (UTC) Well, for one, this article is Race and Intelligence and that's the one under mediation. The changes it underwent as Between-group differences in IQ aren't part of its history, therefore those changes were reverted to a version consistent with the mediation.--Ramdrake (talk) 01:46, 24 January 2010 (UTC) Between-group differences in IQ was basically just a replacement for this article, under a different name. Almost everyone involved in the mediation is aware of this, so it isn’t relevant that it existed under a different name when some of these changes were made. Both here and on the talk page for that article, the consensus was also to keep the changes that had been made to this article under its new name when it was moved back to the title Race and intelligence, so in that respect you’re explicitly violating the existing consensus by trying to reject all of these changes. You’re grasping at straws here. Can’t you just accept the fact that if you’re going to try and make a change to the article of this magnitude, you’re going to need to obtain consensus for it, the same way that you expect from everyone else? Just explain why you think the version you’re reverting to is better than the new version, if you want your changes to stay; or else don’t try to justify your change, and it’ll be undone soon. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:02, 24 January 2010 (UTC) Show me that there was prior consensus for the former version of the article and I'll back down. By consensus, I don't mean two people agreeing with each other.--Ramdrake (talk) 02:09, 24 January 2010 (UTC) When I say that consensus supported keeping the changes that were made to the article under its new title, I’m referring to two things. First, here on the talk page for the between-group differences article, David.Kane stated that he wanted to make sure that the changes which had been made to this article under its new name wouldn’t be lost; I obviously agreed with him about this, even though I thought the article should be moved back to its original title. Then when this was discussed here, mikemikev stated that if he had moved the article back to its original location himself, he would have also agreed with us to preserve the recent changes which had been made to it. Along with DJ, who’s the person who originally made most of these changes (I think it’s reasonable to assume that he approves of his own edits), this is a total of four users who have expressed desire to make sure that the last two months of changes to the article are preserved. Until your recent efforts to undo these changes, nobody attempted to argue with us about this in either of the two places where preserving these changes was discussed. Even if you don’t consider these four users to constitute a consensus, I also stand by what I said about it being unreasonable for you to think the burden is on those of us who don’t want all of these changes to be undone. The question of whether to keep these changes when moving the article back to its original title was discussed and concluded, and you had an opportunity to raise an objection to this course of action before it was decided, but you didn’t. If the burden is on us to stop you from reverting all of these changes from the past two months, then the burden is on you to justify a much larger number of changes which were made over the past three years and which had considerably less consensus than these did. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:42, 24 January 2010 (UTC) Though I wasn't happy with the title, I also approved of DJ's changes to the text. DJ has proven to be a reliable, fair and competent editor in all of this, and I have seen very little criticism of his/her edits from anyone involved in this article. I think those changes should be incorporated rather than simply rolled back. Ramdrake wrote: Well, for one, this article is Race and Intelligence and that's the one under mediation. The changes it underwent as Between-group differences in IQ aren't part of its history, therefore those changes were reverted to a version consistent with the mediation. It's in the face of situations like this when you have to ask yourself what the people who wrote WP:AGF were thinking. --Aryaman (talk) 03:45, 24 January 2010 (UTC) All right, users who support this change have had around 24 hours to provide a justification for it, but nobody has attempted to do so. Since this change is not supported by consensus—in fact, I would say that consensus goes against it—I’m going to restore the article to its previous state. Anyone who thinks this two-month revert is the best course of action, please try to justify your decision either here on the article talk page, and obtain a consensus for this change before going about it. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:17, 25 January 2010 (UTC) Ramdrake, what is the meaning of this? You've been given around two days to justify the change you want to make to this article, and you aren't attempting to do so. Instead, you're just continuing to restore your preferred version without trying to provide any justification for it here. Are you determined to have an edit war with me? Standard editing process is to resolve content disputes by discussing them, rather than just continuing to restore your preferred version of an article while refusing to discuss it, and I was under the impression that you understood this. If you aren't willing or able to justify this edit to the article, then you shouldn't be making it. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:32, 25 January 2010 (UTC) Can't you understand that the onus is on you to justify the edits? Standard procedure is to leave the article as is while mediation is going on, especially from the mediating parties. Moving the article to a new name and then implementing major changes as was done is a disingenious way around the mediation process, and something which I personnally find grossly unacceptable.--Ramdrake (talk) 22:45, 25 January 2010 (UTC) If you find it “grossly unacceptable”, then why are you only raising an issue with this now? These edits were made in December, and the question of whether to preserve them was discussed and concluded several weeks ago. You were actively involved in the mediation at that point, and the mediation talk page was one of the places where this was discussed. But at the time when it would have been appropriate to raise an objection to this course of action if you wanted to prevent it, you said nothing. It’s fine for us to discuss this now, and perhaps a new consensus will form that these changes ought to be undone. But you can’t simply claim that the conclusion of the earlier discussion was invalid, and expect that to be enough to undo it. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:14, 25 January 2010 (UTC) Your memory seems faulty: I was in the hospital from Nov 25 to Dec 31st, so I don't see how I could have been "actively involved" in the discussion at that time.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:29, 25 January 2010 (UTC) I was referring to the discussion on January 10th-12th, when we were discussing whether or not to keep the changes that were made to the article while it existed under a different title. If you had a problem with these changes being kept, why didn't you object to it while we were discussing this? --Captain Occam (talk) 23:47, 25 January 2010 (UTC) (Indent reset) I just went through all the edits from Jan 10th-12th, and there is no consensus that DJ's version should remain (at best, two editors expressed an opinion vaguely in this direction.) So, again, you have no consensus to stand on, so I suggest you back down.--Ramdrake (talk) 00:11, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

New Article: Psychometric research on race and IQ

archiving old discussions
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Slrubenstein above suggests that we might create an article entitled Psychometric research on race and IQ. This is not my first or second or fifth choice for how to handle the dispute. But I can still live with it! Such an article provides a central location for much of the academic work which needs a home in Wikipedia. How about a consensus to create this article and move a lot of material to it? Once it is good, we can link it back to Race and Intelligence in some sort of sensible fashion. David.Kane (talk) 01:36, 25 January 2010 (UTC) Assuming this would be the “narrow-scope” article that’s been discussed earlier here, so it would devote enough space to the psychometric research about this topic (including the hereditarian hypothesis) to explain it adequately, this sounds like a good idea to me. Hopefully other users will agree with it also. --Captain Occam (talk) 03:15, 25 January 2010 (UTC) Well, I think we still have to be cautious about this. Ludwigs proposed the title in our discussion above (which has not yet reached any solid conclusions), and it's too early to say whether s/he's really in support of a separate narrow article, though s/he has expressed some moderate support of the idea. The main thing bothering me is that I don't think anything we propose along these lines is ever going to satisfy Slrubenstein, Ramdrake or Alun. And really, I don't know if it's even possible to come up with a solution with which everyone will be happy. But, then again, must we have 100% consensus before we can take action as a result of this mediation? If not, where is the line to be drawn? If, say, a 2/3 majority would support it, would that be enough to consider the matter settled, at least until a new constellation of editors comes along? Maybe these are questions for the mediator to handle. Xavexgoem? I think that if we all stop trying to rush to a solution we'll have a better chance at coming to an agreement. this argument has already been going on for months; wait a few days and see if a consensus develops, then we can move on to implementation. --Ludwigs2 05:09, 25 January 2010 (UTC) Creating an article like this is a pov-fork. You cannot create a pov-fork article, that would be deliberately creating an article so you could avoid WP:NPOV. Seriously, you just have to accept that the article must contain information that you do not agree with. You cannot take the view that it's OK to create an article that omits information that you personally disagree with. You are in effect saying "well I don't care about neutrality, I'm going to create a different article that sticks to the POV I agree with". It's a core policy of Wikipedia that articles need to be neutral, and that that means that content should be presented in a balanced way, it is not balanced to create an article that is constructed in such a way as to omit information that you disagree with. Like it or not the correct place for the anthropological and genetic evidence for the non-existence of biological "race" as it applies to the question of "race" and intelligence, is the "Race and intelligence" article. I would never claim that it is approporate to have an article that omits work on psychometric testing and only includes work discussing how "race" is not a genetic construct, and then call that "Anthropological and genetic research on race and how it applies to IQ", so I could avoid including work I personally disagree with. So why do you insist on doing it? I find it odd that you cannot accept one of Wikipedia's fundamental tenets, i.e. that we all have to accept that things we disagree with do actually belong in certain articles. There's a lot of Confirmation bias going on here. See WP:UNDUE, WP:POV fork, WP:TEND, One-sided argument, WP:POV, Wikipedia:Fringe_theories#Reporting_on_the_levels_of_acceptance, WP:CONTROVERSY, Understand Bias. Alun (talk) 07:48, 25 January 2010 (UTC) On this particular topic, I don't see an NPOV problem. Consider, for example, that there are articles on ethics, consequentialism, deontological ethics, and virtue ethics. The case seems analogous to me. You can't describe consequentialism sufficiently if you have to do justice to deontological and virtue theories at the same time. It's important for an encyclopedia to cover the kinds of consequentialism, but someone would rightly say that your giving undue weight to the kinds of utilitarianism if you spent much of the space in the ethics article on them. While each of these ethical theories are to some extent competitive with one another, more aptly they like areas of content (or disciplines). Different consequentialist theories are different POVs relative to one another, but consequentialist theories as a whole aren't really different POVs relative to deontological formulations in the sense that they need to be presented together to achieve fair treatment of each POV. Psychometrics is likewise an area of content, not a POV that needs to be balanced side-by-side against other POVs. That said, I'm not yet certain that this plan is actually worth implementing. --DJ (talk) 11:56, 25 January 2010 (UTC) When psychometricians conclude that there are significant differences between IQ scores of people of diffefrent races, they are refering to a social status (race). I do not know this literature and expect Varya will inform us, but I assume that psychometricians are testing (using multiple regression or factor analysis?) the relationship between IQ and othe social statuses. The difference in average IQ scores among races is notable only if it is greater than the difference in average IQ scores among other statuses. What i mean is, when people take IQ tests they provide other information about themselves, race being one, but there being others. Then psychometricians analyze data-sets to see which of these bits of information is most salient, right? What else ae they looking at, besides race? Slrubenstein | Talk 14:02, 25 January 2010 (UTC) I invite you to sit down and read all of Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns as well as Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability to inform yourself regarding how this research is conducted and what kinds of claims are actually made. Perhaps doing so will help clear up some of the misconceptions in this mediation. --Aryaman (talk) 16:12, 25 January 2010 (UTC) I think most people have, but if they haven't they should. Of particular note is the clear indication that the genetic hypothesis (wrt race) is not at all supported by research contemporary to the article. Aprock (talk) 17:18, 25 January 2010 (UTC) Equally noteworthy is the indication that none of the environment-only hypotheses have been able to explain the mean IQ difference. A while back, I think we were able to agree that the Neisser et al. report is a fair representation of the current state of what is considered "known" as well as what is not, and Neisser quite frankly states that we simply do not "know" (yet) what causes this difference, as both "sides" have significant weaknesses when it comes to proving their hypotheses empirically. --Aryaman (talk) 17:31, 25 January 2010 (UTC) Just to clarify here, according to the paper no specific environmental cause has been able to explain the differences, however the range of differences is within what can be attributable to environmental factors. But yes, the fact is that we do not know. But not knowing does not mean that any hypothesis is equally valid. Aprock (talk) 19:14, 25 January 2010 (UTC) Indeed. But one thing I would like the article to do is make the factors which lead to the so-called "default hypothesis" clear to the reader. This is probably the weakest part of our coverage of the hereditarian position - which is odd, seeing as it is based upon an assumption which no one considers to be contentious. Leaving it out - or simply not being aware of it - is very likely what leads many people to misinterpret a logical deduction as a preconception. That's not a comment on the truth-value of the deduction, merely on its formal correctness. --Aryaman (talk) 19:41, 25 January 2010 (UTC) If we all get on the same page as to the existence, significance, and internal diversity of the "psychometric" or the "individual differences" approach to intelligence within psychology and how that is of importance to "race and intelligence" then we may be better able to address this dispute. If we're successful in that, then the phrase "psychometrics and behavioral genetics" will lead one to think of a single coherent research program of considerable relevance to this topic rather than two unrelated things. It should then be clear what Richard Nisbett and Arther Jensen have in common is equally as important if not more so than where they differ. --DJ (talk) 17:52, 25 January 2010 (UTC) Arya, I really was hoping that you would answer my question as a means towards finding some agreement. Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns dismisses the genetic hypotheses so quickly it is clear to me that it is fringe, and to give it more than a sentence in Wikipedia is to give it undue weight. Moreover, Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns doesn't say anything about race, it does refer to sex and ethnicity as two kinds of social groups. based on this, I would say the title we are looking for is Psychometric research on IQ and social groups. Clearly, race should not be in the title. Thanks for pointing me to this important resource. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:00, 25 January 2010 (UTC) Slrubenstein, I provided those links because you're asking questions which are best answered through a reading of the material. You admit to not being familiar with the research, and those two articles provide a good overview of the topics discussed and the research conducted over the last three decades. Other than that, I don't see what you're driving at. Are you trying to argue that, because psychometry also deals with differences in IQ between the sexes, for example, we have to cover "Gender and IQ" in the same article as "Race and IQ"? E.g. in Psychometric research on IQ and social groups? I don't think I'm alone in the opinion that such a suggestion could only come from someone who has both misunderstood the scope of the Neisser report as well as the central issues of this mediation. The Neisser et al. report explicitly substitutes "ethnic group" for "race", though a good deal of the literature uses "race" to discuss the issue. If this comes down to whether "race" or "ethnic group" appears in the title, we can put that up for a vote or resolve it through discussion, as it appears to me to be a minor point. What's troubling me more is that you think the hereditarian position deserves nothing more than "one sentence" in Wikipedia. I'm sorry, but it's very difficult to see this as a "good-faith" (bona fide) position, and I find any further discussion which seriously entertains eliminating coverage of one side of an academic debate to be unacceptable. If there is consensus that we should entertain this as a realistic option, then I will happily bow out of this mediation and let you folks get on with your business. That's not a "threat", that's just me recognizing that, if that's the case, my involvement here is just holding everyone else up from moving forward. --Aryaman (talk) 18:51, 25 January 2010 (UTC) Ignoring the merits for the moment, is there a single other editor involved here besides Alun who believes that an article: Psychometric research on race and IQ would be a POV-fork? It may be a bad idea to have such an article, but I just don't see how it is a POV-fork. Slrubenstein and I disagree about a lot of the issues here, but we agree that this article would not be a POV-fork. Suggestion for the mediator: One way to make progress would be to take a series of small (but important!) points like this and find consensus on them. Doing so would then, I hope, help lead us to consensus on the larger issue. David.Kane (talk) 22:01, 25 January 2010 (UTC) Changing the name is such a cop out. The issue is Race and Intelligence. Not Race and Attempts by Psychlogists to Measure Cognitive Abilities. Not The Groups of Homo Sapiens which can be linked to Continental Areas and Intelligence. And Alun is right that inventing synonomous names and splitting POV's between them is, well, a POV fork. And it's a special problem when one of the POV's is under the common name. mikemikev (talk) 22:18, 25 January 2010 (UTC) And before I'm accused of misquoting I accept Alun did't exactly talk about synonymity, but my point remains, and I agree with his. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikemikev (talk • contribs) 22:58, 25 January 2010 (UTC) I don't thinks it's a POV fork, but I do see that it has the potential of bringing a lot of POV editing with it. Aprock (talk) 22:42, 25 January 2010 (UTC) David Kane: "is there a single other editor involved here besides Alun who believes that an article". As I have said before, if this article is created then I will put it up for deletion as a pov-fork. Then it will be up the the broader Wikipedia community to decide if it is a pov-fork. Personally I think it's a no brainer considering that people are specifically saying that they want to create the article specifically because they want to exclude non-psychometric points of view because they can't accept that these points of view form the bulk of work on the subject. So the whole point of the article is to give a more prominent position to a minority pov. Besides, even if I do put it up for deletion it doesn't mean the broader community will agree with me, they may think creating the article is fine. Though from my past experiences with deletion discussions I suspect the article would be deleted. Alun (talk) 07:45, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Aryaman: "Equally noteworthy is the indication that none of the environment-only hypotheses have been able to explain the mean IQ difference." But the fact is that the "genetic hypothesis" has not had any success in explaining the mean difference, mainly that it has no genetic evidence to support it whatsoever. Some of the criticism of environmental reasons for the difference is clearly a red herring. For example Jensen's "factor X" argument is clearly a fallacy, I don't think anyone except Jensen believes that a single environmental factor causes the difference, but an accumulation of many environmental factors, poverty, poor diet, poor parenting, poor living conditions, poor school attendance etc. etc. Indeed it's noteworthy that in childhood environment is much more important than it is in adulthood, but it's in childhood that intellectual development is at it's most rapid, as it says in Paul Tough's book "Whatever it Takes", if children fall behind educationally in childhood then it becomes almost impossible to catch up, and guess what, in childhood environment is much more important than in adulthood. And yet it's always data collected on adults that are presented as evidence of a strong genetic link "e.g. that in the adult "white" middle class American population 80% of the variation is due to genes. Aprock "Just to clarify here, according to the paper no specific environmental cause has been able to explain the differences, however the range of differences is within what can be attributable to environmental factors. But yes, the fact is that we do not know." Absolutely. It's the claim that because no specific environmental factor has been identified to explain the difference, then all-environmental theories have no validity that is fallacious. It's just as fallacious as claiming that the partial genetic hypothesis is invalid just because we haven't found any genes for "intelligence". Here's the thing, there are genes that affect intelligence, and the environment certainly affects intelligence. But there are probably thousands of environmental variaböes that can affect intelligence, and there are probably thousands of genes that can affect intelligence. So just because we can't find specific genes, or specific environmental factors, then that doesn't mean that either is not important. Aprock "But not knowing does not mean that any hypothesis is equally valid." There's the rub. We already know that in the USA the environments of Black people are much poorer than those of the White population, we already know that there is discrimination in housing, education, medical care and a host of other inequities. Those social differences have been documented again and again. We also know that for the Black community in the USA the degree of European ancestry a person has (and there is a broad range within the community, from close to 100% to close to 0%) doesn't seem to improve the test score of a person, even though the higher the degree of European ancestry a person has, then the more "White" genes they have. So there is a range of environmental differences that are well documented. Of course we don't know what effect these have on test score performance, but we do know they exist, and we do know that environment is important in developing intelligence. But what we don't have is evidence that any genes that are important in intelligence are divided differentially between these social groups. Indeed the evidence with respect to the non-correlation of degree of European ancestry and intelligence within the Black community indicates the exact opposite, that any genes for intelligence are spread evenly between continental human populations. So the partial genetic hypothesis is clearly the weaker of the two hypotheses, there is less evidence for it. It's based on two fallacies, (1) That just because genes can be important in intelligence, then any difference in intelligence between people must be at least in part explained by genetic differences and (2) Extrapolating from fallacy (1) that, because there is variation in the frequency of a very small set of alleles between the Black and White US populations, then this variation must also exist for genes affecting intelligence. The difference between the environmental hypothesis and the partial genetic hypothesis is that, whereas no one denies that environment is important to developing intelligence and we know that the Black US population has been discriminated against for centuries and still is, and while no one denies the importance of genes in intelligence, there is no evidence whatsoever for a differential distribution of genes for intelligence between the Black and White US populations. So we have plenty of evidence for an environmental cause for the differences (poorer schools, parenting, housing, health care, all of which affect educational outcomes), but little or no evidence for the partial genetic genetic hypothesis. Alun (talk) 07:45, 26 January 2010 (UTC) That's nice and all, but you do realise you're simply arguing for one POV here, right? And that you're both misconstruing and oversimplifying the hereditarian position to make your POV seem more credible. Well, fine. I'm glad to see that you can form an educated opinion. But none of this gets us anywhere in resolving the dispute at hand. We need to stop arguing for POVs and start discussing how to represent academic POVs neutrally in the article. --Aryaman (talk) 07:59, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Actually Aryaman I'm not arguing a single pov, I'm saying that there are two povs, but that one is more accepted by the academic community and has much more research to support it. I'm arguing that, yes, we need to include the partial-genetic hypothesis, but only in respect to it being a minority point of view. What is uncalled for is the claims by some editors that the two points of view have equal validity, they do not, one is a minority point of view, some would say fringe, the other has overwhelming academic support. I just outlines some of the reasons why the genetic hypothesis has such little support, that's all. Alun (talk) 08:18, 26 January 2010 (UTC) You've said that the hereditarian position has very little research behind it when compared to the environmentalist position. Are we to ignore the Jensen & Rushton report, which covers 30 years of intelligence research and evaluates that body of research as strongly favouring the hereditarian position? It was published by the APA and peer-reviewed, so it's not as though it can be simply dismissed as fringe-cruft. Seeing as the academic debate we are proposing to discuss in this article revolves around the interpretation of a community pool of data, I perceive any blanket statement which claims that the environmental position has "much more research to support it" as inherently non-neutral. Now, I do not deny that the hereditarian position is the less popular of the two - though this is more of an admission made out of ignorance rather than one which rests upon the result of an objective inquiry (the last poll to be conducted was over 20 years ago). But that popularity is not based on a lack of research on the part of hereditarians. Rather, those who either favour the environmentalist position or reject the hereditarian position do so because they do not find the evidence advanced by hereditarians to be compelling. That does not make the hereditarian position a "fringe" view. On the contrary, the hereditarian position is taken seriously by all as one with hypothetical validity, but judged by most to suffer from a severe lack of empirical demonstrability. It may seem like I'm playing with words, but this is, for me, the distinction residing at the heart of this dispute. --Aryaman (talk) 09:46, 26 January 2010 (UTC) "You've said that the hereditarian position has very little research behind it" No I haven't. What I've said is that there has been more work done on environmental causes for the gap, and that's because there is more evidence for environmental causes of the gap. So with more evidence and more research one would expect that it has a more prominent place in the article. "Are we to ignore the Jensen & Rushton report," Has anyone suggested we should? I certainly haven't. What I've said, clearly and repeatedly, is that we should give minority points of view proportionate space in the article. But remember, it is not the place for Wikipedia to recite or regurgitate the contents of reports. We're an encyclopaedia, we don't publich primary sources, we're not interested in the results of their work, we're interested in the conclusions they draw. Jensen and Rushton don't really say anything new in their report, as far as I know, they simply use a meta-analysis of previous work and draw the same conclusions they always draw. So the report can be used to support their hypothesis along with many others of their publications, but we shouldn't imply that there is anything new here, and we definitely can't just reproduce their data, because these are a primary source. "I perceive any blanket statement which claims that the environmental position has "much more research to support it" as inherently non-neutral." Well I don't remember ever stating that we should say this in the article, right? So I don't understand your problem. But it's still true that there is a massive body of work on the environmental impact of poverty/discrimination on the Black community, and how it affects educational achievement. It's a much larger body than that done by hereditarians, and it is also the more accepted hypothesis (you admit this), so for me to say that the environmental hypothesis is more accepted, and has more research behind it, is not a non-neutral statement, it is just a fact. Unless you can show either that (a) there is a larger body of work oh hereditarianism than environmentalism, and that (b) the hereditarian hypothesis is the more accepted hypothesis within the academic community, then there's nothing biased about what Ive said, it's juts a fact. Furthermore it's a fact that needs to be reflected in the article. "Now, I do not deny that the hereditarian position is the less popular of the two - though this is more of an admission made out of ignorance rather than one which rests upon the result of an objective inquiry (the last poll to be conducted was over 20 years ago)." We are not talking about popularity, right? Science is not about popularity or polling, science is about evidence. The overwhelming majority of social scientists support an environmental only cause for the test score gap, that's simply because the evidence is much stronger. It has nothing to do with popularity and nothing to do with polling. All one has to do is look at the relative bodies of work to see that environmental explanations have a much bigger body of work behind them. "those who either favour the environmentalist position or reject the hereditarian position do so because they do not find the evidence advanced by hereditarians to be compelling. That does not make the hereditarian position a "fringe" view." Correct on both points, what makes the hereditarian position a minority position is that the majority of experts support the environmental explanation. The reason that the majority support the environmental explanation is because, as you say, they do not find the evidence for the genetic hypothesis convincing. You have answered your own question. Most experts do not support the genetic hypothesis because they find the evidence unconvincing, while most experts do support the environmental hypothesis because they find the evidence convincing. So you firstly admit that the hereditarian position is a minority position, then you also admit that the hereditarian position is a minority position because those who don't support it do so because they don't find the evidence convincing. So what does make the hereditarian position a fringe position? Well it's because most experts don't think there's evidence to support it. You've answered your own question. "hereditarian position is taken seriously by all as one with hypothetical validity, but judged by most to suffer from a severe lack of empirical demonstrability." I absolutely agree. It is clear that this thesis belongs in the article. It's clear that it is a point of view held by at least some eminent academics. But that's not the argument here is it? The argument is that we should not pretend that the hereditarian/genetic hypothesis has greater support amongst experts than it really does. It's still a minority point of view, and as such it should not be treated in the article as if it had equal support amongst researchers in the field. More importantly it does not mean that we should create a new article that deals with such a narrow part of this subjest that it gives disproportionate space to the genetic hypothesis. that's just a pov-fork, right? I agree with much of what you've said, I just think that much of what you've said supports my point of view. Alun (talk) 08:28, 28 January 2010 (UTC) As long as we can make it clear that the hereditarian position entails a roughly 50/50 split between environmental and genetic causes (with varying proportions depending upon the scholar), then I think we'll get along fine. I feel the need to stress that, because I get the impression that you're arguing against a 100% genetic hypothesis - which is the real "fringe" POV which no serious scholar supports. Hereditarians have no problem accepting a good deal of the research conducted which argues for a particular environmental factor or a combination of factors. They do object, however, when someone claims that the IQ gap can be explained through environmental factors alone, i.e. to the "environmental" hypothesis. That position is, objectively speaking, just as extreme as the 100% genetic hypothesis, and would, under normal circumstances, be considered just as "fringe". As I said before, we're dealing with a communal pool of research, and to say that most of it supports "the environmental position" is simply wrong. This is a crucial point for us to agree upon if we are to move forward. I think a succinct, neutral summary of the whole topic is as follows: All scholars agree that both the environment and genetics play significant and interrelated roles in the development of intelligence in individuals. When it comes to explaining the long-standing differences in IQ between groups, however, there is disagreement as to whether the same holds true. Some scholars argue that the IQ gap between groups can be explained through an appeal to environmental factors alone, while others argue that genetics also play a role. Proponents of neither position have been able to prove their case conclusively, but the implications of and difficulty in proving any genetic causation has led many, and perhaps most, scholars to favour environmentalism over hereditarianism. That's the whole article in a nutshell. The rest is just filling in the data. Of course, I don't expect anyone to agree with me on that summary, though I do think it's an impassionate and objective condensation of the whole mess. I'm just getting it out in the open so people aren't shocked or surprised by my reactions any more. --Aryaman (talk) 09:32, 28 January 2010 (UTC) Arya, I think you are misreading me above. I am not saying that we should have one article for "gender and IQ" and for "race and IQ." First, I made it clear that the APA statement uses ethnicity, not race, so I do not think there should be any article on race and IQ. My point is that the real "idea" here, the concept we should be educating our audience about, should have to do with how psychometricians work. After measuring IQ they look for correlations between one's IQ and one's social status. Ethnicity is just one of these social statuses, but if we want to represent psychometric research fairly it seems to me that we neeed an article on how psychometricians correlate IQ with social status, sex and ethnicity being two of them. Bottom line: how we organize articles should follow the sources, not our own prejudices. I am willing - easily - to grant that psychologists are the experts on intelligence and intelligence testing. Arya directed me to an APA report that (1) presents the "hereditarian" hypothesis as a fringe view and (2) explicitly does not use "race" and states that "race" shouldn't be used. I have read the article by Rushton and Jensen and nothing in changes my mind, although the introduction to the article does suggest that "race" and IQ is salient in public policy debates. Arya insists that the hereditarian position is taken seriously and at this point I can conclude only that this is a fringe view that yes is taken very seriously by all who share this fringe view. It is a fringe view in genetics, it is a fringe view in sociology and anthropology, and it is a fringe view in psychology. And let's be clear: fringe research can and has been published by peer-reviewed journals; prestigious journals like Science or Nature have been known to give space to fringe views. they play an important role in peer-reviewed literature, which is read by other researchrers, because it is provocative. In anthropology one of the most prestigious journals is Current Anthropology. I believe their web-page lists their most popular articles; in any case, one of the articles that has gotten the most hits was Dan Everett's article on Kraha language - and this article is the most fringe of fringe science. Arya is misrepresenting scientific peer-reviewed journals when he makes publication in one a sign that it is not fringe. Academic journals have reasons for publishing fringe theories. But we do not. This "hereditarian" hypothesis is a fringe view promoted by people who have no trining in genetics yet find it convenient to use genetics to explain things. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:37, 26 January 2010 (UTC) One of the first things we need to resolve, then, is (a) what is meant by "fringe theory" in the context of this discussion, and (b) whether the hereditarian position, if indeed a "fringe theory", meets Wikipedia's notability requirements for inclusion, (c) whether, if worthy of inclusion, the coverage of the hereditarian position should extend beyond 'one sentence' and, (d) if so, what should be seen as a minimum requirement for a coherent presentation. Please don't try and convince anyone of your views on this yet: we're discussing below whether to continue the mediation, and if we do I assume we will make significant changes in how discussions are to proceed from now on. --Aryaman (talk) 18:08, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

locking the page

archiving old discussions
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I'm beginning to think that we should revert the R&I page to its pre-mediation state and lock it until this mediation is over - the constant reversions are just proving a distractions, and no one seems capable of restraining themselves. do we have any consensus for that? --Ludwigs2 18:22, 25 January 2010 (UTC) This is being discussed here. Ramdrake seems determined to undo all of the changes which were made to the article during the past two months, but he's apparently no longer willing to participate in the discussion about his edits. So now he's just undoing the past two months of edits without trying to justify it, and then his edit gets reverted soon afterwards. This isn’t an exaggeration—you can see how this discussion has gone by reading it for yourself. I don’t really see what locking the article would accomplish in this case. Normally locking an article is something that’s done so that a particular edit won’t keep being made while discussion about it is underway, but in this case there is not currently any discussion about this edit, at least not from the person who keeps making it. Locking the article in the state that he keeps restoring it to seems like it would only encourage him to continue refusing to discuss this change, as long as the article remains in the state that he wants it to be. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:54, 25 January 2010 (UTC) I don't really care what state the article gets locked in - I suggested the pre-mediation version because that seemed sensible to me (since a big part of this dispute involves people jumping the gun on mediation issues), but whatever. I'm at the point where the next time I see a revert pop up in my watchlist I'm going to file an ANI report. understood? --Ludwigs2 20:05, 25 January 2010 (UTC) It’s fine with me if you want to report it there. All I ask is that if you do, you provide a link to the discussion that I linked to in my last comment, since I think it’s pretty clear from the discussion about these edits that Ramdrake is the user who’s being disruptive here. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:17, 25 January 2010 (UTC) I'm fine for locking the page at its pre-mediation stage. The point of a mediation is that the article remains untouched by those parties mediating until mediation has come to a resolution. I'm not sure why Captain Occam would consider that his introduction has consensus; AFAIK, it doesn't. I don't have to justify the revert as I'm merely trying to restore the state of the article from the start of the mediation. I'm not aware that any changes after that had consensus, despie what Captain Occam says, especially not if they were made when the article was under another name. So, please go ahead and bring the article back to the state it was in when we began mediating, and let it be locked in that state.--Ramdrake (talk) 22:29, 25 January 2010 (UTC) Ramdrake, all of the points you’re raising here have been addressed before, in some cases by the mediators themselves. Not editing the article during mediation was something that Reubzz requested of us, but after he dropped out of the mediation, Xavexgoem and The Wordsmith specifically suggested that we continue to edit the article while mediation was underway. Your expectation that the article remain in its pre-mediation state until mediation is concluded is particularly unreasonable when one considers what the “mediation” actually involves at this point. Neither of our mediators have had any involvement in the mediation for the past two days, despite several requests for their intervention, although they’re continuing to edit other articles at Wikipedia. In addition, Xavexgoem’s “talk amongst yourselves” comment makes it clear that we should not expect his assistance here anytime soon. The only extent to which mediation is “underway” at this point is that this discussion is occurring here rather than on the article talk page. The mediation process has become more and more this way throughout its entire two-month duration, and judging by its trajectory so far, this appears to be the only “conclusion” that it’s going to have: not a formal resolution, but simply a transformation into an extension of the article’s talk page when the mediators abandon it. We may have already reached that point, but if not, we’re very close to it. So for you to demand that the article remain in its pre-mediation state until mediation is “concluded” essentially amounts to a demand that it remain in this state permanently. I’m not going to address your point about consensus, because that’s already been addressed in the previous discussion about your edits above, and you have yet to respond to it. But don’t forget that if you do insist the burden is on other editors to justify edits from any amount of time ago if you feel that they were made without consensus, then the burden will be on you to justify a large number of edits which were made to the article in 2007 and 2008. Your comments so far seem to indicate that you want to apply this principle only when it enables you to revert edits that aren’t consistent with your point of view. But if you’re willing to also apply it to the earlier edits that I’m mentioning, you need to make that clear. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:04, 25 January 2010 (UTC) Well, that's also a problem because the link you supplied to the purported consensus shows no consensus at all, just you agreeing with DJ. And yes, it is customary to leave an article alone while it is under mediation, regardless of what the mediators may have said. Moving it to another name to perform significant changes surely doesn't jive with the spirit of mediation. I would strongly suggest you revert yourself, as your arguments don't have a leg to stand on.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:32, 25 January 2010 (UTC) I think in the interests of progress that you should do it as well. --Ludwigs2 00:03, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Where did Occam's version come from? I'd be happy setting to the version before the redirection page replaced the original article: [8] Aprock (talk) 00:06, 26 January 2010 (UTC) I'm happy not touching the page anymore, but if there is consensus that it should be reverted to the state it was in when mediation started, so let it be. But I'm not touching it anymore.--Ramdrake (talk) 00:08, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Fact of the matter is I'm leaving for two weeks. This is either gonna sit on the new cases list and stall, or be closed before I leave. So far, here's what's been accomplished: Nothing. Novel ways to talk past each other. Driving off a new mediator, Reubzz, from the wiki. Because he wasn't professional enough. I give up! Xavexgoem (talk) 00:11, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Aprock, “my version” of the article is the version that existed for most of the past two weeks, until Ramdrake reverted it to the version that existed before mediation. Before January 10th, it was the status quo for the “Between-group differences in IQ” article for around a month, during the time when this article was a stand-in for the Race and intelligence article, and Race and intelligence existed as only a disambiguation page. When the article was moved back to its original title, DJ, David.Kane, mikemikev, Varoon Arya and I all agreed to preserve the changes that had been made to the article while it existed under its new title. Most of these changes were the result of edits from DJ, but there were a few from other users also. In any case, given Xavexgoem’s last comment, I don’t think it’s reasonable to consider this article to still be under mediation. We have two choices here: we can let the article remain indefinitely frozen in the state that it had in November while we wait to see whether one of our mediators comes back, or we can try to build on the small amount of progress that’s been made with it during the past two months. I’m for the second option. I guess I'd suggest that we discuss the past two months of edits here, and see whether consensus supports or opposes them. So far, the five editors I mentioned have all expressed varying amounts of approval of these changes, while Ramdrake and Alun have made it clear that they disapprove of them. So right now, I would say that consensus slightly favors keeping these changes, although that may change as more users express their opinions. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:33, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Could you provide the edit diff? Also, if it includes edits that were developed at “Between-group differences in IQ”, I don't think it's appropriate to use here. Aprock (talk) 00:54, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Which diff do you want to see? You aren’t being clear. Also, you aren’t addressing what’s been pointed out earlier about the Between-group differences in IQ article. That article was basically just Race and intelligence under a new title, so why wouldn’t it be appropriate to retain modifications to the article once it was moved back to its original title? --Captain Occam (talk) 01:09, 26 January 2010 (UTC) I've looked into it, and it's clear that you copied your version from the BG article, and not the R&I article. I've reverted it accordingly. If you want to incorporate the edits made on another page, by all means edit the R&I article. Taking the content to another page, developing it there, and then copying the new article back to the old one is not a legitimate way of editing an article. Aprock (talk) 01:19, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Pages get moved to new titles all the time, and that’s what happened in this case. There’s nothing unusual about this. A few users supported splitting up the content of Race and intelligence between multiple articles; then Between-group differences in IQ became a replacement for Race and intelligence under a different name, and finally consensus supported moving this article back to its original title. Apart from T34CH’s decision to split up Race and intelligence in the first place, which was probably a bad idea, nobody did anything at any point during this process that was different from what they should have done. If I recall correctly, you and David.Kane were the only two users who opposed moving this article back to its original title, and you continued reverting Race and intelligence back to a disambiguation page after it was clear that consensus opposed you about this. Are you still not willing to accept what consensus determined about moving the Between-group differences in IQ article back to its original title of Race and intelligence? If this is the only argument you have to offer for why these changes shouldn’t be kept, it definitely isn’t valid. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:36, 26 January 2010 (UTC) The page did not get moved to a new title. Your repeated claims of false consensus are not useful. If you think the edits that occured on the BG page merit inclusion, by all means introduce them on the R&I page. Aprock (talk) 01:58, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Okay, so you still aren’t willing to accept that there was a consensus for this. The users who agreed that Between-group differences in IQ should be moved back to the title of Race and intelligence were Me, Muntuwandi, Victor Chmara, Varoon Arya, Ludwigs2, mikemikev, and (based on the fact that he reverted your edit of undoing the move) Ramdrake. I don’t know how you can call this “false consensus”, when there was more of a consensus for moving the article back to its original title than almost anything else that’s been discussed during the mediation. If you can’t accept that this is what consensus decided, that’s your own problem. This case is pretty clear-cut, and we can’t reject the outcome of a decision like this based on a single editor who refuses to accept it. If this is the only argument you have to offer here, then your reason for reverting isn’t valid, regardless of how many times you repeat yourself in claiming that this consensus for moving the article didn’t exist. Other users: could you please revert Aprock’s edits if he keeps making them based on this false premise? If he’s going to edit war over this the way he did when the article was first moved, I don’t want to violate 3RR while enforcing what consensus determined about this. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:35, 26 January 2010 (UTC) What is clear is that there was no consensus to move to a disambiguation page. That is very different from adopting the BG article for R&I. You are confusing a lack of consensus to move to a disambiguation page with a non-existent consensus for replacing the R&I article with the Between Group article. Aprock (talk) 04:02, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Huh? You’re not even making sense anymore. What (almost) everyone agreed was just that Between-group differences in IQ was essentially the same article, and that it should therefore be moved back to its original title. If there’s a distinction here, it’s not relevant. Like I said, it doesn’t matter how many times you repeat yourself here. I know you haven’t been willing to accept what consensus determined about this, as was evident from your behavior when the article was first moved, but I think you’re the only editor here who isn’t. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:19, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Xavexgoem has left the building! Straw Poll! :)

archiving old discussions
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
File:Justitia mayer.jpg Though our mediator has given up, I still hold out hope that something positive can come of this mediation. I had no prior contact with some of the editors who have become involved here during the mediation process, such as Ludwigs, and though we don't see eye to eye on the details, I think that, provided we have some kind of constructive, uninterrupted atmosphere to work in, we can work well together to bring this forward. I already know that is the case with DJ, Occam, David and Mike, as I have had no problems understanding their points and I feel my points are understood and taken into consideration by them. Also, if I can catch Aprock in the right mood :), I think he, too, would be willing to work constructively with the rest of us. In all, I think there is a lot of potential here for us to work out the bugs and get the article into a respectable form we are all more or less satisfied with. In my opinion, the main problem with this last mediation attempt was that it lacked a clear structure, and the mediator seemed reluctant to step in and keep things on-topic and directed towards a specific, achievable goal. We need to set little goals first and establish consensus on the fundamental things which can then be built upon. We can do this without a mediator, I believe, provided everyone approaches this in good faith and recognizes that, though it might not go exactly the way you had intended, working towards a fundamentally sound solution with the potential to improve over time and which enjoys a respectable degree of consensus is far more enjoyable than sitting and bickering with one another. If you also think that we can still achieve something of value by sticking to the mediation with the addition of clearer "rules of engagement", then please sign your name below: Yes, I'm still hopeful this can be resolved and I'm willing to keep trying Aryaman (talk) 03:40, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Aprock (talk) 04:20, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Ludwigs2 04:29, 26 January 2010 (UTC) David.Kane (talk) 04:41, 26 January 2010 (UTC) mikemikev (talk) 13:35, 26 January 2010 (UTC) TechnoFaye Kane 08:32, 1 February 2010 (UTC) -- I'm not posting (because I get carried away), but I'm still watching with great interest No, I have no hope, either for this issue or for this mediation. I quit! And please, no blaming anyone for anything, no posturing, no excusing, no apologizing, no feigning ignorance, no requests for lengthy clarification, etc. Just sign your name so we can move on, please. Thanks, --Aryaman (talk) 03:40, 26 January 2010 (UTC) I'm happy to keep trying. The main sticking point, which looked like it was progressing till the holidays, was the amount of weight to give to the hereitarian hypothesis. Personally, I'm very much for it's inclusion, as long as it's clear what the results of the research have been. Aprock (talk) 04:22, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Well, that's how this mediation started, and I don't think we went into this thinking there would be a complete re-evaluation of the entire issue. But if the mediation has shown anything, it's that there are more fundamental disagreements which won't be solved simply by picking a percentage. I'm happy to see there has been a positive response so far. I'm pretty sure Occam would sign as well, but apparently he's been blocked - for either 72 hours or 1 week, I can't tell. As soon as a few more editors signal their willingness to continue, I think our first order of business is to get at least some of this talkpage archived. I'd propose starting with a clean slate, but I know some editors object to that as a matter of principle. Any preferences regarding the nature of archiving? (E.g. manual, automated, day-limits, etc.) --Aryaman (talk) 07:33, 26 January 2010 (UTC) I think mediation without a mediator is not a good idea. I am also rather concerned that recently arrived editors not signed up to this mediation have been needlessly repeating discussions on the meaning of "race". That I find wholly unconstructive and in fact disruptive. I also do not agree at all about narrowing the scope of the article. That would be a POV-fork, presenting fringe theories uncritically and outside a general academic context. [Although I'm fairly busy in RL at the moment - and have been and am on a sort of wikibreak - I revisited this page after seeing the WP:ANI report on Captain Occam's one week block for edit warring on R&I.] Mathsci (talk) 09:54, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Thanks for the note. We'll return the favour if/when we come to a conclusion. --Aryaman (talk) 10:06, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Regretfully, I think Mathsci is correct. That said I'd continue with mediation if we had a mediator. Arya is right not to cast blame at anyone. I think this case shows the failures with Wikipedia's mediation system. If ever an article needed mediation, this is it, but we do not have editors who are experienced and well-informed and willing to mediate. This is a huge problem wor the project in general. Anyway, I will stick around hoping that a qualified and committed mediator will take the time to review all material, identify major persistent sources of conflict, and begin to taclke them one by one. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:46, 26 January 2010 (UTC) So, are you in or out, Slrubenstein? A mediator may want to pick this up some time in the future, and we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. But if you want to actively participate before that time, please indicate your willingness to continue by signing your name. Otherwise, you're certainly free to refrain from participating until another mediator comes along. --Aryaman (talk) 18:25, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Arya, the usual way a mediation works (and I'll concede that this has been anything but an usual mediation) is that if one of the parties declines, mediation is stopped/cancelled. If Slrubenstein decides to wait for another mediator, then I believe in all fairness we all should do the same. If anything, this exercise has shown that this mediation requires a strong mediator (no offense to our previous mediators). Trying to mediate without a mediator is just likely to lead us around in circles.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:17, 26 January 2010 (UTC) I wasn't aware that any one editor's participation was to be considered necessary. Several editors who had previously agreed to the mediation later said they would not be participating, and yet the mediators did not call off the mediation. But, as you say, maybe that's because they weren't going about the mediation according to the "usual" rules of procedure. Do you think the editors who have already agreed cannot deal with the issue fairly? --Aryaman (talk) 20:39, 26 January 2010 (UTC) I know it used to be that way, but I can't find the reference now, so in all possibility the rules may have changed.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:48, 26 January 2010 (UTC) I don't know how this would fly with others here, but I'd be willing to step back from the discussion and mediate this. I'm not particularly attached to any of the sides here, I'm at least somewhat familiar with the issues, and I have some experience mediating in the real world (though I'd have to take a crash course in mediation cabal practices to get up to speed). up to you all; let me know what you think. --Ludwigs2 22:24, 26 January 2010 (UTC) on 18:08, 26 January Arya noted one major point of contention we need to overcome. His comment was production and I am game to go with it. I someone could just help us move beyond the issues there, we would make important progress. I have no objection at all to Ludwigs too. But honestly, it needs Alun and Ramdrake and Arya and Captain Occom's agreement first, Slrubenstein | Talk 23:04, 26 January 2010 (UTC) I would be happy to follow Slrubenstein's lead and accept Ludwigs as the mediator. David.Kane (talk) 01:18, 27 January 2010 (UTC) Well, Occam won't be back for a week, so I suppose this will have to sit until then - which is not necessarily bad, as it gives Ludwigs time to switch gears. Though I find losing Ludwigs as an active member in the discussion something of a shame, I'm not against him taking up the role of mediator. --Aryaman (talk) 02:31, 27 January 2010 (UTC) While I also hate losing a knowledgeable editor, gaining a mediator knowledgeable on te subject matter may be a plus for the mediation. I'd support the proposition.--Ramdrake (talk) 15:20, 27 January 2010 (UTC) I agree with Ludwigs as mediator, as long as we can agree that this mediation is about how much space the genetic/hereditarian hypothesis should have in the article Race and intelligence, it is not about starting pov-fork articles. Alun (talk) 09:04, 28 January 2010 (UTC) well, it's kind of the nature of mediation that problematic issues need to be raised and discussed. if everyone agrees that the POV-fork issue is off the table then all is well and good; if people disagree, then we'd need to have a section for discussing that. I would (obviously) ask everyone to refrain from starting or editing any such pages until some consensus is reached. --Ludwigs2 17:20, 28 January 2010 (UTC) I don't think it was agreed that an article focused on the results intelligence research would constitute a POV-fork. We simply had some people saying that it would, and some people saying that it wouldn't. We could feasibly start from the assumption that we will try to keep everything in one article. But it has to be agreed that if/when the content in the section "Psychometric research" starts to get "too big" so as concerns of UNDUE are raised again, a content fork must remain an option, e.g. splitting the section off as a "child" article from the main article. Leaving out important information simply to comply with some percentage allowance is not going to work. If this suggestion has people up in arms, then I guess we have to discuss it more. If not, then let's just roll with it. --Aryaman (talk) 19:20, 28 January 2010 (UTC) One way to approach this would be to have all the scientific research segregated into it's own section in the actual article. Thus, if it grew large enough, and didn't suffer from POV issues, it could then be broken out into it's own article and then summarized on R&I. A.Prock 20:36, 28 January 2010 (UTC) That is entirely sensible. Given the overlap between "hereditarian" and "enviornmental" positions, I strongly suggest we go with DJ's suggestion (made months ago now) to organize the content of the research section according to subject, not according to "position". The positions/interpretations can be dealt with accordingly in a sub-section. If we can all agree to that, I think we'll be back to editing the article constructively very soon. --Aryaman (talk) 20:48, 28 January 2010 (UTC) I think this is the way to go, at least we can try it. I'm happy for Ludwig to mediate. mikemikev (talk) 10:55, 29 January 2010 (UTC) This paper is a pretty good indication of the 'state of play' in R&I. It's arguments seem to be mainly absent from the current article, giving the article a strong "environmentalist" slant. I think to keep wikipedia current we need to include them. It seems that the current structure of the article doesn't need to be changed radically to conform to a 'data-centric' model. I know that those editors of an environmentalist nature will object to reproducing the content of this paper. I think if we just take the subsections as a structure indication (with some modification), we can produce a satisfactorily neutral article. An example of an improvement this would bring is shifting the focus from black/white differences to a black/white/Asian model. mikemikev (talk) 10:16, 30 January 2010 (UTC) Sorry if I'm getting ahead of ourselves, please tell me if I should scratch this until mediation has properly begun again. I notice that the info box on the mediation main page says it will be closing in 7 days, and it's a few days old. Any idea if this is a problem? mikemikev (talk) 10:33, 30 January 2010 (UTC) One of the sticking points in the past has been the amount of weight to give the research of Rushton. A.Prock 19:35, 1 February 2010 (UTC) Well, let's work on a data/topic structure plan and we can allocate content to each section later. mikemikev (talk) 20:00, 1 February 2010 (UTC) I happened to choose Rushton for the structure blueprint, but you could use Nisbett. They're covering the same areas. mikemikev (talk) 20:10, 1 February 2010 (UTC) mediation-wise, I was just waiting to make sure there was a consensus before I picked it up. but I can always recuse myself if there's a later objection, so I guess I'll just go edit myself in now. the first question in my mind, however, is how much of this page we want to keep current, and how much of it we want to archive and start over from scratch. I have some ideas, but what do you all think? --Ludwigs2 16:47, 30 January 2010 (UTC) If it were me, I'd archive the whole thing and start afresh. Nothing like a clean, well-managed page to clear the mind. :) --Aryaman (talk) 17:15, 30 January 2010 (UTC) Ludwigs is okay as long as he remembers that the Judge's job isn't "judging", but managing the courtroom dispassionately. WE are the jury, and consensus is our goal. Regarding a total rewrite, I don't think that's necessary. Just gather up all the statistics and facts into one section AT THE TOP, then present the bullshit sections explaining it all away with silly explanations like "it's the lead paint in ghettos that makes them stupid" (which is actually in there). Since that's pretty much how the article is now, I really don't think major change is needed. I completely agree with Mikey that this article is NOT about black/white IQ, but about black/white/Asian IQ. I think emphasizing the barely-mentioned fact that on average, whites are stupider than Asians would do a lot to defuse people who see the article as KKK propaganda. Every reference to "the black/white IQ gap" should have the word "Asian" inserted. I also do not think this should be broken up just for political reasons. It's not too long. Note that over HALF of the article is footnotes, citations,links, and other eminently ignorable boilerplate. Finally, I would like to point out that the article is NOT about "the race-intelligence debate", but about "race and intelligence correlation" (to the extent that such correlation exists). We need to agree to keep the focus on that, and omit the POV sections blaming it all on racism (e.g., in education). BUT: How about this for a cooperative compromise? I am okay with leaving in all the embarrassing handwaving if we also include as part of the undisputed statistical facts (at the top of the article) important objective measurables such as blacks' brains, on average, being 6% smaller than Asians'. If you think about it, that really DOES belong in an article about why the IQ gap exists, don't you think? I volunteer to pay for the journal article describing the methodology and metrics, since no one will believe it without them. --TechnoFaye Kane 09:40, 1 February 2010 (UTC) As long as it's clear what the data is, I'm all for including data. Likewise, scientific interpretation of data is also appropriate for the article. A.Prock 17:28, 1 February 2010 (UTC) I'm fine with Ludwig as a moderator. A.Prock 18:33, 1 February 2010 (UTC) Guys, you didn’t need to all wait for me like this. At this point, I’m not sure that I want to continue participating in the mediation. I wanted to let one of you know that you could go ahead without me, but I don’t know any of your e-mail addresses, and I obviously couldn’t contact anyone on-wiki while I was blocked. Archiving some meta-discussion that is not helping the cause The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. The reason for this has to do with what was going on here just before I was blocked for a week: Ramdrake and Alun’s decision to revert the past two months of edits here without any discussion. The first three times that this was done, nobody attempted to justify it at all, and even after I challenged other users to justify these edits it happened several times that they simply reverted the article without even bothering to answer my demands for an explanation. My comment here was in response to one example of this from Ramdrake. Even if it weren’t for the apparent indifference that the users making these changes had for justifying or discussing them, the explanations that they provided (when they provided any at all) would have made it clear enough what was going on here, as Varoon Arya pointed out in his own comment about this: “It's in the face of situations like this when you have to ask yourself what the people who wrote WP:AGF were thinking.” (interjection) If you redevelop content on a different page (Between-group differences in IQ), then try to replace an articles content (Race and Intelligence) with that content, you are going to face some resistance. That's really at the core of why your version was getting reverted. It doesn't matter if there was consensus on the redevelopment page for replacing the original article with the redeveloped content. If you think the redeveloped content merits inclusion, it's up to you to justify that in the original article's talk. A.Prock 17:19, 2 February 2010 (UTC) Listen, there’s nothing you’re saying here that hasn’t been addressed already. I believe you that you actually think the two-month revert was justified, so that unlike some of the other users who were involved in this, you’ve been editing in good faith here. But that isn’t really helpful if you’re going to continue refusing to acknowledge the existence of certain things that other users point out to you. It still amounts to the same problem: it means that nothing anyone can do or say will be able to change your opinion about this, or get you to stop reverting the edits of whoever disagrees with you. As I said, I’m not really interested in discussing why you think your behavior is justified. At this point, I’ve accepted the fact that you’re not going to listen, and it’s a waste of my time for me to keep repeating myself when I know it won’t accomplish anything. The only relevant question here is whether there’s any reason for me to remain involved in the mediation when I know this is the case, and that similar things are likely to be the case for future changes to the article also. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:18, 2 February 2010 (UTC) As I said, I’m not really interested in discussing why you think your behavior is justified. You might want to review WP:BRD. If you're not interested in discussion, that's up to you. it means that nothing anyone can do or say will be able to change your opinion about this I specifically said that if you wanted to edit the actual Race and Intelligence article[9], that I'd be fine with that. A.Prock 18:28, 2 February 2010 (UTC) "moving content from one article to another without discussion" Man, this just never ends, does it? The decision to move the article was discussed on this page, and I’ve listed five different users who approved of it. This is what I mean when I refer to repeating myself: I’ve pointed this out multiple times before, while you don’t acknowledge it and just keep saying the same thing that contradicts what I’ve shown you. But it doesn’t matter. I know this isn’t going to change, either in this case or for other similar situations in the future, and seeing this again just reinforces my opinion that I shouldn’t expect to be able to accomplish anything in the long run with this article. Other users are welcome to try and provide a reason for me to stay, but unless someone does, you may as well consider me no longer part of this mediation. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:49, 2 February 2010 (UTC) You keep editing your last comment, so it's hard for me to see what it is that I'm replying to. What do you mean when you say that you'd be fine with us editing the Race and intelligence article? You obviously had a problem with certain content being in that article; can you be clear what content you would and wouldn't object to? --Captain Occam (talk) 18:57, 2 February 2010 (UTC) What I’ve realized recently is that even if the mediation case is successfully concluded and the article ends up being significantly improved as a result, there’s nothing to prevent one or more of these users from deciding at some point in the future to reject another several months’ worth of changes, and undoing everything that’s resulted from the mediation. It probably won’t be difficult to find another technicality to use as an excuse for making major changes without any discussion or consensus; perhaps next time around it could be that the conclusions of this mediation weren’t valid because our mediator joined this case after mediation was already underway, and therefore he wasn’t “neutral”. The next time a group of users here decides to revert several months’ worth of edits, as long as they’re as uninterested in discussing their changes as they were in this case, it doesn’t really matter whether the reason that’s given for this makes any sense. All that matters is that there be multiple users who can reinstate the several-month revert if anyone challenges it, so that nobody can do anything about this decision without edit warring. Over the past three years, situations similar to this have arisen several times before, and they’ve almost always ended the same way. I think most the users here agree that the article has gradually declined in quality since late 2006, and it’s been pointed out before that most of the users who have come to it over the years in hopes of improving it have eventually given up as they experienced this. I was hoping things might go differently in this case, both because we’re in the middle of a dispute resolution process and because this time I think there’s actually a majority of users who care about improving the article. But neither dispute resolution nor majority opinion seems to makes a difference if the users making changes to the article have no interest in discussing them. I expect that in response to this some of the users who’ve been guarding this article for the past three years will be wanting to justify what they’ve been doing all this time. But I’m really not interested in discussing this. Nothing anyone can tell me about this can go against what I’ve seen during the time that I’ve been watching this article, which indicates that unless something major changes, no improvement to the article is likely to last. If any of you want me to remain involved in this mediation, I’ll need to be convinced somehow that somehow the current attempt at improving the article will go differently from every other attempt that’s been made over the past three years. From what I just saw a week ago, there doesn’t seem to be any good reason to assume that it will. --Captain Occam (talk) 12:01, 2 February 2010 (UTC) That block was pretty unfair and must have been demoralising. I for one really hope you will continue to be involved. mikemikev (talk) 12:59, 2 February 2010 (UTC) ok, let's not let things fly off the handle. Everyone should keep in mind that the state of the article at one particular moment is unimportant - what we need to do is think about long-term stability. I understand that there are some inter-personal matters that crop up (and will perpetually continue to crop up) on this page, but I'd appreciate it if we can set those aside and focus on doing what we can. Captain Occam: I'm glad you're back, I'm sorry, about the block, and I hope you don't sour on the effort. I'm going to create a section below specifically for a discussion of the interim state of the page, so that we can at least eliminate any concerns about what the page looks like *now* while we discuss what it will look like in the future. Later today I'm going to archive the bulk of the material on this page (using {{hat}}/{{hab}} tags). I'll retain the structure, and if there's anything that needs to be recovered from archiving please feel free (though try to limit it to short quotes rather than entire sections, for brevity)--Ludwigs2 19:11, 2 February 2010 (UTC) Ludwig, I hope you aren’t misconstruing the reason why I’m reluctant to continue with this. It isn’t because of my block, and it isn’t exactly an interpersonal conflict either. I really do think that given this article’s history, both since 2006 and during the past few weeks, it’s unlikely that any improvements we make to it are likely to last. It matters to me a lot that I spend my time on things that are productive. When I’ve edited other Wikipedia articles, I considered that productive because it resulted in a long-term improvement in their quality. But if it won’t be possible to bring about a long-term improvement to this one, then I don’t consider my involvement here to be a good use of my time. While I appreciate the discussion about what the article’s interim state should be, this doesn’t address my main concerns; the concerns that I’ll need to have addressed if I’m going to participate here are the ones I raised about how short-lived any improvements to this article tend to be. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:38, 2 February 2010 (UTC) To my mind, when a given article can't achieve stability, it's usually because one or more group(s) of editors feel strongly that some perspective is mis- or under-represented in the article. The entire point of mediation (again, to my mind) is to gradually suss out these concerns and find some effective means of addressing them that satisfies most people. sometimes that means changing the way the article is written, sometimes that means convincing people that a perspective has to be presented in a certain way for pragmatic or policy reasons, but generally speaking some kind of balance can be achieved. once it is, and you have people on both sides of the debate willing to maintain a given revision, then the article will start to be stable. may be a pipe dream, I'll grant you that, but that's the goal and process I have in mind here. does that ease your concerns any? --Ludwigs2 21:13, 2 February 2010 (UTC) Not really. Even though I understand that this is the goal here, one of the things that’s often been the case with this article is that even after a certain aspect of it has been established for quite a while, seemingly to most people’s satisfaction, a group of editors can suddenly decide that they have a problem with it and want to remove it. In some cases this can be because the editor in question wasn’t part of the discussion about including it, as happened in Alun’s case here, and there are also situations (such as Ramdrake’s) where there doesn’t appear to be any explanation for why they didn’t express an opinion in the original discussion about these changes. The reason why this happens isn’t important, though. What matters is that even after a certain article structure has been established by mediation, and most editors here seem to approve of it, this is no guarantee that someone won’t decide several weeks or months down the road that they think these changes need to be undone. I’m also a little doubtful about whether some of these people are interested in compromising at all, but I think most people here are already aware of this aspect of the issue (after all, it’s why the article has been under mediation for more than two months with no apparent progress thus far), so I don’t think I need to elaborate about that. In any case, I still think making the article stable is a worthwhile goal, futile though it may be. Even if I no longer have enough hope for this to want to spend any more time on it myself, I don’t want my absence to prevent the rest of you who haven’t given up yet from continuing to work on it. If I decide to stop participating here, how much would my absence interfere with the overall process of mediation? --Captain Occam (talk) 08:26, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

The 99.86% correlation number

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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RESOLVED AS:
The article will discuss the sources that show there is currently no established genetic link/correlation between race and intelligence, note that the research is inconclusive and ongoing, and give a brief summary of the 'Genes and Intelligence' article (or use other sources) as necessary to give proper balance to genetics-based research.

it is understood that this resolved may be subject to clarification as we flesh out the article and sources.

--Ludwigs2 17:33, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

extended discussion moved to Wikipedia_talk:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2009-11-12/Race_and_Intelligence/Archive_3#The 99.86% correlation number

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.