Wikipedia talk:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2009-11-12/Race and Intelligence/Archive 7

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The picture in the lede

Continuing WP:BRD, I think that it is not a great idea to have the Bell Curve picture in the lede. Mathsci (talk) 10:15, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not going to demand that image. I just thought having something to illustrate the distribution of score as well as the overlap could be helpful to the reader. (By the way, I've posted a similar note on the talkpage.) --Aryaman (talk) 10:18, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I've replied there. Mathsci (talk) 10:24, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I think the phrase: "some races are inherently more or less intelligent than others" is inaccurate as it's too all or none and implies all x is smarter than all y. For that reason, I don't think Jensen et al. would agree with it, or ever write it.

Adding "on average" makes it accurate and also implies that race distributions overlap lots, which is a point that should be made graphically early on (a 1 SD effect is big but also comes with millions of cases where black people score higher on IQ tests than 10s of millions of white people).

Bpesta22 (talk) 14:34, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Balance

I think the balance between the environmental interpretation and the hereditarian interpretation is not very good at the moment. There are too many criticisms of the environmental point of view and too few of the genetic point of view. Critiques of the genetic point of view can be found in the books of Fish, Mackintosh and Nisbett. I think these sections and the introductory passage preceding them need a lot more work, with tightening up and the addition of missing content. Mathsci (talk) 14:21, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree, although I think the problem is not so much the raw amount of text on each side as much as the quality/organization of the discussion. Do you have time to do this work yourself? If not, who would you nominate from the involved editors to do so? David.Kane (talk) 14:39, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Well I think this part of the article is somehow the heart of the matter, so will require some time. There is no rush. This can be started even after mediation has terminated. It might be an idea to have separate sections for statements of views and criticisms. But quite a bit of thought is really required. Mathsci (talk) 01:09, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I think we need more criticisms of both positions. For example, I suggested earlier that the Eyferth study ought to be mentioned in the “environmental interpretations” section, but there’s some notable criticism of that study which ought to be mentioned also, such as the fact that the parents of the children in that study were selected for IQ when joining the army. (Jensen makes some of these criticisms in The g Factor.) --Captain Occam (talk) 14:42, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Keep going?

I am through the "data gathering" section but still have the rest to review. Could someone provide an update on what's most likely to happen here? If it's possible or likely that the outline and article will be scraped or reverted to an earlier version, then I'd prefer not to spend more time on this now. On the other hand, if it's likely that David' outline is the first step toward a new and agreed-upon article, then I will keep going.

re citations. I am aware that all my claims eventually need ample cites. That process is tedious (but will be done) so I was hoping to do it last, and only if agreement is reached that what I wrote be included. Bpesta22 (talk) 14:03, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I feel certain that many/most of the comments being made by you and Aprock will be included in the next draft, especially the ones with citations. Now, given that this is Wikipedia, I can't promise you that everything will go in. Indeed, it seems that you and Aprock differ on some topics! But, you have my word that you work will not go to waste. I am sure that other editors feel the same. David.Kane (talk) 15:06, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

David, do you have anything to say about my own suggestions? --Captain Occam (talk) 17:07, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I like your suggestions too! I just forget to mention that. I would propose that the next step, after allowing another day or two for Aprock, Bpesta and others to finish their comments, would be to have a single editor make a good faith effort to incorporate the non-conflicting set of them. I would nominate DJ for this task, or anyone else for that matter. If no one else wants to do it, I would volunteer. David.Kane (talk) 17:27, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree that DJ would be a good choice, as would Varoon Arya. I've been consistently impressed with both of their organizational skills for articles here. --Captain Occam (talk) 05:49, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and made a few of the changes I was suggesting (although not all of them), namely adding a section explaining the relationship of within-group heritability to between-group heritability, and adding a couple sentences to the "hereditarian interpretations" section explaining the arguments used in favor of that position. If anyone disagrees with these changes, I'd appreciate it if they could discuss them here.

The one thing I'm not sure about is the rather long quote from James Flynn that I included in the "Heritability within and between groups" section. I included all of it for three reasons:

1: I think Flynn's explanation of this is superior to any other explanation of it we could have, in terms of both how clear and how concise it is. Therefore, at least some of it should be included.

2: I don't think there's any part of it that can be left out without compromising its clarity.

3: It is noteworthy that Flynn is pointing this out, especially in this rather forceful way, because he is a proponent of the 100%-environmental explanation for the IQ difference.

If anyone disagrees with this rationale for including the Flynn quote, I'm happy to discuss it; just please don't revert without commenting here. --Captain Occam (talk) 11:07, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Let me state again: all of the changes I’ve just made are changes that we’ve been discussing for at least a week, and the only reason I’m making them rather than waiting for David.Kane to make them is because I want to save him some of the difficulty of doing everything that Aprock, Dr. Pesta and I have requested. It isn’t acceptable to just revert these changes with a boilerplate comment like “no consensus” without any comment on either my current efforts to discuss them, or any of the previous discussion we’ve had about them already. --Captain Occam (talk) 11:43, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks DK

I don't expect that all or even most of my comments will go in. If there's consensus here that they should go in, then they should.

Realize though that lack of citations so far is a non-issue. I wouldn't put any claims in my review unless I could make them well-cited. To save time, however, they do not yet include cites.

I briefly skimmed Aprock's comments and seemed to agree with most of them; could be I missed something (I think he/she is dead on re the requirement that any explanation co-vary systematically with race, or it's not an explanation. This is what I referred to awhile back as the difference between a source of error variance versus a confound (finding a confound here would be the explanation for the race gap, at least partly).

Bpesta22 (talk) 15:14, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Two important secondary sources not used so far

Also added to Talk:Race and intelligence

• Nicholas Mackintosh, IQ and Human Intelligence, OUP, with a chapter on group differences including around 40 pages devoted to ethnic groups (discussing in a neutral and comprehensive way the subject of this article). This text book has received excellent reviews.
• Jefferson M. Fish (ed), Race and Intelligence: separating science from myth, with contributions by anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, biologists, statisticians and historians from major US universities,

Mathsci (talk) 11:13, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Within-group and between-group heritability

If nobody else has a problem with the lede mentioning this, I'll add it.

I may also make some of the other suggestions that I've mentioned and that other users have agreed with, such as adding a section that explains the relationship between within-group and between-group heritability. --Captain Occam (talk) 08:53, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Since the relationship between IQ and intelligence is disputed, then I wouldn't mention it in the lede. I have not yet voiced support for a full section on group heritability. Wapondaponda (talk) 10:55, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

“Since the relationship between IQ and intelligence is disputed, then I wouldn't mention it in the lede.”

I actually didn’t put that in the lede, but it shouldn’t be a problem if we decided that we wanted to. Consensus has already determined that the article will be taking the same general perspective as the APA statement about this topic, and the APA doesn’t dispute this.

“I have not yet voiced support for a full section on group heritability.”

Do you have any specific problems with it? Not every change being made to the article has had the support of every user in the mediation; if that were a requirement for making changes, then revising the article would probably be impossible. The requirement for adding something has generally been that a large portion of users have agreed with it, and none specifically expressed a problem with it. Unless you have a specific problem with this section, the same is true for it also. If you do, you should explain what it is, so we can discuss it. --Captain Occam (talk) 11:20, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

You posted your suggestions, but as yet nobody has commented on them. You therefore cannot assume that editors agree or disagree with your suggestion. However, I have also posted some suggestions, and some are in direct contradiction with what you have proposed. Try to reach consensus, rather than slipping in edits that you know very well will be controversial. Wapondaponda (talk) 11:40, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I’m not just talking about the comments on David’s revisions. Having a section discussing the relationship between within-group and between-group heritability was something that we agreed on around a month ago, when we were discussing the eventual page structure after VA posted his outline proposal. There were a few lines of data that we agreed would be in the article even though he didn’t actually add them to his outline, and this was an example. But David’s revisions thus far have only been based on the outline itself, so he hasn’t yet added everything that we’d already decided should go in the article.

With the exception of the “significance” section, nobody other than you had a problem with what we resolved in the original discussion about this. So no, I was not expecting any of this content to be controversial, except possibly to you and/or Mathsci.

This seems to be another procedural point you’re bringing up, and using as a basis for reverting. You haven’t yet brought up any actual problems with the content I’ve added; it’s just that you don’t consider our discussion where we talked about this a month ago to have reached consensus. Can you please just stick to content, and tell me specifically what you have a problem with in this section? --Captain Occam (talk) 11:56, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

The section is disproportionately long and too discursive; that is quite different from the brief style of David.Kane. Please start from scratch, avoid huge quotes and try to produce a summary of just a few sentences. There might have been some consensus for inclusion of material on this topic of some kind, but certainly not a huge rambling segment, which is WP:UNDUE. Please try to produce a shorter version of just one paragraph. Mathsci (talk) 12:59, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Other than the quote from Flynn, everything in that section had already been in David.Kane’s version of the article also; I’ve just moved it into a new section from where it previously had been in the “interpretations” section. If you compare this material to how it was phrased before I moved it, you’ll see that I’ve actually condensed it compared to its original form. I’ll work on shortening the Flynn quote, though. --Captain Occam (talk) 13:15, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

The material is fine, but needs significant shortening, and not just the quote. Mathsci (talk) 13:20, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I’ve cut this section down a little more. Do you think that’s short enough? And if not, what else specifically do you think ought to be removed? --Captain Occam (talk) 13:29, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

It's fine now. I removed the second part of the quote, which didn't seem so relevant, and made Lewontin's example, which should possibly be referenced, into a footnote. I think it might be worth spelling out the technical definition of "heritable" in this case. As far as I understand it, it indicates the result of a measurement within or between groups, without the suggestion of a causal mechanism, genetic or otherwise. Mathsci (talk) 13:52, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Wapondaponda: are you satisfied with the compromise Mathsci and Occam worked out, or do you still have qualms about it? And Occam: please tread a little more gently. when you say "nobody other than you [Wapondaponda] had a problem..." that means that you were aware that Wapondaponda did have a problem, and you should have taken care to address that before charging ahead. ok? --Ludwigs2 15:30, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

“And Occam: please tread a little more gently. when you say "nobody other than you [Wapondaponda] had a problem..." that means that you were aware that Wapondaponda did have a problem, and you should have taken care to address that before charging ahead. ok?”

When we were discussing this originally, we tried to do that as much as it would’ve been possible to. This was the discussion during which Muntuwandi made his own version of the article outline which didn’t use a data-centric structure, and the only suggestions he was willing to offer about Varoon Arya’s outline were that he disapproved of the basic tenets of its structure. After this discussion had gone on for around three weeks, you eventually just made a decision that we should go ahead with VA’s version of the outline (although with a few concessions to Muntuwandi), because nobody else had much of a problem with VA’s outline, and Muntuwandi didn’t seem willing to compromise about this. When I mentioned “what we resolved in our discussion about this”, your decision about that is part of what I’m referring to.

Muntuwandi actually hasn’t said specifically that he has a problem with this section; the reason I’m assuming he does is just because our decision to include it was part of our decision to use a data-centric approach, and Muntuwandi made it clear that has a problem with this approach in general. Are you thinking that I should I have made an additional effort to convince him to be satisfied with the data-centric approach before adding this section? When you gave up on trying to find a compromise with him about this, and decided we should start just start editing the article based on what the rest of us had agreed on, I assumed that meant the rest of us shouldn’t keep trying to discuss this with him either. --Captain Occam (talk) 15:55, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

As previously mentioned, I have also posted some suggestions and these suggestions overlap with what Captain Occam has proposed. One thing I have appreciated about David Kane's version is that it is fairly easy to read. While the current section is accurate, I think it is long and more complicated than it needs to be. There is a specific policy at Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable which I believe we should follow. The heritability arguments can get pretty convoluted. I suggest we avoid these complicated arguments. I have seen discussions with jargon such as "X-factors" and heritablity "h2". According to WP:Article size, some readers start to tire when article is longer than 6000 - 10000 words. Consequently, we need not include every single detail in the article, only the most important points. In short I support continuing with DK's format of a few short but clear paragraphs in each section.

Specifically for the section in question, the three most important points might be

• How heritable is intelligence
• Is the heritability of intelligence the same in all populations
• Does the heritability of intelligence have anything to do with differences in the average IQ scores of groups.

One issue regarding consensus, we can assume that wikipedia editors operate on a 24 hour cycle, that is editors can make at least one edit a day. Therefore, unless a significant number of editors have agreed to something, I think it is a good idea to give every proposal at least 24 hours so that editors can have a chance to weigh in. Currently, there are at least ten threads with proposals for the article, and I think we would need some time to digest these proposals. Maybe the mediator or any volunteer can come up with a way to prioritize these proposals and document when a consensus has been achieved. But at present there is a risk that editing the RI article could degenerate into a free-for-all. Wapondaponda (talk) 16:47, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

@ Occam and Wapondaponda: My own preferred approach is to have editors check in with each other. For instance, in the case here best practice would have been something in this vein: Occam, who believed he was making a more-or-less consensus edit but thought that Wapondaponda might have an issue with it, should have gone ahead and made the edit (as he did), but left a note in W's talk saying that he's made the edit and asking W to review it. further, at the first sign of trouble on the page, Occam should have taken it back here or to talk to discuss the matter. Half of the problem with this article is reactivity - people assuming they are in the right (often with good reason), but reacting to opposition hastily. If any of you suspect you might run into opposition on an edit, check in with the person you think will oppose. if any of you experience opposition (as in reverts), step back and check in with the editor who did oppose. This won't resolve the dispute, obviously, but it will demonstrate good faith, and move the discussion out of article-space edit summaries, where it has some reasonable chance of being resolved.

I like Wapondaponda's suggestion. let's just take as a given that any edit (to the article, or proposals in talk or mediation) is tentative for a 24 hour period after it's made. The longer it goes beyond 24 hours, the more confident we can be that it has consensus. and again, even if it's past the 24 hour mark and we move to edit into the draft, stop and think if there is reason to believe that there might still be opposition, and leave talk page notes asking for clarification so that no one feels like they are left out of the loop. Should I add that 24 hour thing to the agreements at the top of the page? --Ludwigs2 18:48, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

The 24 hour idea sounds OK to me. I generally don’t operate on a 24-hour schedule, but I suspect that even when I’m offline for more than 24 hours at a time, if an edit is contentious another user is likely to raise in issue with it, and it’ll still be under discussion by the time I get a chance to look at it. You should be aware that even if this rule had been in place before now, though, I don’t think this would have caused me to do anything differently with my most recent edits, since the “Within-group and between-group heritability” material was something that we’d already discussed for a while last month, and mostly reached consensus about it.

There’s another problem I had when I was making these edits, which I think has been the most consistent problem I’ve had when trying to edit this article. I was thinking of bringing it up with you on your userpage, but now that you’re providing advice about how to handle this situation, I guess I’ll mention it here. What often happens, and happened in this case, is that when I make an edit or edits I post something on the talk page (or in this case, mediation page) explaining why I think the change is necessary, and requesting that if other users disagree with me about it, they should explain there why they disagree so we can discuss it. And then when other users revert my edits, they ignore my requests to discuss this with them. In Muntuwandi’s case didn’t actually ignore my request, but he only tried to justify the revert on procedural grounds, and when I asked him if he could explain what specific problems he had with the content I’d added, he didn’t respond. In Mathsci’s case, he reverted my edit without any explanation other than his edit summary, and didn’t respond to my efforts to discuss this on the mediation page until I reverted his edit and said in my own edit summary that he needed to discuss this with me if he was going to continue reverting.

Relatively speaking, this example was a pretty mild one. Some of the other times this has happened, I’ve contacted the users who were reverting me on their userpages, and posted links there to the discussion on the talk page where I was trying to discuss my edits. When they’ve removed my comment from their talk page without responding to the thread where I was trying to discuss my edits, I’ve assumed they must not have any objection to it and reinstated it. But when I have, they’ve just reverted me again, still without any discussion. So I’m left with a choice: I can either submit to other users’ desire to revert my edits without any discussion whatsoever, or I can keep reinstating my edit in hope that someone will respond to my request on the talk page that they explain what problem they have with it. The second one usually results in my being reported for edit warring, still without any discussion about the edit itself. You’ve probably noticed that I’ve been suspended for edit warring over this article a few times, and it’s almost always been for this reason.

If you want I can mention which users have given me the most trouble in this respect, but my point in my mentioning this isn’t to complain about other users’ conduct; what I’m looking for here is advice. Even after this has happened to me several times, I still don’t know how to handle it. I know edit warring shouldn’t be a solution, but neither should allowing my efforts to discuss my edits be ignored by people who want to reject them without any discussion, despite my efforts to discuss my edits with them. In the future, what should I do when this happens? --Captain Occam (talk) 19:40, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

If you want to have a detailed conversation on this, let's use my talk page (part of the problem here is a deep flaw in wikipedia's editing policy that will eventually need to be resolved at a much higher level than this). other than that, I'm going to steal some excellent advice that slrubenstein gave to someone else, because it's a good balance between getting your edits addressed and maintaining a decent civil, calm atmosphere. his words:

WP:BRD is indeed very important here. If someone reverts you, my advice is this: start a section on the talk page of the article in question. Summarize your edit, and why you believe you are not violating NPOV, V, or NOR. Ask anyone if they believe you are violating any of these core content policies, and if so, how. Tell people you will welcome suggestions about how to phrase your edit and here to put it (i.e. improve the style). Wait a day or two, but at least 36 hours, and then if no one has any objections, make your edit again. If someone has objections, respond to them - seriously, and collegially. This is all part of collaborative editing which is wht Wikipedia is all about. But once you have responded to all objections by improving your proposed edit, edit the article again. My point: once reverted, take it to the talk page of the article and discuss it in a constructive and cooperative way, welcoming suggested improvements. Once discussion is over, then make your edit again. (originally from slrubenstein)

There's no hurry on wikipedia, and doing things slowly and methodically has a lot of advantages. I'll add that if it goes through a week or so of this (where you are reverted every day or two without discussion (in talk) by the other party), then you will have good cause to bring it up as page ownership and edit warring and get an administrator involved. That's what admins are for, after all. Or you can start an RfC if you think it's better. In any case, being a saint yourself will make it much more obvious when someone else is being a sinner. --Ludwigs2 20:15, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. I don’t think it’s necessary to discuss this any more at the moment, since I’m fairly confident that as long as you’re acting as the mediator here, you’ll be able to prevent this problem from getting too severe. I’m a little more concerned about it happening again after the mediation process is finished, but hopefully by that point I’ll be satisfied enough with the article that I won’t feel like it needs any major editing anymore. (Race-related articles are the only articles here where I’ve had this problem.) --Captain Occam (talk) 14:46, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Appendix B by Richard Nisbett

I have made available a pdf file of Appendix B of "Intelligence and how to get it" by Richard Nisbett here. As discussed right at the beginning of mediation, it might be a good idea for someone to write a summary of the nine points that Nisbett makes in arguing "The case for a purely environmental basis for black/white differences in IQ" (the title of the appendix). Preferably someone who supports the herditarian point of view. Mathsci (talk) 14:15, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I submit Nisbett is not an expert on the topic in that he hasn't contributed any peer-reviewed science to the area (as far as I know). I think the only reason his book is being featured prominently here is because it is recent. I remember reading a recent review of his book (I think it was in Intelligence). I will try to dig it up and link to it. My point is we shouldn't over-weight his book here as I don't think he is mainstream in this specific are Bpesta22 (talk) 14:30, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

He is a distinguished academic. Far more than Richard Lynn, in his minor British university. [redacted]Or, for that matter, you, part of the untenured faculty of Cleveland State University. Why do you think your point of view carries any weight? Mathsci (talk) 20:52, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

hiding off-topic discussion
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
MathSci, is that an appropriate tone for an experienced editor to take toward a new contributor at Wikipedia? In any event, thanks for the pdf. Good stuff! Whoever ends up doing the next rewrite ought to use this as a key resource in the Environmental interpretations section. David.Kane (talk) 21:05, 5 April 2010 (UTC) I have no idea why Bpesta22 thinks he can dismiss a senior academic on wikipedia in this way. We'll just have to wait for some kind of explanation. Mathsci (talk) 21:28, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I have redacted the personal comment that Mathsci made, and hidden the off-topic conversation. mediation rules are that we do not comment on other editors. thanks. --Ludwigs2 21:39, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Nibett is a prestigious social scientist. He received his PhD. from Columbia University, one of the top psychology programs in the orld. And he is co-director of the Culture and Cognition program at the University of Michigan, also one of the top programs in the rowld. he has published important work on intelligence with major presses. I think his psychology credentials are better than anyone working here, and at least as good s Jensen's. We should treat him as a significant view. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:41, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Nisbett's got a great vita and is surely a big name-- in his field. His field is not this. Here's a review of his book by someone in field (published in Intelligence).

A Must Read — Perhaps with Maalox Review of: Richard Nisbett (2009) : Intelligence and How to Get it. New York, Norton, ISBN 976-0-393-06505-3

There are good and bad things about the book, but the review shows that clearly this is not Nisbett's field (the review takes place as an insider critiquing the outsider's comments).

Doesn't mean he's wrong. My point is a book should be secondary to data.

I also think its recency will make it be over-weighted here. I guess I am fine with the Wiki article featuring it, but I don't think it is mainstream...jmo.

Bpesta22 (talk) 01:20, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

eta To be clear, I don't think Nisbett is junk science or shouldn't be mentioned at all. I just don't think his book merits substantial coverage here. I believe Rushton has a long reply to problems in the book (I will link to it soon). Obviously, Rushton seeks to defend his position, but in my read, it appears that Nisbett's views are not mainstream (assuming that means held by scientists in the field). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bpesta22 (talk • contribs) 01:25, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Here's Rushton's rebuttal. All editors should read it, even if they totally disagree with it. I think the review has value because it shows the intricacies of the issues surrounding the science in the area, and it does nicely summarize evidence for and against the genetic position (even if readers conclude the evidence is weak).

http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/2010%20Review%20of%20Nisbett.pdf

Bpesta22 (talk) 01:30, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Please explain why you think Nisbett's book fails WP:V and WP:RS. You may have your individual point of view, but believe it or not that is completely irrelevant for editing wikipedia. Please also stop using this page as a WP:FORUM. And yes a book is secondary to data. But alas on wikipedia, we use secondary sources, not primary sources. Surely you were aware of that? Whatever people have written here, articles are not data-driven on wikipedia - they must rely on secondary sources when they exist. As a related point, Richard Lynn's books are cited in the article even though his methodology has been severely criticized by senior academics like Nicholas Mackintosh. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 01:57, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I'd say it fails because it seems to be (not convinced yet) a work of advocacy and not science per the reasons mentioned in Rushton's review (it's a long review, summarized well though in the discussion section). I don't think it's as bad as Gould, but I don't think it should be given as much weight as say the APA article. Perhaps it's a minor issue, as I am not against mentioning it here, even though I don't personally believe it's much of a contribution to the literature. I also think time will show it to have little impact on the field (obviously, jmo).

I've just seen a history of white knights from other areas attempting to save the poor idiots who actually do the research here. While it's entirely possible a white knight could expose the ignorance of a whole field, I haven't seen any in this field so far. 184.59.172.151 (talk) 02:25, 6 April 2010 (UTC) Comment presumably by Bpesta22. Please log in when contributing here. Mathsci (talk) 07:05, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

One specific example and I won't comment any more unless someone asks questions. The appendix you linked to by Nisbett has a section on RT differences by race. My one contribution to this literature is exactly that. While my tasks did not measure and separate movement from decision time, I very nicely replicated the RT and inspection time difference across race. I also found variability differences across race. These differences completely mediated race differences on the Wonderlic.

I can't imagine this clear a replication coming from an area so muddled (as Nisbett implies in his review of this...).

Nisbett mentions only the lowest possible value (r = .20) in the literature. He either is unaware that aggregating measures produces larger rt-iq correlations (thus making him not an expert) or chooses not to report them (thus making him an advocate). My aggregate measure correlated .42 with IQ, fwiw.

Bpesta22 (talk) 02:48, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

But again, Bpesta22, nobody is in the slightest bit interested in what you might have written a paper on or your personal opinions. This is not about WP:TRUTH, i.e. whether what is in sources is true or not, just WP:V and WP:RS. [redacted]Until you get that straight, you should probably not be editing wikipedia or discussing content here. Lynn's selective use of data and statistical methodology have also been criticized in book reviews; his findings have been used by Jensen and Rushton. However it is absolutely unpermissible for wikipedians to make inferences from this about the work of Jensen and Rushton, since that would be termed WP:OR. Your comments above are also WP:OR; if you have been making similar comments previously here, the mediator or other editors should have already pointed that out to you. (One related final remark on Jensen, Rushton and Lynn: these psychologists are supported by the Pioneer Fund, funds outside academia and linked to organizations like American Renaissance.) Mathsci (talk) 06:50, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

off-topic material hidden, per mediation rules
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
BTW since you have revealed who you are in real life and you seem to be an advocate for the work of Jensen and Rushton (you have met both and have spoken at one of Rushton's conferences), you might have a conflict of interest when contributing here. As I've mentioned before, this can lead to problems. Pcarbonn (talk · contribs) and JedRothwell (talk · contribs) were advocates in the cold fusion article, another topic propelled by researchers on the fringes of their academic discipline. Mathsci (talk) 08:08, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Dr. Pesta, thanks for your views. As an expert in the field, your opinion that Nisbett is not as reliable a source as Rushton and Jensen is appreciated and important. mikemikev (talk) 09:14, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Mikmikev, you are misrepresenting core wikipedia policies - that is disruptive. As editors of wikipedia, we are not here to discuss whether Nisbett is more reliable than Jensen or Rushton, whatever that means. We would have to rely on articles or book reviews, the usual wikipedia method with secondary sources. Please stop using this mediation talk page as a WP:FORUM and WP:SOAPBOX. The academic credentials of Richard Nisbett are iny case not in doubt, as Slrubenstein has pointed out. Mathsci (talk) 09:37, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

There are various paths by which a scholar can be credentialed, and various mechanisms through which his research is vetted. [redacted]Bryan Pesta teaches in a Management Department; Nesbitt heads a prestigious institute for cognitive psychoilogy. I fail to see how intelligence doesn't fall under the purvue of cognitive psychology. Rushton (and apparently many of his confederates) seem to like dismissing scholarly views they do not like as "advocacy." This is disingenuous because this is not what "advocacy" means. Nesbitt is not asvocating for specific social policies, he is arguing that the some scientific research is flawed. That is argument - agree or disagree with it - not advocacy. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:09, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I have refactored several comments above. Comments on Brian Pesta's credentials and position are hereby strictly off-limits, per mediation rules. Mathsci, slrubenstien - if you cannot find some more convincing statement about Nisbett's importance in academia than comparing him to a wikipedia editor, then I would suggest the Nisbett is a very, very unimportant source, and if you make that argument one more time I will ask that any reference to Nisbett be removed from the article simply on the grounds that he is comparable to a wikipedia editor. Focus on content; not on editors. --Ludwigs2 15:16, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Ludwigs2, I take objection to your comments. What do you mean, "if you cannot find some more convincing statement about Nisbett's importance in academia than comparing him to a wikipedia editor?" My "convincing statement" is that he was trained at one of the world's leading psychology departments, is aprofessor in one of the world's leading psychology departments, and heads an important institute on cognitin. I respectfully disagree with B. Pesta that Nisbett is not an important, relevant, researcher - this may be a semantics matter, as to what we mean by "the field." I have stated consistently during this mediation that different academic fields are concerned with the relationship between race and intelligence. Rushton is considered a virtual fraud in some fields that are very much concerned with research on race and intelligence - but he is considered notable in another field. Fine, okay, so we cite Rushton's work. But Nisbett is highly regarded by cognitive psychologists and psychologists more generally who are just as concerned with research on human intelligence. Ludwigs2, this is very serious for me. If you reject this reasoning I withdraw from the mediation and will edit the article as an independent editor. If you have this much contempt for a scholar who wrote a book in intelligence, and do not take seriously the credentials of a scholar with a Columbia PhD who heads an institute at U. of Michigan, who has published a book on intelligence, on the grounds that Rushton did not like his book (but I note considered it important enough to read it carefully and write a detailed review of it - in science, this is usually a sign of relevance. I am sure Nisbet views Rushton as an "outsider.") then you are making a farce of this process.

I was not the first person here to make Bryan Pesta's credentials and position an issue; I think TechnoFaye may have, or someone else, when he was invited to comment as an expert. You did not object to introducing his credentials then; why do you now? Bryan Pesta's argument is that Nisbett is not an expert in "this field." My point was only that Nisbett's field is as relevant to the topic as Bryan Pesta's field, an entirely fair point to make when we (including I) have agreed to use published work by Dr. Pesta, and when some editors present Dr. Pesta as an expert on the topic. Either Pesta's credentials and position are relevant or not. But be consistent: if they are not relevant, factor out any reference to his expertise. If they are not relevant, then we are on shaky grounds citing him. And before you delete what I wrote I remind you one final time my point now is not as it never has been to deprecate Dr. pesta. My point is that we should not hold an esteemed cognitive psychologist to some higher standard, or rewrite the groundrules about what credentials a scholar must have for them to be cited in the article, or given prominence. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:45, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

What I mean is simply this (no more and no less than this): Comment on the content, not on the editor. Nisbett is an academic being used as a source. if you want to argue that he's a good source, you may find other sources in the literature that show he is a good source. Bryan Pesta is an academic functioning as an editor. You and Bpesta and Mathsci are all required to substantiate your claims using independent sources. If Bpesta had said something like "I wrote a journal article in which I claim that...", then you would have been entitled to say something like "Your journal article is not a reliable source because...". However, Bpesta has made no such statement, and has not offered his own work as a source for the article (that I am aware of) in any meaningful way. Therefore his credentials are not a subject for discussion. Unless, that is, you want to open things up so that the other editors here can start investigating you and Mathsci on your academic credentials (Mathsci is a professional mathematician, I don't know what degrees you hold - are they pertinent to an article on race and intelligence?). I doubt that's what you have in mind.

Comment on the content, not on the editor. If Bpesta is unable to substantiate his claims using independent sources or proper reasoning, then you can feel free to dismiss his opinion, and that same rule applies to you and Mathsci. Either way (third time's the charm), comment on the content, not on the editor. ok? --Ludwigs2 17:53, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

To start with, we should consider whether Nisbett passes the WP:PROF test, which I believe he does. Nisbett's publications are definitely eligible for inclusion, and where possible, I would support using them. The only issue is how much weight would we give to Nisbett's publications. Wapondaponda (talk) 18:15, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Richard Nisbett is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has won multiple awards. He is co-director of a group at one of the top universities in the US. There is no need for this kind of discussion. Mathsci (talk) 19:00, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Just to refocus, I don't think anyone is claiming that Nesbitt isn't a prominent and well-regarded academic. Bpesta's concerns were over the extent to which Nesbitt's book should be included in this article, given that it isn't precisely his field, and given the rebuttal offered by Rushton in the link Bryan offered above. that is a question of balancing sources, and I think we should focus on that, rather than getting caught up in other arguments. --Ludwigs2 20:23, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

"given that it isn't precisely his field" - you mean, given that BPesta does not believe it is his field. Nesbitt believes it is his field. Does the mediator really need to take a position here? If so I'd love to know on what evidence. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:28, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

The subject clearly falls within the expertise of Richard Nesbitt, a world expert. Ludwigs2 seems to be WP:TROLLing here. I have no idea why. Mathsci (talk) 01:18, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

@Ludwig, I'm not sure what you mean by precisely his field. I think it's been demonstrated above that the general concerns about Nesbitt are no more serious than some of the other featured researchers. A.Prock (talk) 21:31, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I am simply reiterating what Bpesta said above, for clarification, with no attempt to judge the claim on its merits. If you disagree with what Bpesta said (as it seems you do) then the correct approach is to discuss why Nesbitt's qualifications make him a reliable source. I simply want the discussion to refocus back on the question of concern. Thanks. --Ludwigs2 16:44, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

As I mentioned, Nesbitt's qualifications are covered suficiently above. Please review. A.Prock (talk) 18:36, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Quick note

I am not offended by questions about my credentials. I am aware of how my vita compares with other researchers.

I do think discussion here is relatively civil and productive (I've seen lots worse). I do really like the new intro, and think it's good to go. So, I think progress is being made here.

For Nisbett, I guess it's up to you all to decide. I mentioned my article only because I was asked for specifics on problems I had with his book. My point was not to prop up my work but to show that Nisbett's discussion on this specific issue is misleading at best and flat out wrong at worst. Were that section sent to experts for peer-review, it would not pass (as written). That was my point.

Also, the Pioneer Fund has detailed info about charges of racism against it. My suggestion is if the editors want to make the claim that it's a hate group, they should at least link to the fund's rebuttal section (btw, Rushton is now the director of it).

Bpesta22 (talk) 15:42, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I don’t think criticism of the Pioneer Fund belongs in the article, except perhaps as a brief mention. For us to bring up any criticism of the Pioneer Fun that doesn’t discuss specific research covered by the article would be WP:SYNTH. It isn’t synth to discuss criticism of specific research based on its source of funding, but as far as I know the latter type of criticisms are almost exclusively from journalists, and have not appeared in any of the academic literature where the scientific controversy about this topic is discussed. If I’m correct that this is the case, giving any substantial amount of space to these criticisms would have the same problem as giving substantial space to Gould’s criticisms in The Mismeasure of Man—our goal is to accurately represent the state of scientific research about this topic, which means limiting ourselves to sources that have some amount of expertise in this area. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:16, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I appreciate Bryan's note. It seems like peoploe misunderstood mine. Suffice to say, I have never objected to our using work published by Dr. Pesta, which I think communicates what I think of his credentials.

Concerning the Pioneer Fund, Captain Occam's SYNTH concerns are reasonable. We should introduce the Pioneer Fund into the article only if a reliable source has drawn a connection between the Fund and the specifics of Rushton et. al.'s research. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:27, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

There a plenty of secondary sources. For example "The science of human diversity: a history of the Pioneer Fund", by Richard Lynn. An actual real life incident at the University of Delaware involving the funding of Linda Gottfredson by the Pioneer Fund is described in detail in "Academic freedom in the wired world" by Robert M. O'Neil, which can be read here.[1] There is also "The funding of scientific racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund" by William H. Tucker published by the University of Illinois Press which specifically mentions $5 million set aside for race and intelligence. Here is another reference by Tucker [2] from "The Science and Politics of Racial Research" (same publisher) in which he describes how Jensen set up the Institute for the Study of Educational Differences as a non-profit organisation with Jensen as president and his wife as vice president as "a conduit for channeling money from the Pioneer Funds to Jensen". This is a sample of well documented information in secondary sources about the connection between the Pioneer Fund and hereditarian research in race and intelligence. Rushton, president of the Pioneer Fund, has himself has written an article on the fund, attacking its detractors.[3] There's a quite interesting response from Tucker here [4] Mathsci (talk) 07:14, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I think the Nisbett thing is a minor issue now. I am fine including him, but he is no white knight as I described above and I do see flaws with his contribution to the area. But, presenting him to balance the issues is fine (I do think he carries no more or less weight in this specific field than rushton or jensen). I do think his section on RT would not pass peer review in the field, as written. Mentioning his ideas and Rushton's rebuttal would be perfectly reasonable.

Bpesta22 (talk) 20:37, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I think this is a very fair position. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:30, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Another Major Editing Round?

At Ludwig's suggestion, I am posting this plan here for comment. Aprock, Occam, Faye and several other editors made extensive comments on our current draft. All good stuff! I think that we (?) promised them that those comments, at least the non-controversial ones, would be incorporated. Alas, no one has done so. Anyone else want to volunteer? If not, I will do so. (I think that a large number of changes are best done by a single person, acting with the forbearance of all active editors on the page.) If you object, please say so. My plan is to, like last time, make a whole bunch of edits in just a 24-hour period. My only request is that people not edit war with me while I am doing so. Give me a chance to make all the changes that I need to. Then, if you object, feel free to revert to what we have today (or to change whatever specific aspects you disagree with). Unless someone objects (or someone else volunteers), I plan to do this tomorrow. I realize that no large set of edits can make everyone equally happy, but I do think that, taken as a whole, my changes will (like last time) lead to an article that all can agree is better than what we have now. Comments? David.Kane (talk) 20:38, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I am certainly in favor of the write, review, revisit process. It keeps things out of the edit warring realm, allows people to voice their concerns and have them incorporated. I think David.Kane would do well at revisiting the article, but I would certainly support other editors if they are interested in such an undertaking. Unfortunately, because the article is in mainspace, it's more of a moving target than it might be. A.Prock (talk) 21:38, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I know it puts a burden on David Kane but I appreciate his work and everyone seems pleased by it and I for one would be vey grateful if he would agree to do another round of revising, based on the discussions we have had since his major rewrite. Asking for 24 hours is more than reasonable, and he would be right to put up the template again informing others that an overhaul is in progress. David, ae you and admin? If so perhaps we can also protect the page while David is doing the rewrite.

I thought David's memo, on the R&I talk page, after his rewrite, summarizing what he did and his own sense of gaps, and inviting others to be bold, was very positive and helpful and I ouldn't edit the article again until he has put up that memo and removed the template. Slrubenstein | Talk 01:25, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

There are many proposals, I would just like to find out beforehand what sections are to be added or edited. Wapondaponda (talk) 05:01, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't think there are currently any sections slated to be added. The only pending section is the Significance .l. section which seems to be forgotten for the time being. A.Prock (talk) 08:25, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

MathSci has just produced sources for relevant material on the Pioneer Fund. I do not know where this would fit in the article, but I believe it belongs. Pehaps you guys have constructive ideas? Slrubenstein | Talk 10:51, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I've actually put what I hope is a very neutral and anodyne statement about the Pioneer Fund in the history section of the article where it seems to belong. I don't believe it's necessary go into any further detail about its previous projects, its support for various politically aligned organizations or those who have been and are involved in running it. That is mentioned in the two references I selected (by Tucker and Lynn) as well as the wikipedia article. Any extra information on this fund would risk being inflammatory and spark endless arguments, as far I can see (e.g. the initial documented aims of the founder to repatriate 4 million African Americans to Liberia). Readers can find that kind of thing out for themselves if they are so minded. Mathsci (talk) 11:18, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

This article by the way is about the debate on the connection between race and intelligence. William Shockley played a large role in that debate (helped by the Pioneer Fund), as can be read in many sources eg "Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age" by Joel N. Shurkin as well as some of the others I've mentioned. Probably he should appear in the history section. Mathsci (talk) 11:45, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Wapondaponda: My main plan: 1) Incorporate all the non-controversial comments made by Aprock, Occam, Faye, Mathsci and others about the initial draft. 2) Do more tightening, better sourcing, better writing, more conciseness and so on. The same sort of changes that I made last time around, just done better. 3) Incorporating more general advice. MathSci has, for example, made some interesting comments (which I am still working to understand) about the importance of secondary sources like Makintosh and Nisbett. I plan on following that advice. Slrubenstein has provided thoughts on how to frame an article like this so that, in the future, editors find it easy to work with. I will try to do that. 4) I will not add Significance section, but I will try to rationalize the other sections in a sensible fashion. 5) I hope that my fixes to the interpretation section will assuage the concerns of the proponents of a Significance section. How does all that sound? David.Kane (talk) 13:35, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

This plan sounds good to me. There are also a couple suggestions that have been made about this article beyond what you’ve mentioned here, which also might be worth following:

1: The proposed addition to the draft about brain size. Although there’s some disagreement about whether we ought to include references from the 1930s or earlier, I think everyone is agreed that this line of data ought to at least be mentioned. I think Mikemikev is intending to add it if you don’t, but it might help avoid conflict if you add it yourself along with the rest of your revisions.

2: Sociobiology Study Group and Science for the People. Varoon Arya has suggested that if we’re going to discuss the Pioneer Fund, we ought to also cover these groups that have supported the 100%-environmental position. I agree with him that this makes a lot of sense, and nobody appears to disagree with his proposal about this, either.

Do you approve of these two suggestions? --Captain Occam (talk) 14:34, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

1) Yes. 2) Not sure. I certainly want to treat any sourcing discussions in a fair and balanced fashion. David.Kane (talk) 15:35, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Is there any indication that racial variation of brain size correlates in any significant way with intelligence? A.Prock (talk) 18:29, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I think this is a point that Rushton & Jensen discuss which was later taken up by Nisbett (it's in his Appendix B and also probably elsewhere). It would come out in the wash if the sections I mention below are rewritten properly. Mathsci (talk) 18:48, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

In addition to Jensen, Rushton and Nisbett, I’m pretty sure the relationship between race, brain size and IQ is discussed by Ulric Neisser also. (He agrees that the relationship exists, but thinks that the difference in average brain size is caused only by environmental factors.) --Captain Occam (talk) 18:58, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

<-I replied to David.Kane on my talk page and will just reproduce what I wrote there.

I think there are probably three things to do:

• A rough historical account (without scientific details) of events that happened in 1970s following Jensen's 1969 paper in the history section, mentioning names. I mentioned a ref to Varoon Arya on the nediation talk page, but there are probably many others. For this we only need the source to be written by a good neutral historian (or equivalent commentator).
• An account of the hereditarian point of view following Rushton & Jensen (placed first because it was the first to be discussed historically)
• An account of the environmental point of view, following Nesbitt and others.
• Criticisms of both points of view, including remarks from neutral book reviews and other commentaries

Mackintosh's book is extremely neutral, well-written and accessible, so might be the right place to start. The environmental point of view is also well represented in the book edited by Fish that I mentioned to Varoon Arya on the mediation talk page. I would get other people to help, because this is a lot of work. Mediation can probably stop fairly soon. If these become the three goals for the article, then developing these parts van progress more slowly according to everybody's availability as an editor. Mathsci (talk) 18:34, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

David, I'd suggest you also procure a copy of D. J. Bartholomew's Measuring Intelligence: Facts and Fallacies (Cambridge, 2004).--Aryaman (talk) 18:55, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Looks like much if it is available at Amazon David.Kane (talk) 13:25, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Sociobiology Study Group & Science for the People

Since it has been deemed necessary to cover the Pioneer Fund, I think it's more than fair to suggest a mention be made of the role of the Sociobiology Study Group and possibly also of its daughter organization, Science for the People. The Sociobiology debates of the 70's and 80's are certainly central to the whole environmental vs. hereditarian debate, particularly in relation to the issue of race and intelligence. Notable members of the Sociobiology Study Group included Dawkins, Gould and Lewontin, among others. This whole issue gets very political - not to mention slightly dangerous - very quickly, and I advise caution to any editor attempting to make critical mention of either of these organizations on Wikipedia. But the role of both has been documented in reliable sources, and at present the attention given to the Pioneer Group makes the whole history section extremely lop-sided. I'm a bit swamped with real-life work at the moment, so I won't be digging up the sources (google will provide all that is necessary), but anyone interested will find more than enough to put the history of this debate back into something resembling balance. --Aryaman (talk) 11:58, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

The events in the 1970s folowing Jensen's 1969 article are described quite well in "Measuring the mind: education and psychology in England, c. 1860-c. 1990" (C.U.P.) by Adrian Wooldridge. [5] There are probably other secondary sources. This is not quite the equivalent of the Pioneer Fund, but obviously falls within the topic of the article. The correct thing to do is to paraphrase a secondary sources or sources written by uninvolved parties.Mathsci (talk) 13:29, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out, VA. When David.Kane makes his next round of revisions to the article, I agree that he ought to cover the groups that you mentioned also. --Captain Occam (talk) 14:13, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I am not sure I see the relevance. But I admit I know nothing about these organizations. I have two questions the answers to which would speak to my doubts about relevance. First, I am very familiar with numerous critiques ot sociobiology as applied to human societies as junk science; the scientific status of sociobiology is very much debated. But does this debate extend to research specifically on race and intelligence? The work I know is critical of the whole theoretical apparatus of sociobiology. I did not know that sociobiologists had entered into any debates on race and intelligence, so I am not sure how criticisms of sociobiology relate to race and intelligence. Second, do either of these organizations provide funding for research by critics of Rushton or Lynn e.g. did they fund the research behind, say The Mismeasure of Man?

It is my understanding that the Pioneer Fund material is relevant because (1) the PF funded research on race and intelligence and (2) It is the PF's funding of such research that is being held up to scrutiny. I see these as two reasons why the PF stuff is relevant. But what is the connection between the Sociobiology Working Group and research on race and intelligence? In the past Captain Occam has been very good about alerting us to risks of violating SYNTH. We need a direct connection in order to comply with our NOR policy. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:25, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I don’t know very much about either of these organizations either. From what I’ve been able to find using Google, it seems like they’re critical of all research into genetic influence on human behavior and personality, which includes all of Arthur Jensen’s work; both his research related to race and his research about the heritability of IQ in general. In that respect, they’re fairly similar to the Pioneer Fund, which had funded research about the heritability of psychological traits both in connection and not in connection to race. I would like it if Varoon Arya could explain these organizations’ relevance in more detail, though, since he apparently knows more about them than I do. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:35, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I suggest reading Defenders of the Truth by Ullica Segerstråle (Oxford, 2000), which documents the influence members of the openly leftist Sociobiology Study Group exerted over public as well as later scholarly perception of the science behind the race and intelligence issue. Having its roots in the US anti-(Vietnam)war/anti-capitalism movement of the late 60's, the purpose of the group, to put things bluntly, was to pursue the realization of Marxist socio-political goals through publication, either in academia or in the popular press. Their program involved, among other things, associating otherwise reputable scientists with the eugenics programs of Nazi Germany, as well as in consistently referring to science which contradicted their socio-political goals as "pseudoscience" ("fringe" in Wiki-speak). They were successful in launching a (now well-documented and analysed) smear campaign against biologist E. O. Wilson for his views on the contribution of genes to various aspects of human behaviour, and have been largely successful in doing the same with Arthur Jensen and his work on general intelligence. But I foresee it would be an uphill battle getting any of this into the article. As Slrubenstein has already noted: the Sociobiology Study Group was not a "fund", and thus they are entirely irrelevant to the subject. <_< --Aryaman (talk) 18:15, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

If a reliable source has discussed the SSG influencing attitudes about the race and intelligence debate, then I think that deserves to be mentioned in the article for the same reason as the Pioneer Fund. When the Pioneer Fund is criticized in relation to race and intelligence research, the criticism seems to not be so much just of the fact that they’ve funded the research, but over the idea the idea that they’re influencing its conclusions somehow. If that justifies its inclusion, I think an organization that exists specifically to influence the attitudes of the public and of scientists about this topic would deserve to be included also, and that including it would be appropriate in the interest of balance. SLR, what do you think? --Captain Occam (talk) 18:36, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I really just still think what I originally wrote. I could see two grounds for making this information relevant, plus of course a reliable verifiable source directly making the links so as not to violate SYNTH. So far I haven't seen any evidence of that. I do not see how opposing racism is a left versus right thing, certainly in the US there are enough Jewish and Black and Hispanic and native American Republicans to show that the right is as opposed to racism as the left. Moreover, I do not see how good science is a left versus right thing. Marx's social and political goals were a classless society achieved through a violent revolution led by the working class. It is hard for me to imagine how a couple of Harvard biology professors, who I assume lived pretty comfortable lives, were doing much to organize an armed revolution in America, but if that is what someone believes, hey it is a free country. It still has nothing to do with their research. I do not believe that MathSci (or I, or anyone else here) has made any claims at all about where Lynn or Rushton stand on the question of the virtues of a classless society, or their support for armed insurrection. I just do not see how it is relevant. I don't see how it is relevant to the critiques of the Pioneer Fund either. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:28, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

My take on two recent issues:

1. The brain size IQ link is interesting, but I don't think it needs a whole long section. It's clear now that brain size correlates weakly but significantly with IQ (cite McDaniel). This is a race blind meta-analysis, so it's strong evidence. Less well known is whether races differ in average brain size and whether those differences co vary with iq.

In other words, it's one thing to say that blacks average smaller brains than whites, but the distributions would surely overlap. The better study is one showing that the race difference in brain size maps directly on to individual (and group) scores on IQ tests. As far as I know, that study's not been done. It's sorta like the problem with environmental explanations-- until one shows that when controlling for individual brain size, the gap between blacks and whites goes away, this is only very indirect evidence of something important (in my view).

2. The PF is indeed controversial. I applied for a grant from them about 2 years ago (not funded). I was very careful to research and read about it first, because I heard the usual rumors about it being a hate group. In my opinion, it's not (I was satisfied with the explanation they gave about their controversies on their web site). Even if it were, though, the bottom line is the data and the research methodology used to produce the data. Unless there's a big conspiracy going on here (implicating the PF, people who got money from it, all peer reviewers and editors of various journals-- including APA journals) I don't see how mentioning the PF is relevant to this article. One needs more, I think-- direct evidence that its influence has biased the data. I don't think anyone's got that evidence. The PF is interesting enough to have its own wiki article, and just linking to it would be enough coverage (plus a sentence or two on it's role in funding research here).

Bpesta22 (talk) 00:26, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

“The better study is one showing that the race difference in brain size maps directly on to individual (and group) scores on IQ tests. As far as I know, that study's not been done.”

I’m pretty sure it has, actually. I’m aware of two papers from Arthur Jensen which discuss this; this one published in Intelligence and this one published in Personality and Individual Differences. One of the more interesting results from these studies is that when blacks and whites are matched for IQ, the difference in average brain size disappears, which is what one would expect if the brain size difference were one of the factors contributing to the IQ difference. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:59, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Ack; nice call. I was not familiar with these. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bpesta22 (talk • contribs) 01:02, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Once again, Bpesta22, please remember that wikipedia is not a WP:FORUM. Could you please stop giving personal anecdotes as you just did about the Pioneer Fund? It only serves to give more details about a possible WP:COI. Here for example is a WP:RS which discusses the history of the Pioneer Fund (it has already been mentioned by me). It makes it clear that the president J. Philippe Rushton, at least when it comes to the history of the fund, has misrepresented documented facts in a published paper.

• Tucker, William H. (2002), "A Closer Look at the Pioneer Fund: Response to Rushton", Alb. L. Rev., 66: 1145

Various scientists have accused Rushton of doing that elsewhere. The chapter devoted to analysing Rushton's use of evolution/biology in the book edited by Fish cited above makes similar criticisms. Mathsci (talk) 05:30, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I appreciate Bryan's views, but MathSci is right - no editor's views trump policy. NPOV demands that we include all significant views from verifiable sources. These are the two criteria for inclusion. Now, I personally do not agree with Bryan that one must demonstrate a conspiracy or show direct evidence that they biased the interpretation of data. Aside from the fact that if I did this I would be violating NOR, I would not expect this of any studies of the Pioneer Fund. After all, social scientists do not think in terms of conspiracy theories. As an example of how social scientists work, let's look at our own article on race and intelligence. When Rushton suggests that 50% more or less of the variation in IQ scores is caused by environmental factos, he is not suggesting a conspiracy theory. Also, all the studies that have been cited so far use statistics, either regression or factor analysis I think (we need that primer!) - the studies on childrearing are not actually looking at specific families and how specific observable patterns of childrearing affect individual children; instead, they aggregate test score data from different kinds of families and analyze it. My point is that social scientists usually do not even try to describe direct evidence of influence. So why should we expect that from these studies of the PF? But the bottom line is our NPOV policy. If there is a notable work out there, published in a verifiable venue, then all that matters is its analysis. If there is another published work in a verifiable venue questioning its methods or analysis, well, we include that view too. Wikipedia is about presenting multiple views. Our own opinions are simply not relevant. Slrubenstein | Talk 08:54, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Your call on how much you want to feature the PF but money alone won't get stuff past peer review. It it's biased, it shouldn't survive peer-review. If it does, then the journal it appears in will quickly lose its reputation. If that doesn't happen, then for a topic this controversial, other scientists will trash it with data published in other premier journals. None of this has happened. Rushton, Jensen, Lynn get lots of stuff published. Intelligence has an impact factor above 3 (could be in part due to publishing controversial stuff). Their work is generally not contradicted by quality articles in other premier journals (witness the APA task force report). What is it then about the PF that's useful for this debate?

Also, look at Rushton's vita. He publishes in many APA journals. These journals simply do not publish crap (not saying that an article is "true" if published there, but it does mean the article passed rigorous peer review). For example, the R&J "30 years.." paper is published in an APA journal. Also, all these papers seem to be highly cited (though it could be controversy versus impact).

Bpesta22 (talk) 14:03, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I think there are two issues here. One is proportion. What proportion of the article should be given to studies of the Pioneer Fund? I think this depends on the contents - the contents of the literature MathSci has brought to our attention, and what contents that would translate into in our encyclopedia article. If it directly relates to research on race and intelligence, we should have a little more content. if it is indirectly related to race and intelligence research, we should have much less. The only thing to do is for someone to craft a draft paragraph - then if it is not clear we can ask questions that might lead to augmenting the paragraph. Or if there are questions about its relevance, we can try to whittle it down to something that is more concise. The second issue is the validity of its claims. BPesta seems to be challenging its validity. But BPesta's points are all empirical. In some cases, BPeste provides the empirical evidence to support his claims (e.g. the fact that the 30 years article is published in the APA journal). Presumably the articles MathSci has recommended make empirical claims and provide evidence too. I would agree that any summary of those articles that goes into our article should highlight the empirical claims and summarize the empirical evidence provided (and I would give much less weight to any speculation). Aren't these the same standards we would apply to any other article here? As for BPesta's specific claims, well, we all know the rules: as editors we cannot add our own views, they do not count. But if these points have been published in a reliable source, well, I certainly would not object to adding them along with the summary of the articles critiquing the role of the PF. As I explained, our NPOV policy leads us to provide multiple views. No one view is "the truth." Not in science, and not in Wikipedia. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:19, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

SLU-- that seems reasonable and fair. Those who think the PF is relevant should write the section; then we can critically evaluate it.

I am a little confused about the expertise thing. I thought I was asked to give "expert" opinion. In a legal setting, if one is vetted as a qualified expert, then opinions-- versus facts -- are allowed into evidence. I'm not saying verbatim quote my opinions in the article, but please let me know if you require I cite every claim before you all will consider it. The sections I wrote above did not include citations because that is time consuming. Were those deemed ok to add to the article, I could easily add cites.

Thanks!

Bpesta22 (talk) 15:20, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I am glad you find it reasonable. About the "expert" thing ... I am just anothe editor, you might want to check this with Ludwigs2, who is the mediator. But whoever asked you to come here as an expert (in any way that is even remotely comparable to who qualifies as an authority or expert witness in a courtroom) may have been misinformed about Wikipedia policy. All editors are equal in the sense that we play on a level playing field. It is obvious that you know a lot, from your comments. But it is the degree to which we find your comments meaningful/useful/plausible that would make you a valued editor, not your credentials or position (which is why Ludwigs2 thought it inappropriate that I brought up your position in relation to Nebitt's position. I think you understood - well, I hope you understood! - that I was comparing two published authors, and my point was that scholars can be embedded in diferent kinds of academic fields and their published work can still be relevant to the article we are working on. Ludwigs2 thought I was making some comment on you as an editor and the principle he was acting on, which is a good and important principle here, is that editors' credentials do not matter. Mikemikev (and I am just picking your name at random, honest, you can say the same about me) might be a precocious high school student. Or he might be a professor emeritus at Chicago. We do not know and he is not telling us because it does not matter. What matters is whether his comments make sense and if he is able to relate to us clear information about significant views from reliable sources. We take or leave his comments based on that criterion, or something like it, and the same applies to me and you.

Assuming that you actully are the same Bryan Pesto who has published in peer-reviewed journals (and by the way I have no reason to doubt it), I would hazzard a guess that you were brought here by another editor who believes that Wikipedia in general needs more editors like you, that in an ideal world every Wikipedia article would be edited by someone who knows how to do good research and who has actually done serious research on the topic, whether they have a degree or not (though people with degrees obviously have). If this was the motive, I'd say it is a good motive. Even if the article ends up containing views you do not think belong, I have no doubt that the article will be better because of your participation. But honestly, I can say the same about Arya, AProck, MathSci, Mikemikev, Captain Occam, and Muntuwandi - each of them at one point or another has brought to our atention useful articles or books, has made important points, or has asked important questions. Is it because they all have PhDs? Or are they skilled non-professional researchers? It really doesn't matter.

If there is any conflict between your opinion and that of any other editor, the conflict will not be based on the fact that you are an expert and I am not, it will be resolved based on our content policies. If you really know more than I do, that obiously gives you an advantage in any argument and others will recognize it. But that is not the same thing as treating you like an expert witness.

Now, Bryan Pesta's credentials DO matter when it comes to citing his published work in the article. On at least a few occasions I have referred to a point you made in one article of yours (well, of Bryan Pesta's) as something I believe should be included in the article. But - and please do not take this the wrong way - if we cite your hournal article in our encyclopedia article, it will not be because you dazzled us as an editor, it is because it is an important point made in a good article published in a reliable source.

As I said, check with Ludwigs2 if you think I am wrong. I am at least being sincere. If you want to know what policies I am basing this on, start with two of our core policies, WP:NPOV and WP:NOR. If I am right, I do hope that you do not feel like you were seriously misled. As I said, the article will be better thanks to your participation, no matter what the final outcome is. I hope you feel that, and that this makes the experience gratifying for you. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:02, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Perfectly fair, Slu, and about what I expected coming into this. I admit to being surprised at how balanced discussion was here, compared to, well, anywhere else. That is good. In fact, it seems like my contributions not really needed here but I don't mind sticking around and adding my 2 cents, whether or not my comments get incorporated into the article.

I don't expect my one article on race and IQ needs to be cited. I was a bit surprised it got accepted as (except for perhaps the mediation analysis) I wasn't sure the incremental contribution was big enough to merit publication, and my minority sample size was pretty small. That said, if this article features race differences on reaction time or inspection time, as far as I know, mine is the most current example.

Bpesta22 (talk) 18:02, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

technical matters

During this discussion B.Pesta has had cause on a couple of occasions to refer to his point about error variance, in one of his published articles he linked for us. There was one occasion where Muntuwandi pointed out problems with some research that were indicated by the sample size and numbers of standard deviations (I don't recall whether he had an independent verifiable source making this point). I realize that both of these points are pretty technical and hard to explain both clearly and concisely. However, the fact is that the vast majority of interpretations of the test scores rely on statistical manipulations where sample size, standasrd deviations, error variance, etc are important and I think the article needs to cover them, somehow. How scientists reach their conclusions is just as important as the conclusions they reach. I suggest a section addressing this head-on: a paragraph or two on why we depend on certain concepts and procedures in statistics in order to intepret the data, and what kinds of problems researchers face or what issues researchers have to be sensitive to in analyzing data e.g. different sample sizes limit the kinds of comparisons we can make between different data sets, error variance, etc. I reread David kane's first revision 9the current article) and - without meaning to fault David in ANY way - some sections on different variables or factors or interpretations are hard to follow, and the reason is that they all take for granted a very basic understanding of how statistics can and cannot be interpreted. If we had a section on this around the beginning (maybe right after the section on the IQ test results?) i think it would make it a lot easier for people to follow the rest of the article.

many of you may not agree but I would suggest that this is because many of you have a good grasp of statistics and know this stuff quite well. The good news is: this means it should be pretty easy for you to write up what i am suggesting. And yes, links to articles that go into detail would be a good way to keep such a section concise. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:52, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I certainly agree with you that the current version is not written nearly as clearly as it should be. Mea culpa! I will try to improve that in the next draft. At the same time, I will try to make it easy, as both Nesbitt and Makintosh do in the references provided by MathSci, for a reader with no statistical background to follow the discussion. Indeed, the more that I study what needs to be done, the more that I am understanding the wisdom of MathSci's advice to look at (good) secondary sources for guidance. David.Kane (talk) 16:58, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

As someone who works with parameter estimation based on samples, I can say confidently that much of the statistical data is weakly presented, and most of the conclusions drawn from them are probably not warranted statistically. Unfortunately, the raw data is rarely available so information like standard errors are usually missing.A.Prock (talk) 18:34, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Aprock, I am asking two things. First, can someone (you? B.Pesta? Muntuwandi?) write an entirely neutral explanation of the most basic principles of statistics one must understand in order to understand why as the article currently has it some interpretations have gained favor and others have been dismissed. You raise a second point, but the issue is: are there reliable sources making the point you are making now; the points Muntuwandi has made, and the point B.Pesta has made about error variance. Well, we know that Pesta has an article in a peer-reviewed journal making that point, so I think we should explain the point and cite Pesta. Can you or Muntuwandi provide sources for th points you are making? If so, can we include those points in the article, with citations? I think we really need a section explaining why certain concepts or principles of statistics are important for assessing the different interpretations of the data. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:34, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I think the most likely places to look for statistical related discussions would be in reviews of The Bell Curve which was notorious for it's misuse of statistics. Unfortunately, those reviews tend to be regarded as POV, in no small part because most people don't understand statistics well enough to digest the critique. Coming up with something that is correct and comprehensible will be tough. I'll give a whack at it some time next week. Ideally there would exist some wiki page somewhere which we could refer to, since a meaningful discussion is probably beyond the scope of R/I. A.Prock (talk) 21:13, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, I for one would be very grateful to you for doing this. Of course any criticisms of The Bell Curve in a verifiable source should be explained in the article on the book itself. Perhaps - at whatever pace you can manage - you can work up an expanded criticism of that book for the article on the book, and a compressed account of statistical issues for this article. Thanks. Slrubenstein | Talk

I'd be happy to write a few paragraphs on the stats end of it. My data are freely available to anyone who wants them. I suspect that's true of any data published in the journal. It would be an extreme red flag if any researcher refused to provide the data when asked for it. I suspect that anyone doing research on this specific topic knows damn well that they'd better keep the raw data forever...!

It's probably a good idea to have a very brief primer on correlation, regression and partial correlation (perhaps also factor analysis). Anything more, and you'd be better served linking to the wiki page that covers each type of statistic.

Bpesta22 (talk) 00:36, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

That's very kind of you Bryan. May I suggest that you draft a concise primer on correlation, regression and partial correlation (perhaps also factor analysis) - I do think that it has to include something about sampling and how statisticians know that results are significant (if this can be explained conceptually rather than through math), and the distinction between accuracy and precision too. Here i think is where a concise explanation of standard deviation and why it is important too. But if you could draft something, AProck, Muntuwanda and others might tweak it, and then present it to David Kane for inclusion. I think it sould help a lot. Slrubenstein | Talk 08:43, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I didn't mean to step on Aprock's toes here. If he/she wants to write it, that is fine. Let me know.

Bpesta22 (talk) 15:24, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia already provides excellent (?) articles on correlation, regression, partial correlation and factor analysis. Why would anyone want to replicate that (as opposed to just referring to it)? David.Kane (talk) 15:51, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

First, I do not think anyone has to worry about stepping on toes - two people can work on the same thing, it can become a collaboration. Second, my proposal was not meant to have the R&I article needlessly replicate what is already in other articles. But it is not at all uncommon for one article to include a summary of what is found in another article; that is because topics can overlap. I am suggsting a paragraph or two that provides the bare minimum explanation of these terms needed for someone to understand what follows - because I do not think that the average reader will be able to understand why some variables have ben rejects and others are considered powerful, or why some explanations have been challenged, unless they understand what these terms mean. I think we should provide the basic necessary explanation to make the article work, with links to the articles so people can learn more. After all, one of the major advantages of an online encyclopedia is the ability to use hypertext. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:07, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I'll echo the second point here. While the material is of great importance, since much of the research is about interpreting statistics, a detailed discussion is beyond the scope of R/I. The key is to create contextual summaries which highlight the statistical difficulties faced when looking at the data. I've found a good source for this, but it's fairly long and only covers the work of Lynn. Coming up with something which is succinct, clear, and in the proper context will take some time. A.Prock (talk) 17:44, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Rewriting Again

I am starting another major rewrite of the article now. You patience is much appreciated. I will be done by noon EDT April 9. If other editors could avoid edit warring with me during this period, I would appreciate it! Of course, once I am done, you may do whatever you like. Goals:

• Incorporate the many fine suggestions made by Aprock, Occam, Faye, Bpesta and others to the previous draft. Needless to say, I will need to use my best judgment since some of these comment disagree with each other and some are particular contentious. Wish me luck!
• Improve the overall article quality. Given how much time I/we are putting into this article, I have vague thoughts/dreams of, someday, turning it into a Featured Article. So, I will be tightening everything up, fixing citations, standardizing on terminology, capitalization and so on.
• Follow some advice from MathSci, Slrubenstein and others about how better to frame the article. I especially appreciate MathSci providing access to Nisbett's Appendix B and to Slrubenstein for offering thoughts on how to make this article easier for future editors to work with. I realize that not all editors might agree with this perspective and that it will necessitate a departure from the current outline. I just ask your indulgence for a day to give it a try.

No rewrite can make everyone happy. I hope that you will judge this effort on the following basis: Is the article that I show you tomorrow better, on the whole, then the article we have today (or, at least, the article that we started with several months ago). If you have any thoughts, feel free to offer them here. But I will probably not have the time to reply until tomorrow. David.Kane (talk) 13:37, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

proposed addition to draft on brain size

TechnoFaye is proposing the following section be added to to the draft, under the heading Brain Size. This would be a subsection of the Group Differences section. Text as follows, with a reflist template to make reviewing references easier. --Ludwigs2 20:01, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

proposed addition

Many MRI volumetric analyses have shown that on average, the brains of people identifying themselves as African-American are 5% smaller than the brains of people identifying themselves as white, and 6% smaller than people identifying themselves as Asian.

These results have been duplicated worldwide many times and verified by three other methods not involving MRI. The subjects used in the study were similar in body size. Since the anomaly is seen in newborns, fetuses, and embryos just weeks old, the difference is not likely to be due to environment.

The average brain volumes (in cm³) are approximately 1,268 (Africans), 1,362 (Europeans), and 1,415 (East Asians). The black/Asian difference is about one-quarter measuring cup of brain material.

A study on twins showed that frontal gray matter volume was correlated with g and highly heritable. A related study has reported that the correlation between brain size (reported to have a heritability of 0.85) and g is 0.4, and that correlation is mediated entirely by genetic factors.Posthuma; et al. (2002). "The association between brain volume and intelligence is of genetic origin". Nature Neuroscience. 5: 83–84. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help); line feed character in |title= at position 30 (help)

In a study of the head growth of 633 term-born children from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children cohort, it was shown that prenatal growth and growth during infancy were associated with subsequent IQ. The study’s conclusion was that the brain volume a child achieves by the age of 1 year helps determine later intelligence.

References

I could have posted this comment equally well on the talk page of the article.

TechnoFaye's edits were completely out of line in using pre-1930 references about brain size. [6] The edits on this topic, which have been made repeatedly, go against all wikipedia policies. (Independently of mediation, repeated instances of this extreme kind of edit can often result in a community topic ban.) Mathsci (talk) 20:05, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Pre-1930? SO WHAT, mathsci? Do you think filling skulls with rice grains or b-bs or plaster is too complex a task for the 1800's people to get right, or do you think that's an archiac science technique? They still use it today. I did it myself when I was an anthro major, on casts of pre-hominid skulls.

And which wiki policies did my pretty little summary violate, mathsci?

How 'bout, like, NONE?

I am very stupid, so you'll have to cite each policy and tell me specifically how my article violates that policy, because y'know what, matsci? I JISS can't see the violations myself. Can you do that for me, mathsci?

As to your threats, they're transparent, invisible--mere energy

cm3, respectively (Beals, Smith, & Dodd, 1984). Using the method of weighing brains at autopsy, Paul Broca (1873) reported that Whites averaged heavier brains than did Blacks, with larger frontal lobes and more complex convolutions. (Broca also used endocranial volume and found East Asians averaged larger cranial capacities than Europeans, who averaged larger than Blacks.) Other early autopsy studies found a mean Black–White group difference in brain weight of about 100 g (Bean, 1906; Mall, 1909; Pearl, 1934; Vint, 1934). A more recent autopsy study of 1,261 American adults found that the brains of 811 White Americans in their sample averaged 1,323 g and the brains of 450 Black Americans averaged 1,223 g—a difference of 100 g (Ho, Roessmann, Straumfjord, & Monroe, 1980). Because the Blacks and Whites in the study were similar in body size, this was not responsible for the differences in brain weight. --Rushton

Mathsci, could you please rewrite the above in a far less confrontational tone. All you need to say is that you object to the use of pre-1930's references (and possibly clarify why you object to that). the remainder of what you wrote is comments about Faye as an editor, and as such are against mediation rules. thanks. --Ludwigs2 20:49, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately we are discussing direct edits to the mainspace article. Do you regard this page now as a substitute for Talk:Race and intelligence (cf my prefatory small print) and, if so, why? How can other editors not involved in mediation express their views? You wrote yourself [7] on User talk:TechnoFaye that this material clearly does not have consensus. (Repeated insertion of such content does usually lead to topic bans on wikipedia.) If that is so, then it is not a particularly good use of anybody's time to open up another discussion about it here. The material is WP:UNDUE, WP:OR and WP:SYNTH - yet another example of an editor inappropriately using primary sources instead of secondary sources (like Richard Nisbett again - here is a preliminary discussion of material on brain size that aooears in his 2009 book [8]). Mathsci (talk) 21:47, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Part of the problem here is the fact that edits are occurring in mainspace instead of on a temporary page. This creates a natural conflict between non-mediation editors and mediation editors. It seems natural that the current draft article should be considered a work in progress by those involved in mediation, and that feedback from a diverse set of editors should shape the draft. At the same time, there are non-mediation editors which are legitimately editing the article, but who are not a part of the mediation. This leads to the ambiguity of where current work should be discussed. I still think the current process would benefit from editing on a sub-page, but every time that is suggested, it is rejected. So these procedural ambiguities arise more frequently than they might. A.Prock (talk) 22:19, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Its still possible to move the working draft to a subpage. Mathsci (talk) 23:24, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

(e/c)Mathsci: I am asking you to respect the mediation rules, as well as general rules of civility, talk page behavior, and good faith editing. Your assessment of the actions which some administrator may take at some future point does not belong here; your assessment of whether Faye is 'in line' or 'out of line' does not belong here; your assessment of whether faye's post goes against policy is valid, but badly put - obviously the edit does not go against all wikipedia policies, and you have failed to specify (in your initial post) which policies were violated, and how they were violated.

I am not objecting to your objection in the least; I think it is a reasonable objection to make, and bears thought and discussion. I am objecting to your tone, which is explicitly threatening, and both hostile and domineering. A tone like the one you presented here is bound to create tension and increase the level of bad feelings in this mediation, and that is not the result we want. Frankly, I don't want the very good point you are trying to make about the article to be lost on everyone because everyone is pissed off about the officious, overheated language you used to make that point. And I do not want to open the door for some eventual retaliation by Faye, which she may indulge in (hopefully not) if she is sufficiently pissed off at your tone herself. Please refactor your initial post to remove any personal comments about Faye, anything that resembles a threat, and anything that might come off as overly-hostile. --Ludwigs2 22:24, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

These were comments on the edits and as such are not personal attacks or uncivil. Please see WP:DNTTR. Mathsci (talk) 23:15, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Nonetheless, they are unnecessary comments and would be certainly be interpreted as personal (I think it's essentially impossible not to interpret a threatened community ban as personal). I am asking you for the third and last time to rewrite the the comment. If you refuse (or ignore this request), I will consider it a breach of your sworn word - point 1 of the mediation agreements you signed onto says "Stick to content, not the contributor" - and I will open a separate section to conduct a straw poll on whether you should be allowed to make comments of that sort in mediation. I'll leave it to other editors to discuss the matter with you; they are the ones who have to put up with it, not me. Your choice. --Ludwigs2 02:26, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I did refactor the comments. Mathsci (talk) 14:29, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

It appears that neural wiring is an important factor in determining intelligence.[9][10] --Horse wiz (talk) 22:28, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't think anyone disputes this. A.Prock (talk) 23:29, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

It says, "Study gives more proof that intelligence is largely inherited" and "UCLA researchers find that genes determine brain's processing speed". Processing speed is important in determining performance on timed tests, such as IQ tests, SAT/GRE tests, and most school tests. Quick processing speed is important in determining who will get into Harvard or MIT for example. --Horse wiz (talk) 15:10, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

You (and the linked to articles) are confusing heritability with genetics. That's fairly common it seems.A.Prock (talk) 18:41, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Faye, I agree that it’s worthwhile for the article to discuss brain size, but I have some suggestions about it.

1: Do we really need references about this from more than 70 years ago? Methodology for measuring brain volume has improved so much during the time since then that I really don’t see what this material adds to the article. If you think this material is worth mentioning just out of historical interest, I think you should qualify it by saying something like, “comparisons of average brain size between races have been the subject of studies since the 19th century, and many of early studies of this have obtained similar results to modern studies, despite their primitive methodology.”

2: I think we need to neutrally present the debate that exists over whether the difference in brain size is due to genetics or environment. At least one of the sources you’re using (Niesser 1997) takes the perspective that the difference in brain size is environmental, so NPOV policy requires that we present his perspective also.

Is that an acceptable compromise between TechnoFaye and other users? --Captain Occam (talk) 04:25, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I think it's important to add this, and to balance it. I agree with Occam's earlier point that the current article is less focused on race and intelligence in conjunction than it should be. For example the recent addition of 'iodine deficiency'. We know it affects IQ, but is it implicated in the racial IQ gap? I know of no sources that discuss this (probably because iodized salt in the West and seafood diets in some areas, where the gap remains, eliminate it as a possibility). I would be happy to be corrected on this. Anyway, we need to narrow down the focus (sometimes by adding more information). TechnoFaye's brain size section is acceptable, and important, I think, but minus the primary sources. I think it goes under 'Physiology'. mikemikev (talk) 13:47, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

There are few or no mainstream publications, especially recent ones, that have studied racial differences in brain size, and whether they are responsible for the race-IQ differences. Most studies have simply focused on the correlation between brain size and IQ, irrespective of race. As result, I consider what was in the versions of 3rd April( many changes since, can't keep track) as appropriate. Wapondaponda (talk) 19:36, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Wapondaponda that any article cited here should specifically address racial issues. If it doesn't, it belongs in one of the many other articles that treat IQ more generally. In that respect, I think that this current draft is too permissive (and that is my fault!) in that it has two many citations that are not directly relevant to R&I. I have not studied Faye's citations closely to see which pass muster according to this criteria. At a glance, it seems that some do and some don't. David.Kane (talk) 20:22, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I would suggest removing all of the cites to papers outside R&I (everything except Rushton, Jensen and Neisser), and adding the new paragraphs under the old ones in 'Physiology'. Something like this:

proposed addition

Within human populations, studies have been conducted to determine whether there is a relationship between brain size and a number of cognitive measures. Studies have reported correlations that range from 0 to 0.6, with most correlations 0.3 or 0.4.

A study on twins showed that frontal gray matter volume was correlated with g and highly heritable. A related study has reported that the correlation between brain size (reported to have a heritability of 0.85) and g is 0.4, and that correlation is mediated entirely by genetic factors.Posthuma; et al. (2002). "The association between brain volume and intelligence is of genetic origin". Nature Neuroscience. 5: 83–84. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help); line feed character in |title= at position 30 (help)

In a study of the head growth of 633 term-born children from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children cohort, it was shown that prenatal growth and growth during infancy were associated with subsequent IQ. The study’s conclusion was that the brain volume a child achieves by the age of 1 year helps determine later intelligence.

Many MRI volumetric analyses have shown that on average, the brains of people identifying themselves as African-American are 5% smaller than the brains of people identifying themselves as white and 6% smaller than people identifying themselves as Asian.

The average brain volumes (in cm³) are approximately 1,268 (Africans), 1,362 (Europeans), and 1,415 (East Asians).

Any better? mikemikev (talk) 23:06, 5 April 2010 (UTC) Also I think some of the cites need to be checked, the Asian paper is cited for black/white differences. Maybe that's right, I don't know I just copied them.

Any objections? I'll fix the cites and put this in tomorrow if not. mikemikev (talk) 12:57, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Only a handful of scholars, such as Rushton have been studying supposed racial differences in brain size and their correlation with intelligence. It is not a topic investigated by mainstream scientists. This should be taken into account when considering whether or not to include this topic. Wapondaponda (talk) 16:23, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Passing peer review counts as mainstream science. mikemikev (talk) 09:11, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Not true. Slrubenstein | Talk 09:31, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so define "mainstream science", because I really don't see what you're getting at. mikemikev (talk) 09:44, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, publication in a peer-reviewed journal is certainly important, but it is not sufficient. Some articles as you may know are accepted and published, and then retracted because of problems with the data or interpretation. This happens almost every year to major science journals, sometimes the media catches the story but in fact while I would not say it is routine, it is not surprising. Science journals publish articles on current research precisely so other scientists can try to reproduce the research (this is NOT the jo of peer-reviewers); that's when we sometimes discover a published article is wrong. "Severe dopaminergic neurotoxicity in primates after a common recreational dose regimen of MDMA" was published in the prestigious journal Science in 2002 and then retracted. "Magnetic carbon" was published in the equally prestigious journal Nature in 2001 and retracted. So an article can get through peer review and be published, but not turn out to be mainstream science. And an article does not have to be reracted. Some guy named Everett published an article in Current Anthropology, the top, or one of the top two, anthropology journals in the world, back in 2005. He claimed that the Indians in Brazil he worked with did not count beyond a few, had no conception of the future, and that their language lacked what every other linguist considers universal gramatical features. Based on that published article, other linguists were able to demonstrate that his interpretation of his own dats was flawed and that his entire analysis is nonsense. The news media picked up on the article, but not the criticisms. So I have seen stories on him and thse people who have no understanding of the future in The New york Times and The Guardian. But his article is not mainstream science. Science journals, even the best, pulish plausible science, but then once published a wider community of scientists has to jude the work.

Also, there are LOTS of science journals. Science and Current Anthropology reject 95% of submissions. Many other journals also have peer-review but reject only 50% of the submissions. The point is to get plausible reseach public so that the wider counity of scientists can judge it. And many articles get published and are then never or only very rarely cited by others. I would hardly call those articles mainstram science. Science, yes. "Mainstream?"

I think research has to be accepted as valid and important by a wider community of scientists before it can be called "mainstream." Evidence of this is can take different forms: that the research is widely cited (and not critically - some articles are notoriously bad and are frequently cited precisely because everyone is arguing against them, so I would not call these articles mainstream sciencesometimes you have to look at how they are cited.) For some disciplines, you know something is mainstram when it is actually assigned frequently to students in university courses. Finally, time is an issue - an article can be very popular, might ven be mainstream, for years .... until the day comes when it is superceded. From Galileo to Einstein, physicists viewed gravity as a force, that was mainstream science then. Since Einstein physicists no longer view it as a force, it is no longer mainstream science.

Bottom line: publication in a peer-reviewed journal is important. But NPOV asks us to distinguish between majority and minotiry and fringe views, and there is something analogous in science, views that are almost universally shared; research that is not yet accepted, but considered important enough that people will question it, test it, try to reproduce it; research that was once important but has been superceded or rejected; research that journals publish sometimes deliberately to stir up debate, but which are quickly rejected; research that is published but that is simply ignored. This creates a specturm, and "mainstream" is at one end. But plenty of peer-reviewed journals are somewhere else on the spectrum. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:26, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Great, a nice explanation. But how does it relate to the brain size data? mikemikev (talk) 19:10, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, dude you pick your own battles. But here is my advice for what it is worth. A few editors (including MathSci) have recommended to David Kane books consiered to provide good oveviews of the debates. If an article you think is important is cited in one of those books, I'd say you have a stronger case that it is mainstream science, althoughyou have to see how cited. Also, some databases let you find our how often a given article has been cited; agin, if it scores high in citation indexes you have a stronger argument that it is mainstream science. But that's just my own approach. You might want to sk Muntuwandi just to spell out his objections to any of the articles you are using and see wht his objections are, tell him to spell it out, and then see. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:13, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Reference by Joseph L. Graves

The article on Rushton in the book "Race and intelligence: separating science from myth" (ed Jefferson Fish, Routledge) is only available on questia (free one day trial access). A version of the article by its author, Joseph L. Graves jr, is in print elsewhere [11]. I have made it available here. The article in the book is more detailed and is summarised in the article. On pages 146-147, Graves explains that Rushton has misrepresented the original data on brain size, gathered not by him but in the following book:

• Broman, S.H., P.L. Nichols, P. Shaughneessy and W. Kennedy (1987) Retardation in Young Children. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

This would appear to place a questionmark next to the unqualified use by Mikemikev of Rushton's paper as a WP:RS in the article. Mathsci (talk) 11:45, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

So Graves has an objection to Rushton's analysis of one data set. Incidentally, from what I can see it's not valid. Rushton uses four independent data sets, and they agree. If you want to mention Graves' criticism in the article feel free. mikemikev (talk) 18:54, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I am not sure if this is an RS issue or a different kind of issue but it certainly merits discussion. In any event, isn't David doing the next major overhaul now? I thought none of us should be editing the article right now, anyway, until he finishes the next round of his revisions. Or did I misunderstand the timing? Slrubenstein | Talk 12:20, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Certainly I would agree for potentially controversial material. Here is another more recent reference on brain size [12] by Jeremy Gray (Yale) and Paul Thompson (UCLA). It addresses the problem of the ethics of making scientific measurements related to race and intelligence. (They also write that few scientists investigate race differences in intelligence and those that do are predominantly white.) I shall try to find others. Mathsci (talk) 12:51, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

WP:NOTCENSORED mikemikev (talk) 18:54, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Look at what happened to Linda Gottfredson for daring to do science in this area. I think this answers why few people do research in this area...sorry for the ghastly looking link (feel free to fix it)

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V9F-4Y6489M-2&_user=10&_coverDate=01%2F18%2F2010&_alid=1286734883&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_cdi=5897&_sort=r&_docanchor=&view=c&_ct=1&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=9aea813b4eed1008bc773ee85092aca8 other Bpesta22 (talk) 14:09, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

The issue of academic freedom seems to be brought up in connection to this debate pretty often. Considering how many reliable sources that discuss this issue, I think it probably deserves to be covered by the article. (And this could possibly also include any discussion about the Sociobiology Study Group and Science for the People.) What do other people here think of this idea? --Captain Occam (talk) 15:44, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand why editors are writing that this is a question of academic freedom, Rushton's misuse of other scientists' data apparently was extremely incompetent and unscholarly (according to Graves). Rushton never responded to Graves, even in the journal "Anthropological Theory". I assume this had nothing to do with the fact that Graves is an African American. Mathsci (talk) 22:21, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree. Let's stick to th question of "good science." I realize many editors will always defend Rushton against charges that he is a bad scientist. That's reasonable and when you reliable sources making the same points, we can draw on them in the article. But when we have others who criticis Rushton's science, who criticize him on scientific grounds, well, this is precisely the debate that "science" is supposed to thrive on, and it is very much in line with our NPOV policy to cover these debates. It is simply a flat out and out violation of NPOV to censor any criticism of Rushton. And criticizing a scholar doesn't even come close to "censoring" a scholar. What distinguishes science from dogmatism is precisely the fact that any scientific claim is open to scrutiny; the assumptions made, the methodology, the interpretation of the data, all of these are fair game, in fact scientists provide accounts of their methods as well as the raw data precisely to make it possible for other scientists to criticize them. Enstein's various attempts to develop a unified field theory were always rejected by his colleagues - were they denying him of his academic freedom? Or were they actually treating him like a scientist, and scrutinizing his work the way any good scientist would want? Slrubenstein | Talk 22:59, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

SLR, please stop with the nebulous philosophy of science lectures (well written as they are). Please try to make a practical point. If you have valid criticism of Rushton's methods from a reliable source, of course it can go into the article. Please summarize Graves' criticisms (they seem a little unclear to me) and they will be considered for inclusion. mikemikev (talk) 07:22, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

The Editor Replies

I dedicate what's to come to Bryan, in consideration of the treatment he got at that `science blog. They can't do that at wikipedia. Here, watch... TechnoFaye Kane 05:45, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Please use secondary sources to avoid WP:OR and WP:SYNTH

A lot of the latest round of edits to the article do not conform to wikipedia core policies. The "history" section has serious problems becase it lacks context and is uninformative: it reads like an attempt to sanitize controversy by omission, despite what is written at length in multiple secondary sources. I have restored the lede and part of the history section, discussed at length here. I suggest we restore something like ordinary editing procedures as soon as possible, to avoid fruitless discussion. Mathsci (talk) 06:18, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Just to spell this out, on wikipedia we use secondary sources to write history, or anything else for that matter. The citations in the history section are all to primary documents and reads like WP:OR. The same seems to apply to almost all the rest of the article: at no stage is there a clear statement about the hereditarian point of view or why the methodology used to justify it has been criticized. A small group of psychologists, almost wholly supported by the Pioneer Fund, have argued for the hereditarian point of view, assembling data gathered by other scientists. Other academics have subsequently commented on their work, sometimes through public statements by academic bodies and sometimes individually through book reviews, extended essays or books often intended for a general readership. Common charges have been that the psychologists have made a selective use of data, that it is often used out of context, that the statistical methodology is flawed and that they are unqualified to discuss matters related to biology and anthropology. There are plenty of secondary sources which describe the history or the general issues. None of these appear to have been used. Mathsci (talk) 06:31, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

There have been extensive criticisms of the methods of Rushton, Jensen and Lynn by many scientists. including psychologists (Richard Nisbett), biologists (Joseph L. Graves) and anthropologists (Leonard Lieberman [13]). A neutral way to write the article would necessarily involve an unequivocal and unsanitized statement of the hereditarian point of view of Rushton, Jensen and Lynn, which would include the attempt at aggregation and ranking of races into three broad groups mongoloid/caucasoid/negroid according to average cranial size and IQ. It should also be pointed out that Rushton, Jensen and Lynn immediately draw inferences about causes of crime and other social problems, as many of the commentators point out. Often they refer to it as scientific racism. Mathsci (talk) 09:17, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you that we should privilege secondary sources. I agree with you that Rushton and Lynn's positions should be presented accurately. I agree with you that criticisms of Rushton and Lynn have to be incluced in the article. When David Kane is done with his round of orevisions, which are general, why don't you just focus on this specific issue and improve it? Slrubenstein | Talk 09:25, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I've been waiting for David Kane to finish with this round of edits, but so far I don't approve the material being added. I think David Kane has tried to give the impression that he is neutral, but it is now evident that he leans towards the hereditarian position. Obviously he is entitled to his own opinion, but it becomes a problem if his own views interfere with writing a neutral article. Wapondaponda (talk) 11:24, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I am willing to AGF with David Kane - but that is because i know that this set of revisions is just a stage, and when he is done it will be up to us to fix it. Certainly, relying on secondary sources as a way of avoiding SYNTH is important. And all views should be represented accurately. I am sure we can all agree on these principles. If so, spotting problems and fixing them should be straightforward, a simple matter of pointing to a specific passage and saying "here is he alternative I propose, and why it is more in compliance with policy (or better written). Slrubenstein | Talk 12:16, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I will be done in 4 hours. If you think that the article I produce is worse, on the whole, then the article that I started with, then, by all means, revert it. If you think, in 4 hours, that specific aspects need fixing, then, by all mean, fix them. The only reason that I have spent multiple hours as the main editor on this article is because no one else volunteered to do so. I second Slrubenstein's comments above. For the record, I put myself in the APA camp: there are racial differences and there cause is unknown. I like to think/hope/dream that, despite having an opinion, I can present the views of Nisbett, Jensen, et al in a NPOV. David.Kane (talk) 12:18, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

MathSci - particularly after D.K's comment, I need you to please stop guessing other editors' motives. I understand the cynicism, particularly for a case like this. But it's back to the hoary content/contributor problem. Folks will focus on the contributor aspect if one tries to include it with a content aspect, and Hilarity typically Ensues as people whack at strawmen (causing a feedback loop, since it often "confirms" suspicions). 99% of conflicts resulting in mediation come from this very problem. Just something to consider; continue as you will. Xavexgoem (talk) 12:30, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Ahem, I was careful not to ascribe any motives to David.Kane above - I criticized his edits and his use of sources. Muntuwandi did make some kind of comment. As I've said my worry is that his edits break WP:OR, WP:RS, WP:V, WP:SYNTH, WP:UNDUE and possibly WP:POV. But certainly David.Kane's version of the lede breaks all consensus and does not agree with I've read from secondary sources. Contrary to what his current lede suggests, there has been little or no direct research in academia on race and intelligence. Academics have written popular books and it has been much discussed in the media. It also sparked much controversy in the 1970's following Jensen's 1969 paper. This is all rather easy to read in the secondary sources but absent from the current article. David.Kane's lead is not neutral, it is simply misleading. Mathsci (talk) 15:12, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I am not the most experience editor, so specifics would be helpful. I plan on spending the next few hours on this article and would rather do it right than wrong. What specific edit that I have made violates WP:OR or WP:RS? David.Kane (talk) 15:18, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Request for Assistance in Dealing with MathSci

I would rather not get into a edit war with MathSci. However, I feel that his behavior in not allowing me a final 3 hours to edit the article in peace is not very polite. But perhaps I am not being objective? If you think that my hard work on this article has earned me some goodwill from the editors involved in this mediation, please revert his latest change. David.Kane (talk) 13:48, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree that he should let you finish revising the article. I can't promise that I'll agree with every change you make, but I don't think we should be attempting to judge your work-in-progress on the article until it's finished. --Captain Occam (talk) 14:44, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Well I still think the use of draft or subpage would have been a good idea. David Kane could have done all his revisions on a subpage, and then simply moved the final product to the main article in one edit. By doing this, the article history remains low, and there are no interruptions. Wapondaponda (talk) 15:53, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

@ David: I've responded in your talk (which I see you've seen).

@ Occam: Mathsci has a right to revert those changes, since he clearly objects to them, so David can go ahead and do other revisions for the time being while you all discuss the reverted material and work out some compromise.

@ Wapondaponda: You may be right - as I said, I was constrained by circumstance at the time, and if I'd had my druthers I'd have probably done it the way you suggest. Water under the bridge... at this point, however, I think we are moving out of mediation into regular editing, so minor disagreements in article space are normal and expected. it's all good. --Ludwigs2 16:00, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Something that I think we all need to keep in mind is that until David.Kane is finished revising the article, we won’t know for sure what his finished version is going to look like. This is something I have a lot of experience with as an artist, both with regard to other people’s work and my own. There are very few things that annoy me more than for someone to start criticizing problems about one of my works-in-progress that probably weren’t going to exist in the final version of the work, and I make a conscious effort to avoid this with other people’s art, unless they specifically request it.

I know it’s a bit different with this article, since David.Kane isn’t just creating his own work here; he’s trying to make something that’ll please all of us. So I’m fine with us making suggestions about his revisions before he’s finished with them. However, I think that reverting his edits when he isn’t finished yet is unfair to him, both because we don’t know yet what things he still intends to change, and also because it’s going to be much more difficult for him to make the rest of his revisions if he has to deal with someone trying to undo his earlier revisions at the same time. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:29, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

well, I trust Mathsci will make selective reverts, only removing material that he disagrees with. If he makes broad reverts of large numbers of edits, that's a different issue. let me know if that happens, and I'll see what I can do. --Ludwigs2 17:11, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

This is really a problem of the redraft being done in mainspace, what David is writing isn't a final version, and regardless of his personal views, he's been very reasonable in terms of welcoming input and doing the thankless task of drafting. I'll make another plea to move the major redrafts to a sub page so that we can avoid everyone getting their undies in a bunch until the draft is ready. A.Prock (talk) 18:20, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Upon reflection, you may very well be right. If I ever (stupidly?) volunteer to do another round of major edits, I will certainly consider that suggestion carefully. The difficulty, of course, is what happens when someone is working on a draft and someone else edits, in good faith, in the main page? David.Kane (talk) 19:13, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

This is just a normal editing consideration; the only difference here is that you're doing largish edits, but so long as everyone involved is respectful and responsive, and you take into account all the input you get from others, it shouldn't be too much of an issue. Personally I think you're doing a great service here, and even if the draft isn't perfect the article is in better shape than it has been in maybe a year.

Nothing on wikipedia is ever a final version; just do the best you can in as open and neutral a way as you can, and then let other people build on it. The trick is to create some solid roots; once those are in place, the article can be shaped and trimmed by everyone without falling to pieces. --Ludwigs2 20:01, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

pioneer fund

why is the pioneer fund mentioned in the history section? it doesn't seem to meet the standard for importance relative to the size of the section/article. it's not, for example, in nisbett (2009). --DJ (talk) 17:59, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Good point. I will delete it. David.Kane (talk) 19:07, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

loss of subtlety

i'm struggling to express this clearly... we run the risk of losing needed subtlety if we put significant emphasis on a narrative of a conflict between two monolithic views. you can measure this by looking at who is being emphasized, attributed and quoted. lots of rushton and nisbett but less of authors like loehlin and hunt. --DJ (talk) 18:08, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

expanding this, hopefully with added clarity... it is possible to cover both "views" by only quoting rushton and nisbett, but you aren't really getting the full range of views if you do that. there's a second dimension missing -- confidence about conclusions. rushton and nisbett are both very confident about their very different views, which makes them easy to contrast. however, that doesn't necessarily express the full gamut of expert opinion. --DJ (talk) 18:18, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Good point. My hope is that, with the new organization, future iterations will be able to provide precisely this gamut. We will see. David.Kane (talk) 19:09, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I have a somewhat different view. I think we loose subtlety if we organize the article in terms of hereditarian verssus environmental views - that is why I strongly favor a section on the different variables - being as specific as researchers themselves ("environment" is just intolerably vague).

However, we would loose all needed nuance if we did not review the different debates and conflicts that occur surrounding the research on race and intelligence. I think it is essential to have sections on "debates about the research" and if we can distinguish between different kinds of debates, disaggregate them accordingly. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:26, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Rewrite Number 2 Complete (?)

(A version of this comment also appears on the article talk page.)

I have finished my one day plus a few hours of work on the rewrite. Comments:

• Thanks to all editors for allowing my the freedom to make so many dramatic changes.
• I did the best I could but, obviously, the article still needs a lot of work. My main failure was to just leave so much undone. Several of the new sections are empty shells. There are several other editors involved in this article (DJ, Aprock, Occam, MathSci) who could do a great job filling in those sections. I hope they will be bold! I will add some material in the near future.
• The main improvements, I think, are:

• • First, I followed (my interpretation of) advice from Slrubenstein and MathSci. The article now uses an (excellent) secondary source (Nisbett 2009) as a framework in which to organize the article. Thanks to MathSci for providing Appendix B. As Slrubenstein, this allows future editors to fix up discrete sections (on, say, reaction times or inbreeding depression) without upsetting the structure of the article as a whole.

• • Second, I tried to significantly clean up the references and other junk. Needless to say, there is still much more that could be done.

I will leave it to other editors to judge whether or not this version, taken as a whole, is superior to the previous one. I look to the mediator for discussion about where we go from here. My recommendation: See if there is consensus that this version is better then where we started and see if there is consensus to end this mediation and go back to normal editing. David.Kane (talk) 22:08, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Before I offer any detailed critiques, there’s one thing about this new version that jumps out at me: The “interpretations” sections are gone. Did someone else specifically request that they be removed, or did you decide for yourself that we should get rid of them? Either way, I don’t think I agree with this change, so we ought to discuss whether the article really is better off without them. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:22, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

That was my decision, inspired by various conversations with Slrubenstein. But look closely! Almost all the (good) text that was included in those sections is now spread throughout the article. In essence, we now have a structure that allows/encourages/requires that all discussions about, say, the meaning of g loading occur right next to the description of the studies that report on that. I think/hope that this will prove to be a better framework. My only request is that you reserve judgment on this point for a few days and see if the subsequent editing that I and others do is more productive than it has been in the past. If not, we can always add back in such a section later. David.Kane (talk) 22:30, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I did not think that any advice I gave you would have led to removing the "interpretations" section. But I frankly am not sure how I feel about this yet, and want instead to reiterate a point I made above: we would loose all needed nuance if we did not review the different debates and conflicts that occur surrounding the research on race and intelligence. I think it is essential to have sections on "debates about the research" and if we can distinguish between different kinds of debates, disaggregate them accordingly. Perhaps sections on "debates concerning R&I research could substitute for the former sections on "interpretations. maybe not. But I still think such sections are needed. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:28, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

rut row; problems with Nisbett

BTW, his name is misspelled in the article:

"Nesbitt finds this argument unpersuasive, noting that

The g loadings of subtests do not differ that much, the g loading of a particular subtest cannot be construed as evidence about the degree to which the subtest measures strictly biological or hereditary differences as opposed to environmentally produced differences, and the scores for blacks have improved almost as much on a g-weighted IQ test as on a non-g-weighted test."

This is utter bullshit. digit span forward is half as g-loaded as digit span backward. Just one example. To say that g loadings don't differ that much is to say there's little variation. That implies g loading should not / can not correlate with other things. That's patently false (the fact that g-loadings correlate strongly with other things suggests that differences in g loadings are critically important). It's also not at all accepted that the gap has shrunk on the most g-loaded tests. I'd need to research the lit again, but I remember just the opposite in several recent large scale studies on the topic.

I think I predicted this-- using someone who hasn't published in the journal will likely lead to distortions about articles and data presented therein. I'm waiting for someone to claim g is a statistical artifact now...

Bpesta22 (talk) 02:19, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

I had to pull out my Jensen / g factor. See page 378. 149 psychometric tests on the x axis. g loadings range from .26 to .89 (that's vastly different from "do not differ that much"). The correlation between g loadings and the b/w gap is .63.

IMO, Nisbett's statement is so off the mark it can only be Gouldian advocacy and not science. Feel free to argue differently, but then also produce data showing no trivial differences among cognitive ability tests and g-loadings, and no mapping of them to the gap. Good luck.

Bpesta22 (talk) 02:46, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Hunt and Carlson (2007) on this topic:

One of the most widely cited pieces of evidence (although not the only one) for biological differences in intelligence, sometimes referred to as Spearman's hypothesis (Jensen, 1998), rests on an indirect argument constructed from three facts. The first is that various IQ measures are substantially correlated, providing evidence for general intelligence. Although tests do vary in the extent of their g loading, factor structures are similar over several test batteries (Johnson, Bouchard, Krueger, McGue, & Gottesman, 2004). The second is that, within Whites, the g factor appears to have a substantial genetic component (see citations in Rushton & Jensen, 2005a). The third fact is that the g loadings of tests are substantially and positively correlated with the difference between the mean White and African American score on each subtest within a battery of tests. This analysis has been referred to as the "method of correlated vectors" (Jensen, 1998). Because it has also been well established that general intelligence has a substantial genetic component, results from the method of correlated vectors have been offered as putative evidence that the "default hypothesis" ought to be that about 50% of the variance in the African American versus White difference reflects genetic differences in a potential for intelligence (Jensen, 1998; Rushton and Jensen, 2005a).

Technical objections have been made to the method of correlated vectors and to a somewhat stronger condition: that if the within-group correlations between measures are identical across groups, the between-group differences must arise from the same cause as the within-group correlations (Widaman, 2005). The essence of these objections is that the method of correlated vectors does not consider alternative hypotheses concerning the latent traits that might give rise to the observed difference in test scores. When a more appropriate method of analysis, multigroup confirmatory factor analysis, is applied, it has been found that Spearman's hypothesis (i.e., that the difference is due to differences in general intelligence) is only one of several models that could give rise to the observed distributions in test scores (Dolan, 2000). These findings render the method of correlated vectors ambiguous—which is not the same as saying that the Jensen-Rushton position is incorrect. Our point is that the argument for the default hypothesis is an indirect one. It would be far better if a direct causal argument could be made linking racial/ethnic genetic differences to studies of the development of the brain.

Citation: Hunt, E.; Carlson, J. (2007). "Considerations Relating to the Study of Group Differences in Intelligence". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 2 (2): 194. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6916.2007.00037.x.

--DJ (talk) 05:43, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

What would you think of fixing this problem with the article yourself, DJ? You haven't edited it much lately, and I suspect you'd be able to improve it a lot. (Both in this respect, and probably others also.) --Captain Occam (talk) 07:58, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

I also nominate DJ to work on this. Or Bpesta or Occam! Although there is contention about the lead, I suspect that everyone agrees that all the different subsections of the article could be made much better. Have at it! Indeed, the main reason that I structured the article like this was to make it easy to have a thorough NPOV discussion of specific topics like g-loading. And, even better, by providing the citations to Nesbitt and critics at the top, you don't even need to gather other sources. Everything is already discussed in those sources. David.Kane (talk) 14:02, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Hunt and Carlson.The method of correlated vectors is not direct proof of the genetic hypothesis, but it is indirect in that I wonder what environmental-only explanation can account for the fact that race differences are twice as large on digit span backward versus forward.

A problem with ANY structural equation model is that there are many models that fit the data equally well. The one the researcher chooses needs some other justification (a theory, perhaps) than just that "it fits the data". But, that's a problem with all of SEM versus just Spearman's hypothesis specifically.

Bpesta22 (talk) 14:59, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

BPesta, can you clarify something for me: are you saying Nesbitt's views are uter bullshit, or that the account the article provides of his views are utter bullshit? If the latter, well, we need to rewrite the section to make sure nesbitt's views are presented accurately. However, if you personally think Nesbitt's views are bullshit, I have to remind you: your opinion doesn't matter. Neither does mine, or David Kane's. Our NOR policy makes it clear that no editor can put his or her views into articles. Our views are irrelevant. NPOV policy demands that we include all major views. It is perfectly appropriate to include conflicting views, it can even be desirable. So we have to include nesbitt's views. Now, if there are other published sources that have a contrary view, we add that view. And if there is a published source that is critical of Nesbitt, we add that too. But our objective is to provide all major views, not to say which one is right and which one is wrong. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:33, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry for my continued latency. I don't have much energy for working on this now. To re-characterize this discussion... including Nisbett's views are an WP:UNDUE problem. His criticism have never been published in a peer reviewed source and appear to be novel. In contrast, the criticism summarized by Hunt and Carlson (above) is an appropriate and direct substitute for Nisbett's which should satisfy the WP:UNDUE concern. That section should be rewritten to capture the Hunt/Carlson/Dolan/Wicherts/et al. argument against Spearman's hypothesis. I'll try to get to that later or anyone else can jump in. --DJ (talk) 19:42, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Great idea! Again, my hope is that the current article structure makes this easy to do. David.Kane (talk) 03:49, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

If you have time for this, DJ, it would be nice if you could also implement some of the other suggestions I’ve mentioned here that haven’t been implemented yet. Most of these things were actually agreed on even before David.Kane started revising the article, but the article still needs them. It still doesn’t mention structural equation modeling, and for most of the other lines of data that are mentioned in it (especially reaction time and racial admixture studies), the article also doesn’t explain what the data in these areas actually is.

You seem to have more familiarity with the academic literature in this area than most of us do, so it would be useful if you could fill out as many of these sections as possible, along with appropriate citations. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:26, 11 April 2010 (UTC)