Stonkaments (talk | contribs) |
No edit summary |
||
Line 478: | Line 478: | ||
::::::::{{u|Stonkaments}}, why would there need to be ongoing discussion around formulation of an RfC, when this is the first step, and any RfC will necessarily depend on the outcome of this. '''[[user:JzG|Guy]]''' <small>([[user talk:JzG|help!]] - [[User:JzG/Typos|typo?]])</small> 13:52, 9 May 2021 (UTC) |
::::::::{{u|Stonkaments}}, why would there need to be ongoing discussion around formulation of an RfC, when this is the first step, and any RfC will necessarily depend on the outcome of this. '''[[user:JzG|Guy]]''' <small>([[user talk:JzG|help!]] - [[User:JzG/Typos|typo?]])</small> 13:52, 9 May 2021 (UTC) |
||
:::::::::Why would we want to formulate a constructive RfC that could actually address the recent issues on this article, rather than simply rehash the RfC from last year which won't solve anything? Seriously? [[User:Stonkaments|Stonkaments]] ([[User talk:Stonkaments|talk]]) 15:43, 9 May 2021 (UTC) |
:::::::::Why would we want to formulate a constructive RfC that could actually address the recent issues on this article, rather than simply rehash the RfC from last year which won't solve anything? Seriously? [[User:Stonkaments|Stonkaments]] ([[User talk:Stonkaments|talk]]) 15:43, 9 May 2021 (UTC) |
||
:::::::::: The RfC last year solved a lot, allowing the editors who wished to bring the article into accordance with the mainstream view to do so. Recently problematic and/or single-purpose editors have re-initiated attempts to move the article away from the mainstream view, and rehashing the last RfC will almost certainly solve that problem. Perhaps what you mean is that it is unlikely to ''produce an outcome you desire'', but that's a rather different thing. (If there really is a fundamental issue not addressed by this RfC, then this RfC does not prevent someone from opening a proper RfC to address it.) --[[User:JayBeeEll|JBL]] ([[User_talk:JayBeeEll|talk]]) 17:10, 9 May 2021 (UTC) |
|||
::::*Well, I am just not sure what the consequences of admittting the theory is fringe would be. Per [[WP:FRINGE]], ''Wikipedia article should not make a fringe theory appear more notable or more widely accepted than it is.'', and so on. Yes, sure, but I think it is already described as such on our pages. Simply following [[WP:NPOV]] produces an appropriate description of this and other similar subjects. [[User:My very best wishes|My very best wishes]] ([[User talk:My very best wishes|talk]]) 19:03, 7 May 2021 (UTC) |
::::*Well, I am just not sure what the consequences of admittting the theory is fringe would be. Per [[WP:FRINGE]], ''Wikipedia article should not make a fringe theory appear more notable or more widely accepted than it is.'', and so on. Yes, sure, but I think it is already described as such on our pages. Simply following [[WP:NPOV]] produces an appropriate description of this and other similar subjects. [[User:My very best wishes|My very best wishes]] ([[User talk:My very best wishes|talk]]) 19:03, 7 May 2021 (UTC) |
||
::::::Yes the article currently describes racial hereditarianism in a way that is consistent with [[WP:FRINGE]]. This RfC demonstrates the community support enjoyed by those of us who have been laboring –– under heavy opposition and a near-constant rain of personal attacks –– to keep it that way. That's why it's important. Sure, certain editors are likely to continue claiming that the consensus is {{tq|ideologically driven}} [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ARace_and_intelligence&type=revision&diff=1017983921&oldid=1017977716] and that its defenders simply {{tq|can't handle the truth}} [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AStonkaments&type=revision&diff=1018246846&oldid=1018178884], but this RfC makes it clear at least that we are not alone. [[User:Generalrelative|Generalrelative]] ([[User talk:Generalrelative|talk]]) 19:20, 7 May 2021 (UTC) |
::::::Yes the article currently describes racial hereditarianism in a way that is consistent with [[WP:FRINGE]]. This RfC demonstrates the community support enjoyed by those of us who have been laboring –– under heavy opposition and a near-constant rain of personal attacks –– to keep it that way. That's why it's important. Sure, certain editors are likely to continue claiming that the consensus is {{tq|ideologically driven}} [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ARace_and_intelligence&type=revision&diff=1017983921&oldid=1017977716] and that its defenders simply {{tq|can't handle the truth}} [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AStonkaments&type=revision&diff=1018246846&oldid=1018178884], but this RfC makes it clear at least that we are not alone. [[User:Generalrelative|Generalrelative]] ([[User talk:Generalrelative|talk]]) 19:20, 7 May 2021 (UTC) |
Revision as of 17:10, 9 May 2021
![]() | Race and intelligence was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | This article is of interest to multiple WikiProjects. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | Other talk page banners |
No "direct" evidence for a genetic component
Breaking this out in a new thread, as the previous discussion has stalled. I want to revisit this claim in the article: The current scientific consensus is that there is no evidence for a genetic component behind IQ differences between racial groups.
Gardenofaleph made a very strong argument that this sentence, as written, is wrong and is not supported by the sources cited[1]. Others have made similar arguments previously, as shown here[2].
For context, the original phrasing was "no direct evidence for a genetic component", but the word "direct" was removed as alleged MOS:WEASEL wording[3]. The fringe determination in the RfC[4] was also cited in support of removing the word "direct"[5], and the most recent revert said "not good wording, implies there is indirect evidence".[6]
As far as I can tell, no argument has been forwarded that no evidence for a genetic component is supported by the cited sources. To review, here is what the sources say:
- Hunt: "Nisbett's extreme statement [that the differences are 100% environmental] has virtually no chance of being true...The real debate is over the identity and size of genetic and environmental influences on group differences in intelligence, not the existence of either one."
- Mackintosh: "In spite of claims to the contrary, there is remarkably little evidence that the difference is genetic in origin."
- Kaplan: "no direct evidence" (original phrasing was a verbatim quote from the Kaplan source)
- Nisbett et al: "no new direct evidence"
Furthermore, later in the Wikipedia article another quote from Hunt says, in part, "The argument for genetic differences has been carried forward largely by circumstantial evidence."
So we have all of these highly reliable sources referencing some degree of indirect or circumstantial evidence for a genetic component, including Hunt which is arguably the most reliable tertiary source available. It seems clear the current claim of "no evidence" is false and unsupported by the sources; therefore I propose reverting to the original wording of "no direct evidence", or a similar alternative. I don't find the argument that this would somehow violate the fringe RfC to be convincing. And if it truly is the case where we acknowledge the wording is wrong but determine that it would contravene the RfC to fix it, I would remind editors of WP:IGNORE: If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it.
Stonkaments (talk) 19:44, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
- Maybe I could be convinced we need a modifying word somewhere in that sentence, but I don't think 'evidence' is the right thing to hang it on, because implying a category of indirect or circumstantial evidence leaves open how much (or how little) of it there really is. How about 'The current scientific consensus is that there is no evidence for a significant genetic component behind IQ differences between racial groups.'? - MrOllie (talk) 19:54, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
- That is a fair point. I would support that change. Stonkaments (talk) 19:57, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
- @MrOllie: Thank you for suggesting that wording. I'd also support that change provided that some words are added clarifying that there is also no scientific evidence which racial group would be the beneficiary of any very small genetic difference in intelligence. This was stated in the source quoted above by Generalrelative: "It is also important to note that the direction of the mean difference could favor Africans or Europeans with equal likelihood."[1] Many people would read a statement that there is no "significant" genetic contribution to the black/white IQ gap to mean that there might be a slight amount of genetic inferiority of blacks compared to whites. As the source says, it is equally likely that whites would turn out to be inferior to blacks. Since a genetic component in group IQ differences is a matter of speculation, one can equally speculate that, if whites had been treated over the last 350 years as badly as blacks have been and if blacks had enjoyed the privileges that whites did, then the black-over-white IQ gap would be more than 15 points. In other words, the wording should clearly indicate that there is no scientific evidence of any race being genetically superior or inferior in intelligence to any other race. NightHeron (talk) 20:39, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
- A possible sentence to add: "Nor is there any scientific evidence as to whether people of African descent or European descent would be favored by any very small genetic difference in intelligence that might exist."[2] NightHeron (talk) 21:09, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
- Stonkaments, how about "fuck no", as a starting point? You are arguing for the kind of weasel words the racists have been trying to add for a decade. Guy (help! - typo?) 20:46, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
References
- ^ Bird, Kevin A. (2 February 2021). "No support for the hereditarian hypothesis of the Black-White achievement gap using polygenic scores and tests for divergent selection". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. doi:10.1002/ajpa.24216.
- ^ Bird, Kevin A. (2 February 2021). "No support for the hereditarian hypothesis of the Black-White achievement gap using polygenic scores and tests for divergent selection". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. doi:10.1002/ajpa.24216.
- The framing of this debate as "genetic inferiority" is tiring, inflammatory, and arguably disruptive; speculation about a black-over-white IQ gap of greater than 15 points is unfounded and similarly unproductive. As for the claim that "the direction of the mean difference could favor Africans or Europeans with equal likelihood", one primary source should not be relied upon to the exclusion of the many more reliable secondary and tertiary sources that do not support such a claim. Stonkaments (talk) 21:18, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Stonkaments: Please stop your personal attacks against me, which violate WP:NPA. I am not being disruptive or inflammatory. In the context of discussing a black-white IQ gap, it is highly misleading to suggest that there might be a very small genetic explanation, since that suggests that a between-group difference, if there is one, would necessarily favor whites. In other words, it reinforces implicit biases against black people. It's not "inflammatory" to acknowledge this reality.
- Why are you taking offense and reacting with such hostility to the notion that a racial difference in intelligence could favor blacks? NightHeron (talk) 21:48, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
- @MrOllie: @NightHeron: For what it's worth, I oppose these proposed changes in wording, though I recognize that they come from a genuinely collaborative place. As I stated above, pretending that there is a scientific rationale for believing that some genetic link exists between race and intelligence would clearly violate the RfC consensus, as well as the cited sources. The OP is welcome to try to defend their interpretation of WP:IGNORE before WP:AE, but I suspect that the verdict is more likely to be WP:NOTHERE. Generalrelative (talk) 22:09, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
- @NightHeron: I agree wholeheartedly that we need to take special care to avoid any misleading or ambiguous claims in this article. I believe the best way to do that is to be thorough and meticulous in presenting well-sourced information in a clear and neutral way. My specific objection to adding the additional sentence "Nor is there any scientific evidence as to whether people of African descent or European descent would be favored..." is with regards to sourcing and WP:UNDUE—that claim is based solely on one primary source, while we have a number of other more reliable source that do not support that claim. Adding that would make the article worse, not better. I feel that the wording MrOllie proposed is careful and neutral as-is.
- @Generalrelative: Can you explain how the proposed change in wording to "no evidence for a significant genetic component" would violate the cited sources? As I mentioned in the OP, I have never seen that argument made, and the excerpts provided by Gardenofaleph indicate the change would in fact align more closely with the sources. Stonkaments (talk) 22:28, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
- @MrOllie: @NightHeron: For what it's worth, I oppose these proposed changes in wording, though I recognize that they come from a genuinely collaborative place. As I stated above, pretending that there is a scientific rationale for believing that some genetic link exists between race and intelligence would clearly violate the RfC consensus, as well as the cited sources. The OP is welcome to try to defend their interpretation of WP:IGNORE before WP:AE, but I suspect that the verdict is more likely to be WP:NOTHERE. Generalrelative (talk) 22:09, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
- The framing of this debate as "genetic inferiority" is tiring, inflammatory, and arguably disruptive; speculation about a black-over-white IQ gap of greater than 15 points is unfounded and similarly unproductive. As for the claim that "the direction of the mean difference could favor Africans or Europeans with equal likelihood", one primary source should not be relied upon to the exclusion of the many more reliable secondary and tertiary sources that do not support such a claim. Stonkaments (talk) 21:18, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
- (ec)@Generalrelative: I think you're right. Stonkaments' responding to my attempt at a new wording by personally attacking me -- like the SPA's ridiculous attacks on you earlier -- shows that their only purpose here is to try to overturn the consensus and promote racialist hereditarianism. Their repeated violations of WP:NPA show that it was naive on my part to hope that this could end amicably.
- As you have pointed out, we're under no obligation to relitigate the RfC in response to the refusal of some people to accept consensus. All of the claims they are making have been made and refuted many times before. NightHeron (talk) 22:43, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
- The most important concerns on this article ought to be WP:Verifiability, and the prohibition against misrepresenting sources. Editorial consensus shouldn't be able to overrule both a basic Wikipedia policy, and one of the administrative remedies affecting this article.
- MrOllie's proposed change is an improvement over the current wording, but the only source that it summarizes accurately is Mackintosh. The wording "no evidence for a significant genetic component" seems to be making a statement about the possible size of a genetic contribution, and saying that it must be small if it exists. Mackintosh discusses evidence for a very small genetic contribution in his comments about brain volume, and later concludes that there's "remarkably little evidence" for a genetic contribution. But the other sources say that that the evidence for a genetic contribution is indirect or circumstantial, without taking a position about its possible size. Hunt is very critical of all arguments that the genetic contribution is a specific size (including the argument that it's a size of zero), and describes these arguments (p. 436) as "overly precise statements on either the pro-genetic or pro-environmental side". So I think MrOllie's proposal is not consistent with what most of these sources say, and the original wording "no direct evidence" is the most accurate summary of the sources.
- If MrOllie's proposal is the only one that can gain consensus, though, don't count me as opposing it. It's only consistent with one of the four sources, but I guess that's better than contradicting all four of them Gardenofaleph (talk) 00:27, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
Speculation is not science. Scientists cannot prove that the genetic contribution is zero. Nor can they prove that it's nonzero. Nor can they prove that, if it's small but nonzero, then it is positive. Nor that it's negative. (Positive means that if it weren't for environment blacks would still score below whites on average; negative means that they'd score higher.) This is the point that's made in the source that Aquillion, Generalrelative, and I have cited. It's a recent reliable source, published in the journal of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. Nothing in recent reliable sources contradicts that.
Please keep in mind that the RfC is settled. Wikipedia works by consensus, which means that attempting to continually relitigate settled questions is viewed as unconstructive. NightHeron (talk) 01:03, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- To put the same point another way: A measurement is never a single value, it is always a confidence interval. If the genetic effect is zero, what we measure will always be "somewhere between minus epsilon1 and plus epsilon2", with epsilon1 and epsilon2 being positive numbers. All that happens is that the epsilons will get smaller over time. And the people who believe in a non-zero effect will always be able to say "you did not refute the non-zero assumption". This is logically related to Popper's "possibility of refutation" criterion for science: following Popper, the statement "the value is zero" is science because it is refutable by getting an interval which does not contain zero, while the statement "the value is not zero" is not science because it is not refutable. The burden of proof lies with the non-zero crowd, and until they get an interval without zero in it, science says the effect is zero. The same logic applies to lots of other pseudosciences too. The effect of homeopathy is also measured to be "zero plus/minus epsilon". --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:30, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
Now do the environmental effect to see how meaningless this is. Spork Wielder (talk) 12:01, 16 March 2021 (UTC)- Are you saying that there is no evidence that Blacks are poorer than whites and that they have poorer access to education in the US? That must mean that someone here must have mastered the feat of editing a parallel universe's Wikipedia. --Hob Gadling (talk) 12:27, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
None of the studies show there is a consensus that genetics play no role. The study you cited says that the evidence the study uses is compatible with the claim, just as it's compatible with genetics explaining up to 15%. The scientific evidence is compatible with genetics playing a role, which is also what all the (imperfect) surveys of experts suggests is their opinion. I think the wording should be rearticulated as something akin to "the scientific consensus is that the existing evidence is compatible with environmental factors explaining the differences". Any sources cited don't (and as Nighheron said, cannot) rule out genetics playing a role.
There seems to be a misunderstanding where some editors think that "is compatible with environmental explanations" is thought to mean "is incompatible with genetic explanations".
78.16.177.15 (talk) 01:40, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- @NightHeron: Could you clarify what is the point you're trying to make about speculation vs science and what can be proven? None of the proposed changes to the wording are making any claims as to the level of proof that has been presented, and WP:Verifiability and WP:DUE apply to reliable sources across the board–not only to what science has proven–so I fail to see how those distinctions are relevant here. That said, I could probably get on board with a mention of the uncertainty involved, including Hunt's argument criticizing all estimates of the size of the genetic contribution as "overly preciese", if you think that would be important context. Stonkaments (talk) 01:49, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- Please see the above comment by Hob Gadling, who explained this better than I've been able to. NightHeron (talk) 10:49, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- Thank you. But I have a correction and two additions: "science says the effect is zero" should actually be "science says the effect is either zero or so close to zero that nobody has been able to measure it". Please note that this implies that those who believe it is different from zero do not do so because of solid empirical evidence but because of errors such as overgeneralization, cherry picking, wishful thinking, or for ideological reasons. Here another rule of thumb comes into play: Occam's Razor. If you can explain what we see without the assumption that there is an effect, you should. --Hob Gadling (talk) 11:42, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
The garbled attempts at scientific reasoning have no place here, since it is not the place for us to state our opinions. Nevertheless I can't help but laugh at those saying science proves things, or that an observation must be zero, when the explanation of the observation is the point under discussion, and then getting Occam's Razor exactly backwards by positing mysterious unidentified "environmental variables" to reduce an observed difference to zero. I guess this is why we look at reliable sources, not the intellectual mediocrities and social justice activists that edit Wikipedia. Spork Wielder (talk) 11:57, 16 March 2021 (UTC)- Regarding the environmental variables, see my response above.
- Those are things scientists understand and apply implicitly. The purpose of explaining them was to make some of the editors understand the parts they are missing when scientific sources are quoted, but it was not to be expected that all of the targets would grasp the concept. I'll just say WP:CIR and drop it.
- Reliable sources have been quoted above. It is your choice not to accept what they are saying. Wikipedia's choice is different from yours. --Hob Gadling (talk) 12:27, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- Hunt says: "Nisbett's extreme statement [that the differences are 100% environmental] has virtually no chance of being true...The real debate is over the identity and size of genetic and environmental influences on group differences in intelligence, not the existence of either one." This is arguably the most reliable tertiary source that we have, and presents a clear and direct claim that is as close to a refutation of your argument about the confidence interval as you'll get. Just because he leaves open the remotest of possibilities of the effect being zero (as you say, science can never prove with 100% certainty), per Occam's Razor, the best-guess estimate is a >0% genetic component. However, that claim is covered by the fringe RfC and I am not seeking to re-litigate or overturn that here.
- But the disputed sentence in the article makes an even stronger claim, saying there is no evidence for a genetic component. This is not a claim about the confidence interval, and I have yet to see anyone make an argument that it is an accurate representation of the cited sources (Generalrelative made the claim but did not elaborate an argument[7]). This is a problem, especially because there is a special restriction on this page about misrepresenting sources.[8]
refutation of your argument about the confidence interval
Wrong. What I wrote was just a further explanation of what NightHeron said, and it is all very basic science and independent of the specific race-and-intelligence example. Hunt's opinion about what Nisbett said does not invalidate it. --Hob Gadling (talk) 15:01, 16 March 2021 (UTC)- Oh, and yes, "no evidence for a genetic component" is a claim about the confidence interval, namely that it contains the value of zero. If it did not, that would constitute evidence for a genetic component. Can we stop this please? --Hob Gadling (talk) 15:04, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- Thank you. But I have a correction and two additions: "science says the effect is zero" should actually be "science says the effect is either zero or so close to zero that nobody has been able to measure it". Please note that this implies that those who believe it is different from zero do not do so because of solid empirical evidence but because of errors such as overgeneralization, cherry picking, wishful thinking, or for ideological reasons. Here another rule of thumb comes into play: Occam's Razor. If you can explain what we see without the assumption that there is an effect, you should. --Hob Gadling (talk) 11:42, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- Please see the above comment by Hob Gadling, who explained this better than I've been able to. NightHeron (talk) 10:49, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- (ec) Actually Hunt makes exactly the same point as Hob Gadling has above. Scientists cannot prove that the genetic contribution to the IQ gap is zero because, as Hunt helpfully points out, "doing so would require proving the null hypothesis and, as any good statistics instructor will tell you, that is a logical impossibility." (Hunt p.447) Hereditiarians, on the other hand, could indeed have proved that it was non-zero if that were the case, and have consistently failed to do so. This is the meaning of the Hunt quote: "Of course, tomorrow afternoon genetic mechanisms producing racial and ethnic differences in intelligence might be discovered, but there have been a lot of investigations, and tomorrow has not come for quite some time now."
- Hunt's opinion about Nisbett's view, on the other hand, is just an opinion. And indeed, it conflicts directly with Mackintosh's opinion that "One could reasonably defend Nisbett's argument that the gap was entirely environmental in origin." (Mackintosh p.344)
- One more point before I drop this thread: Hunt and Mackintosh are indeed reliable sources on the state of understanding 10 years ago among psychometiricians because that was their area of professional competence. When they speak about genetics specifically (and today's consensus) however, we should take their views with a grain of salt. If there is anyone who is truly open to persuasion that the hereditarian view is wrong (who is not already convinced by the mountain of evidence already presented), I would suggest reading "Race, genetics and pseudoscience: an explainer" by four prominent geneticists –– Ewan Birney, Jennifer Raff, Adam Rutherford, and Aylwyn Scally: [9] I won't be debating this. I know that it's been attacked by know-nothings on all the usual white-supremacist websites. I am also aware that it's a blog post. While blog posts by established experts are sometimes allowed in articles (per WP:RSSELF), I am not arguing that this source be included in this article. I am legitimately trying to inform those who do not yet know why the overwhelming majority of geneticists believe what they do about this topic. Please consider this my last straw of patience for the current crowd of race/IQ truthers. After this my engagement with specious argumentation will be limited to repeating the results of the RfC and reporting sanctionable behavior if necessary. Generalrelative (talk) 15:11, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Hob Gadling: Stop what, exactly? You are ok with the fact that the article's claim of no evidence for a genetic component is contradicted by the cited sources? Would you care to address that? I think that is the whole crux of the matter here. Stonkaments (talk) 15:16, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
It's amazing that these prominent geneticists identified the genes responsible for intelligence and found they were uniformly distributed among races. That's way more advanced the state of research I was aware of. Truly stunning and groundbreaking work that ends the debate. Nobel prize winning stuff. One only wonders why they didn't publish their data and methods, rather than asserting it on a blog. Spork Wielder (talk) 09:00, 19 March 2021 (UTC)- This is a truly ludicrous mischaracterization of what the geneticists say in the source. Among other things, they explain that socially constructed notions of race do not correspond to genetic divisions between populations, and so the concept of race is not useful in genetics. As before on the R&I talk page, this SPA's comments contain plenty of sarcasm and nothing of value. NightHeron (talk) 10:43, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
That's exactly what they say. "The genetic variants that are most strongly associated with IQ in Europeans are no more population-specific than any other trait. To put it bluntly, the same genetic variants associated with purportedly higher IQ in Europeans are also present in Africans, and have not emerged, or been obviously selected for, in recent evolutionary history outside Africa." What I find especially fascinating, is that despite their strawman dismissal of racial categories, they're happy to use those very categories to state Europeans and Africans have the same IQ variants. Which is it? Unsurprising that this confused nonsense is unpublished. Their "refutation" of the race concept is particularly funny: "If samples are collected based on pre-defined groupings, it’s entirely unsurprising that the analyses of these samples will return results that identify such groupings. This does not tell us that such taxonomies are inherent in human biology." Are these prominent geneticists unaware of the HGDP? Spork Wielder (talk) 11:38, 19 March 2021 (UTC)- Yes, they are. And they are also aware of the GIGO principle, of Reification, the Law of small numbers, the Texas sharpshooter fallacy and the Spurious relationship. --Hob Gadling (talk) 13:08, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
Am I supposed to waste my time explaining why literally none of these things apply? Spork Wielder (talk) 13:46, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
- It is, as Generalrelative just explained, contradicted not by "the cited sources" but by an opinion in one of the cited sources. You people do not understand how scientists talk and what they mean when they do, nor can you tell the difference between a statement of fact and an opinion. We all tried to explain it but seem to have failed. I don't think any further explanations will do anything to change the situation. --Hob Gadling (talk) 15:24, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- Can you point to just one example (of either fact or opinion) from any of the cited sources that supports the assertion that there is no evidence of a genetic component? Stonkaments (talk) 15:37, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- Stonkaments, That is what Hunt is communicating, that there probably is some difference (as there would be between any two randomly selected groups), but it is within the observational error range of the methods we have. This is scientist for 'no evidence' the same way that 'works as well as placebo' is medical researcher for 'it doesn't do anything'. MrOllie (talk) 16:18, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- I don't agree with that interpretation at all. It seems to me he's saying that it's abundantly clear (based on circumstantial evidence) that there is some genetic component, it's just a question of how much. Stonkaments (talk) 16:29, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- Stonkaments, That is what Hunt is communicating, that there probably is some difference (as there would be between any two randomly selected groups), but it is within the observational error range of the methods we have. This is scientist for 'no evidence' the same way that 'works as well as placebo' is medical researcher for 'it doesn't do anything'. MrOllie (talk) 16:18, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- Hob Galding, have you looked at the Hunt source itself, and not just the excerpts from it that various editors are posting here? Hunt definitely is not making the argument that you think he is. He gives a detailed summary of the arguments made by hereditarians, and then says "In general, I find their arguments not so much wrong as vastly overstated. But overstatement does not mean that there is no point to them." This is the context in which Hunt goes on to say, "Rushton and Jensen (and Lynn) are correct in saying that the 100% environmental hypothesis cannot be maintained." So in context, it is very clear that Hunt is saying that the hereditarians have presented enough evidence to demonstrate that the differences are not 100% environmental, but not enough evidence to support Rushton and Jensen's 80% genetic "default hypothesis" (which Hunt calls an "excessively precise statement").
- Can you point to just one example (of either fact or opinion) from any of the cited sources that supports the assertion that there is no evidence of a genetic component? Stonkaments (talk) 15:37, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- It is, as Generalrelative just explained, contradicted not by "the cited sources" but by an opinion in one of the cited sources. You people do not understand how scientists talk and what they mean when they do, nor can you tell the difference between a statement of fact and an opinion. We all tried to explain it but seem to have failed. I don't think any further explanations will do anything to change the situation. --Hob Gadling (talk) 15:24, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- As I said in my earlier post, I understand that consensus is opposed to changing this part of the article, or any of the other articles that the same wording cited to the same sources has been copied to. But I'd like everyone at least be aware of the reality of what's happening on these articles, which is that this is a case of consensus superseding the Verifiability policy. Gardenofaleph (talk) 23:36, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- I only know the few parts that have been quoted here, by any party, but nothing from those quotes convinces me that "no evidence" is wrong. What Hunt says still just sounds like his opinion.
- Is there evidence that homeopathy works? No. Well, actually yes, if you insist on answering the question literally, but it is really crappy evidence that does not count because it is the kind of evidence you would expect to be found even if the effect does not exist: bad studies without control groups, small studies with very little power, irreproducible statistical flukes. So, effectively, there is no evidence. If the effect exists, it is so tiny that nobody could reliably reproduce it. Still, there are people who are convinced that it must exist, and continue looking for it.
- The race-and-intelligence situation looks very much the same to me: If the effect exists, it is so tiny that nobody could reliably reproduce it. Still, there are people who are convinced that it must exist, and continue looking for it. Hunt is one of them. That is how it looks to me from the quotes.
- There are many studies that find that IQs are determined mainly by genetic factors. People who understand statistics will know that such results are not natural laws. They are properties of data sets. If you only use university students in your research, or only US citizens, or only US citizens with specific properties, your results will be determined by the distribution of the parameters you are looking at within your data set. If the environmental conditions of your subjects do not vary a lot - e.g. if you do not look at any people who live in actual slums - the influence of environmental factors will be lower than if you did. If you want to interpret data from another source, which includes people living in slums, you cannot just extrapolate from the more-homogenous-populations studies.
- But not everyone who uses statistics understands this. Many people, even scientists, view statistics as a tedious tool, a couple of recipes you follow without having to understand what exactly you are doing. Even published scientific studies are sometimes full of rookie mistakes. Statistical significance is one of the things used by thousands of scientists who do not understand what it really means - see Replication crisis. I think those IQs-are-determined-by-genetic-factors studies are misleading many such math-averse scientists into taking their results for real effects instead of just properties of data sets. Hunt sounds like one of those. Unless he gives actual results from valid studies with the right scope, "no evidence" seems right. --Hob Gadling (talk) 12:12, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
- Hrm... Hunt was the president of the International Society for Intelligence Research, which has historically been at least amicable to the hereditarian view (ie. willing to have its more out-there advocates on the editorial board of its journal). And just reading the section of his book being cited here I see several eyebrow-raising things - he devotes an entire aside to James Watson's controversial comments, where he defends them as factually accurate on every point.Note (Including the bit where Watson said
His hope is that everyone is equal, but “people who have had to deal with black employees find that this is not true.”
Hunt helpfully notes that this is an accurate statement because "As references in this chapter have shown, in the United States the work performance evaluations of African Americans are, on the average, lower than the evaluations received by white workers. This is true for both objective and subjective evaluations. The difference is much less than the difference in test score averages.
" I couldn't resist including that as a footnote.) He also gives massive amounts of focus to Rushton, Jensen, and Lynn. I would also point out that while he presents himself as a neutral observer who refuses to take sides, [10] describes him as a heriditarian, which pretty closely lines up with his career, expressed sympathies, and, of course, stated opinions. Like... obviously scholars exist who support the hereditarian position, but that doesn't make it the mainstream consensus. Hunt doesn't present what he's saying as the mainstream consensus, he just says it's what he believes. And it is fairly notable that even the scholars supporting that perspective tend to cite the same small number of people, which doesn't exactly support the argument that their views represent a broad scientific consensus. --Aquillion (talk) 14:24, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
- Hrm... Hunt was the president of the International Society for Intelligence Research, which has historically been at least amicable to the hereditarian view (ie. willing to have its more out-there advocates on the editorial board of its journal). And just reading the section of his book being cited here I see several eyebrow-raising things - he devotes an entire aside to James Watson's controversial comments, where he defends them as factually accurate on every point.Note (Including the bit where Watson said
- As I said in my earlier post, I understand that consensus is opposed to changing this part of the article, or any of the other articles that the same wording cited to the same sources has been copied to. But I'd like everyone at least be aware of the reality of what's happening on these articles, which is that this is a case of consensus superseding the Verifiability policy. Gardenofaleph (talk) 23:36, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
I guess the peer reviewed literature on the heritability of intelligence is written by people who just don't understand. Luckily we have Wikipedia editor Hob Gadling to show us the truth. Spork Wielder (talk) 15:43, 17 March 2021 (UTC)- Not "the peer reviewed literature", only part of it. --Hob Gadling (talk) 16:06, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
So where does this leave us? To summarize:
- The current wording,
no evidence for a genetic component
, fails WP:VERIFIABILITY and misrepresents the cited sources, all of which reference some level of indirect or circumstantial evidence for a genetic component. The only argument made that the sources do in fact support the current wording came from (in my opinion) a misinterpretation of Hunt's views tied to a tangential discussion on confidence intervals around the null hypothesis, speculation vs. science, and facts vs. opinions. - It looks like there is strong opposition to the original wording,
no direct evidence of a genetic component
, despite being the most faithful representation of the cited sources. - There has been some qualified support for
no evidence of a significant genetic component
. While still not an entirely accurate representation of the sources, it would be an improvement.
Can we work towards building consensus on how to incorporate a change to no evidence of a significant genetic component
? What additional context or qualifying statements, if any, would be needed to go along with that? Stonkaments (talk) 15:47, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
- That summary is obviously biased. The truth of the matter is that the discussion has (1) two editors plus one sarcastic SPA who dislike the conclusion of the RfC on race and intelligence and want to undermine it by changes in wording, and (2) five editors who have been arguing against this. A consensus already exists on Wikipedia, and it does not support introducing weasle-words that suggest that there's scientific evidence that some races are genetically inferior to others. NightHeron (talk) 16:02, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
Can we really vote to ignore core policies? Neat. Spork Wielder (talk) 16:12, 17 March 2021 (UTC)- I moved your response where it belongs: after the contribution it responded to. But consensus is not a vote, and your interpretation of the source is just your interpretation while the consensus has a different one. So, your problem, not ours. --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:27, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
- Why should "Hunt's views" be relevant? Science is about results, not about views. --Hob Gadling (talk) 16:06, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
- The views in Hunt's Intelligence are relevant because:
- It is being cited as a source (and his views are being used to defend the current wording, when in fact they argue against it)
- It is considered a reliable tertiary source, which Wikipedia policy notes "can be helpful in providing broad summaries of topics" and "may be helpful in evaluating due weight"[11]. Stonkaments (talk) 16:20, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
- It is a tertiary source for the stuff Hunt gets from other sources and summarizes, but a primary source for Hunt's own view about it. Which part of "Science is about results, not about views" did you not understand? --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:27, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
- The views in Hunt's Intelligence are relevant because:
I have one last proposal that I hope might be amenable to everyone, before I bring this to dispute resolution. Would there be support for simply removing the sentence entirely? The sentence that follows, Growing evidence indicates that environmental factors, not genetic ones, explain the racial IQ gap, seems to provide an adequate summary of that section and the current scientific consensus, without the issues of verifiability and misrepresenting sources that have been brought up here. Stonkaments (talk) 01:22, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
- I oppose deleting that sentence, which correctly represents current scientific consensus. I would also urge you to drop the stick rather than taking a matter to dispute resolution that was already litigated in great detail in the RfC and elsewhere, including this talk page. NightHeron (talk) 02:33, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
- I also oppose deleting that sentence, and I reject the premise that it misrepresents the sources. - MrOllie (talk) 03:30, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
- As pointed out in earlier discussion, there is no source that states the existence of such consensus, and all the surveys of experts suggest this is not the case. Even if these surveys like this are imperfect, the burden of proof is upon those claiming consensus is 100% environmental to provide better sources with more rigorous methodology which they have been unable to do. Indeed there seems to be inability to cite any source even with less rigorous methodology that would suggest such consensus exists. It seems people mistake "compatible with entirely environmental explanation" as "incompatible with any genetic factor". I support changing the sentence to something that mentions that something along the lines of "the differences are compatible with environmental explanations".
2001:14BB:70:C4C5:A041:ECC7:B828:6037 (talk) 08:54, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
- You're mixing up two very different statements. No one is saying that the scientific evidence is "incompatible with any genetic factor", which would be the same as saying that science has proved that it's zero. Neither is science incompatible with the existence of Bigfoot.
- You, too, please drop the stick. NightHeron (talk) 10:09, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
So then we agree that at least some experts think the evidence is at least compatible with a genetic factor? It's kind of an academic question, because we can all see that some do. Anyway, this is clearly going nowhere and needs to go to dispute resolution. Spork Wielder (talk) 12:22, 18 March 2021 (UTC)- You still do not get it. All experts think that, and they will all continue to think it forever, because there is no possible evidential situation which would be incompatible with it. That is trivially true and does not need to be mentioned in the article.
- Yes, this is going nowhere because it already has gone somewhere and is there now. The dispute resolution has already happened and does not need to happen again. That is why, as NightHeron said, you should drop the stick. EOD as far as I am concerned. --Hob Gadling (talk) 13:27, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
I have raised this issue here: Wikipedia:No_original_research/Noticeboard#Race_and_IQ:_"no_evidence"_for_genetic_component? Stonkaments (talk) 22:47, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
Direct vs indirect evidence
Flynn's 1980 book "Race, IQ and Jensen" has a chapter on Direct evidence and indirect. Flynn says direct evidence favors an environmental explanation, indirect evidence favors a hereditarian explanation. He says direct evidence overrules indirect evidence. As making a distinction between these two types seems to be a thing in this field of research, it would be a mistake to conflate "evidence" with either "direct evidence" or "indirect evidence". When a source says "direct evidence", Wikipedia should also call it "direct evidence" in the article. --Angillo (talk) 18:35, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
"Current" scientific consensus
MPants at work's recent edit has removed the qualifying word "current" regarding the scientific consensus, with the justification being that there's no need to paint this as temporary when it's not; the data that's evinced this will not change with time
. Could you please explain what is the support for the claim that the scientific consensus is permanent and will not change with time? That strikes me as an inaccurate interpretation of the relevant sources, as well as a misunderstanding of the scientific process and the dissenting view as an alternative theoretical formulation on the spectrum of fringe theories (WP:FRINGE/PS). Stonkaments (talk) 19:59, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
- Scientific consensus can always change. I took MPants' edit summary to be an argument rather than a statement of absolute fact. To me, the fact that scientific consensus is changeable is a good reason never to include the word current before it, because the effect is to cast doubt on a particular consensus. There's no good reason to do so here. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 20:14, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
- As far as I can tell, Cici & Williams 2009 is the only cited source that makes a claim about the scientific consensus. They say:
There is an emerging consensus about racial and gender equality in genetic determinants of intelligence; most researchers, including ourselves, agree that genes do not explain between-group differences.
[12] (They also say that "plenty of scholars remain unpersuaded", and note that considerations for what is "acceptable" or "politically correct" may influence the debate.) - Per WP:RS/AC, Wikipedia's claims about the scientific consensus should match what is indicated in the sources. The fact that the source explicitly calls it an emerging consensus is important, and Wikipedia should reflect that. Stonkaments (talk) 20:32, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
- (ec)I'm still waiting for some explanation as to why the qualifier "currently" is necessary that doesn't boil down to instilling doubt as to it's accuracy in the reader's mind. Your argument above about consensus changing is exactly that; the reader should doubt it because it might change. Only this is Wikipedia; we don't work to instill doubt about the veracity of scientific consensus, we simply state it as fact.
- As to your followup implying that this consensus doesn't even exist, I'd point out that you've lost this argument over at WP:NORN already, and others have lost this same argument countless times. This question has a binary answer, and without demonstrating that most researchers believe that genetics explains it, that leaves only the environmental explanation. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:54, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
- That source was published 12 years ago. The "emerging" consensus has by now emerged. The trouble with the term current consensus is that it suggests not only that the consensus was different in the past (which is true) but also that it is likely to be different in the future (which is false). It is theoretically conceivable that the consensus (like any consensus, e.g., the consensus about anthropogenic climate change) will change, but we don't say "the current scientific consensus is that anthropogenic climate change is real." The word current doesn't belong in either case. NightHeron (talk) 20:44, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
- Can you provide any sources that support your view of the current scientific consensus? Stonkaments (talk) 20:48, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
- Can you provide any sources that support your implicit assertion that this consensus is likely to change? ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:56, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
- The qualifier "current" (or ideally, "emerging") is necessary in order to accurately represent what the source says about the scientific consensus. Per WP:RS/AC:
Stated simply, any statement in Wikipedia that academic consensus exists on a topic must be sourced rather than being based on the opinion or assessment of editors.
- I am not making the assertion that the consensus is likely to change; I'm simply arguing that consensus can change, and that we should faithfully represent what the sources say about the current state of the scientific consensus. I understand the cited source is 12 years old, so a newer source would be much appreciated, but we can't simply assert that the emerging consensus has "emerged" without reliable sourcing. Stonkaments (talk) 21:25, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
The qualifier "current" (or ideally, "emerging") is necessary in order to accurately represent what the source says about the scientific consensus.
Insisting that something is necessary without providing a coherent explanation of why it is necessary, when you have been asked by at least two people to provide a coherent explanation of why it is necessary will accomplish nothing except undermining your own credibility. I should note that the diametric disconnect between what you claim to believe and what you argue for on these talk pages does much the same. If you're having trouble getting at my meaning, perhaps a more colloquial term will express what I'm getting at better: The more you talk, the less convincing you get. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:46, 26 April 2021 (UTC)- "The fact that the source explicitly calls it an emerging consensus is important, and Wikipedia should reflect that." What is unclear? Stonkaments (talk) 21:54, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
- You want to know what's unclear about it? Whether it's true. Your insistence that it's important isn't enough to go on. BTW: Richard Lewontin said that the environmental explanation was "the present egalitarian cosnensus" as long ago as 1970. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 22:05, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
- Stonkaments' wikilawyering has got to stop. The obvious purpose of trying to put a word like "current" or "emerging" in front of "consensus" is to plant doubt in the reader's mind. The RfC at WP:FTN ([13]) considered many sources, including statements by major scientific organizations, in reaching the conclusion that racial hereditarianism is a fringe POV. This does not have to be relitigated every time Stonkaments or another opponent of the RfC tries to weaken statements of that consensus in R&I and related articles. NightHeron (talk) 22:22, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
- I just posted a source from 1970 that clearly stated it was the current consensus even then, so if that's not the end of it, we might have to take this to ANI. I mean, there are only three possibilities:
- 1. It's controversial. The sheer weight of the evidence in favor of the environmental hypothesis, and the sheer weight of evidence undermining the genetic hypothesis falsifies this option.
- 2. The consensus is that it's genetic. There's not a shred of evidence for this.
- 3. The consensus is that it's environmental. The evidence supports this overwhelmingly, researchers who disagree with this are "ostracized" and "censured", and we've got two sources straight up saying "this is the consensus", one from 1970, and another from 2009. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 22:29, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
- FYI, here is the entire quote from Lewontin's paper: "Such a conclusion is so clearly at variance with the present egalitarian consensus and so clearly smacks of a racist elitism, whatever its merit or motivation, that a very careful analysis of the argument is in order."
- This source supports the statement that Jensen's 1969 paper went against the scientific consensus that existed fifty years ago, but it does not support the statement that there is (in the present) "no evidence" for Jensen's position, which is what the Wikipedia article says. Lewontin's article doesn't use the phrase "no evidence" or any similar phrase at all. Whether a hypothesis is correct or incorrect, and whether or not evidence exists for it, are two separate questions. Sometimes there is evidence for both of two competing hypothesis, but the evidence is stronger for one than for the other.
- I'm not trying to change the article's text at this stage, because I know last year's RFC doesn't allow it to be changed. So this is just another reminder that despite how many times this has been discussed, the phrase "no evidence for a genetic component" (as opposed to "no direct evidence", which is what the article used to say) still isn't consistent with what most of its sources say. Gardenofaleph (talk) 00:09, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
- I'll just pop in here to note that Gardenofaleph's "reminder" does not represent what most of us think is the case, per the recent RfC at NOR/N and the talk page threads leading up to it. Indeed it has been explained again and again how and why the sources support the language "no evidence for a genetic component". This will not be relitigated here. It just needs to be noted and then moved on from. Generalrelative (talk) 00:32, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
- You've already had your argument rejected by the community. More than once. WP:HORSE. Move on. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 02:36, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
- "The fact that the source explicitly calls it an emerging consensus is important, and Wikipedia should reflect that." What is unclear? Stonkaments (talk) 21:54, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
- The qualifier "current" (or ideally, "emerging") is necessary in order to accurately represent what the source says about the scientific consensus. Per WP:RS/AC:
- Can you provide any sources that support your implicit assertion that this consensus is likely to change? ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:56, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
- Can you provide any sources that support your view of the current scientific consensus? Stonkaments (talk) 20:48, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
- As far as I can tell, Cici & Williams 2009 is the only cited source that makes a claim about the scientific consensus. They say:
- Stonkaments, no. Repeat until heat death of universe. Just: no. This is precisely the kind of weaselry that racists have been trying to insert here for a decade and more. In the absence of a credible racially-neutral way of measuring intelligence objectively, there is no way of separating racial variation from systemic bias. Guy (help! - typo?) 20:50, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
- Your opinion is at variance with mainstream psychology. Nuclear Milkman (talk) 09:01, 28 April 2021 (UTC)— Nuclear Milkman (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
- No it is not: it is entirely in line with the strong scientific consensus. The group that declared themselves to be "the mainstream" are the opposite, they are a tiny minority. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 09:59, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
- Guys, remember when the racists got 52 professors to sign a statement saying that the racist view was mainstream, then somebody demonstrated that 80% of those professors weren't even experts in the subject, and the APA then issued a comprehensive report basically calling that first statement bullshit? Yeah, good times. Good times. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 12:17, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
- No it is not: it is entirely in line with the strong scientific consensus. The group that declared themselves to be "the mainstream" are the opposite, they are a tiny minority. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 09:59, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
- Your opinion is at variance with mainstream psychology. Nuclear Milkman (talk) 09:01, 28 April 2021 (UTC)— Nuclear Milkman (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
Isn't Nuclear Milkman a likely sock? They created the account today and have a total of 7 edits, all to this page, and all but the first have been disruptive. NightHeron (talk) 13:32, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
- For anyone still following this: Yesterday, I added Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns to the list of sources supporting the statement about the scientific consensus, as it was a work specifically commissioned to address this very question, by the organization which is best suited to be the definitive voice on the state of the science. There is literally no better possible source for this claim. I would advise anyone reading this to refuse to discuss the issue unless and until an editor who disagrees comes equipped with sources of a similar quality that explicitly refute this statement on the consensus. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 13:09, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
AE request opened
I have opened a request that affects this page on the Arbitration enforcement noticeboard. You can find it at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Race_and_Intelligence. - MrOllie (talk) 14:12, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
- Please note that I have modified the article AND talk page to Extended Confirmed Protection (WP:ECP) as per that discussion, for a period of 6 months. At the end of that time, the article will revert to no protection, so I recommend starting a new report at WP:AE about two weeks prior to the expiration of protection, so that a discussion can be had regarding the problems (if any) and usefulness of ECP on this article, and so that appropriate protection can be applied before expiration. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 21:44, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
- Dennis, I really appreciate this, especially given the way that each round of drama has a way of stirring up the IPs and socks, and the fact that a new round of drama has begun. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 22:36, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
- Well, the next 6 months will be revealing. Feel free to ping me when that time comes. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 23:12, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
- Dennis, I really appreciate this, especially given the way that each round of drama has a way of stirring up the IPs and socks, and the fact that a new round of drama has begun. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 22:36, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
Criticisms of Intelligence as a biologically defined concept.
Surely these criticisms would be better largely left to the relevant linked articles: Human intelligence, Intelligence quotient, and G factor?
This article leaps straight from a short history of discussions of race and intelligence into questioning the nature of and validity of measuring intelligence itself. It seems odd and ill-prioritised to the casual reader.
Rather than having the 'history', 'who might have funded what' and 'what is intelligence anyway?' portions at the head of the article, how about reordering it to feature the contemporary research, results and conclusions first? For someone dipping into an encyclopedia to learn about the links (or lack of) between race and intelligence, and any reasons there might be for such links, this would be a far more useful approach.
Granted, criticism of the concept 'race' must be featured, but nobody denies that intelligence exists as a scientific concept.
A 'Controversy' or 'Criticisms' section further down would seem sensible, as this seems to be the standard format on Wikipedia. 2407:7000:9BC3:C800:A111:F246:3AB6:3EDD (talk) 12:24, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
- To each their own, I suppose. I'll just correct a couple of misconceptions here:
- 1)
nobody denies that intelligence exists as a scientific concept
That really depends on what you mean by "intelligence" and what you mean by "scientific concept". The problem is with reducing intelligence to a measurable quantity like IQ. Scientific consensus on the construct validity of IQ is summed up by Wayne Weiten (quoted in the validity section of our IQ article): "IQ tests are valid measures of the kind of intelligence necessary to do well in academic work. But if the purpose is to assess intelligence in a broader sense, the validity of IQ tests is questionable." In my view the section we have here deals with this issue appropriately, and it is appropriate to introduce the concept in a nuanced way before detailing the science on the concept. - 2)
A 'Controversy' or 'Criticisms' section further down would seem sensible, as this seems to be the standard format on Wikipedia.
Not so. See WP:NOCRIT. It's just an essay but one with enough community buy-in that it can be considered a norm. For all the reasons discussed in that essay, a criticism section would be inappropriate here. Generalrelative (talk) 12:41, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
- The section in question is not a general criticism section but rather it relates to whether the terms race and intelligence in the article title have any clear scientific meanings. So the section logically belongs where it is, near the beginning of the main body. NightHeron (talk) 12:47, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
- I agree that the section belongs here. This article is about the intersection of two concepts, and the validity and applicability of those concepts is important to both the nature of this intersection and the scientific consensus concerning it.
- A criticism section would not suite this article, given that one of the concepts (race) is biologically meaningless and the other (a measurable g-factor) is quite controversial. We'd essentially have to repeat the rest of the article in that section. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:39, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
RfC on racial hereditarianism
Is the following statement correct (vote "yes") or incorrect (vote "no")? The theory that a genetic link exists between race and intelligence is enough of a minority viewpoint in the scientific consensus that it falls under Wikipedia's definition of a fringe theory.
NightHeron (talk) 20:24, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
Discussion
Several editors have suggested that last year's RfC on race and intelligence (see [14]) should be revisited. As the OP of that RfC, I'm fine with that, provided it's done with the EC-protection that this talk-page has. The wording of the above formulation is taken from the closing of last year's RfC. NightHeron (talk) 20:24, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- I'd rather there was more significant planning before this RfC was opened, though I guess opening it now means that a rush of fresh accounts can't extended confirmed status prior to the closure of the RfC. I don't see why we need another RfC when the result last time was pretty definitive once the SPA's had been discounted. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:48, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- Sure. But from what's been going on at WP:RSN it was clear that the choice was between a straightforward, neutrally stated RfC that revisits last year's RfC, or else a complicated, tendentiously worded RfC at a non-EC-protected forum. Hopefully, this way it won't be such a time sink for all of us. NightHeron (talk) 21:48, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- I do think that such a quick re-opening of an RfC, esp. when there wasn't clear consensus on what venue would be appropriate is... ill-advised for creating a solid consensus in the future. I think a FTN thread would have been better. —Wingedserif (talk) 22:18, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- The RfC at WP:RSN was closed on the grounds of improper venue, as well as non-neutral formulation. Meanwhile, several editors had commented on starting a new RfC elsewhere. One editor suggested FTN, and several editors, apparently including the closing admin, favored this talk-page. In any case, we don't need to go through an RfC on where to hold an RfC, I hope. NightHeron (talk) 22:32, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- The closing admin mentioned the talk page as an option, as well as NPOVN; their summary was not a mandate or a recommendation. This formulation of the RfC will not end the issue, as we can at best create WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. I think this was hasty, but here we are now. —Wingedserif (talk) 22:41, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- According to WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, a local consensus is a consensus
among a limited group of editors
. I've just finished putting notifications of this RfC on the talk-pages of all editors (except for SPAs, IPs, and editors with edit-count less than 500) on both sides in last year's RfC, over 40 editors. I've also put notices at Talk:Scientific racism, Talk:Nations and IQ, Talk:Heritability of IQ, WP:RSN, and WP:FTN. I'd be happy to put notices wherever else you suggest, in particular, at any relevant WikiProjects you can think of. I agree that it's important to invite broad participation. NightHeron (talk) 23:25, 3 May 2021 (UTC)- Agreed. I will also note that the ongoing grumbling at RSN is going on against the advice of the closing admin, who stated:
I would HIGHLY suggest you hold this discussion on the article talk page rather than here, which is what I stated in the closure I made above.
[15] That seems pretty unambiguous to me. Generalrelative (talk) 23:36, 3 May 2021 (UTC)- The full, correct quote was
I would HIGHLY suggest you hold this discussion on the article talk page rather than here, which is what I stated in the closure I made above, or at NPOVN as you noted. Please do not hold it here, immediately after the above discussion.
I agree that the previous RfC was malformed and am glad to see that a wide range of editors will be notified. I was tbh suspicious of the RSN RfC deciding to not notify previously involved editors. —Wingedserif (talk) 23:53, 3 May 2021 (UTC)- Aha, my apologies. I was looking at the original diff [16] not the amended comment [17]. Thanks for the correction! Generalrelative (talk) 23:56, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- No worries! I had to recheck because I was confused by the sentence structure the first time anyway. —Wingedserif (talk) 23:59, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- Aha, my apologies. I was looking at the original diff [16] not the amended comment [17]. Thanks for the correction! Generalrelative (talk) 23:56, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- The full, correct quote was
- Agreed. I will also note that the ongoing grumbling at RSN is going on against the advice of the closing admin, who stated:
- According to WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, a local consensus is a consensus
- The closing admin mentioned the talk page as an option, as well as NPOVN; their summary was not a mandate or a recommendation. This formulation of the RfC will not end the issue, as we can at best create WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. I think this was hasty, but here we are now. —Wingedserif (talk) 22:41, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- The RfC at WP:RSN was closed on the grounds of improper venue, as well as non-neutral formulation. Meanwhile, several editors had commented on starting a new RfC elsewhere. One editor suggested FTN, and several editors, apparently including the closing admin, favored this talk-page. In any case, we don't need to go through an RfC on where to hold an RfC, I hope. NightHeron (talk) 22:32, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- I do think that such a quick re-opening of an RfC, esp. when there wasn't clear consensus on what venue would be appropriate is... ill-advised for creating a solid consensus in the future. I think a FTN thread would have been better. —Wingedserif (talk) 22:18, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- Sure. But from what's been going on at WP:RSN it was clear that the choice was between a straightforward, neutrally stated RfC that revisits last year's RfC, or else a complicated, tendentiously worded RfC at a non-EC-protected forum. Hopefully, this way it won't be such a time sink for all of us. NightHeron (talk) 21:48, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- Seems like an attempt to pre-empt an ongoing discussion at the RS noticeboard about a more carefully worded RFC. Seems invalid, so I won't vote. tickle me 01:28, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- At RSN, an opponent of last year's RfC started an RfC with a lengthy and highly partisan statement. After the ensuing discussion, in which several editors objected and called for a brief and neutral RfC, an uninvolved admin mercifully closed that RfC. Then another opponent of last year's RfC proposed a complicated, multi-tiered RfC statement that was also
rejectednot supported by most editors. Meanwhile, I and several other editors were arguing for a policy-compliant RfC to be started on this talk-page. There is no Wikipedia policy that says that we have to wait for the second long discussion at RSN to be closed before starting such an RfC. However, there is a Wikipedia policy that says that an RfC statement must bebrief and neutral
. NightHeron (talk) 09:30, 4 May 2021 (UTC)- The proposal for a new RfC at RSN was not "rejected by most editors" as you claim—that is a blatant falsehood. You are the only one who expressed opposition (and one other editor suggested that the discussion be held elsewhere). In contrast, numerous editors have expressed concerns about the validity of this RfC as being disruptive, hastily constructed, etc. As the OP of the new proposed RfC at RSN explained:
The entire point of starting a new RFC was to address the issues of WP:RS and WP:V that have arisen over the past year. Your RFC question ignores those issues, and just rehashes the question from last year's RFC. An RFC that ignores those issues won't be able to resolve anything useful, no matter which way the outcome goes.
Stonkaments (talk) 19:13, 4 May 2021 (UTC)- You and Alaexis were the only ones to support AndewNguyen's proposal, and Alaexis also supported the opening of this RfC (kindly thanked me for doing it). Jayron32, Guy, Aquillon, and I had objections. But you're right about my word choice: rejected is too strong, so I've changed it to not supported. NightHeron (talk) 19:55, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- The proposal for a new RfC at RSN was not "rejected by most editors" as you claim—that is a blatant falsehood. You are the only one who expressed opposition (and one other editor suggested that the discussion be held elsewhere). In contrast, numerous editors have expressed concerns about the validity of this RfC as being disruptive, hastily constructed, etc. As the OP of the new proposed RfC at RSN explained:
- At RSN, an opponent of last year's RfC started an RfC with a lengthy and highly partisan statement. After the ensuing discussion, in which several editors objected and called for a brief and neutral RfC, an uninvolved admin mercifully closed that RfC. Then another opponent of last year's RfC proposed a complicated, multi-tiered RfC statement that was also
- Seems like an attempt to pre-empt an ongoing discussion at the RS noticeboard about a more carefully worded RFC. Seems invalid, so I won't vote. tickle me 01:28, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes per the clear consensus of the previous RfC, which I don't see the justification for revisiting. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:01, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes per the previous discussion, per the sources used to support the text in the article:
The scientific consensus is that there is no evidence for a genetic component behind IQ differences between racial groups.
and per the facts that the vast majority of sources and arguments used in the countless previous discussions to contest this have been that there is a genetic component, not that the scientific consensus is that there is a genetic component, and that those few sources which address the actual consensus provided have been of quite low quality. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:32, 3 May 2021 (UTC) - Yes, definitively. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:37, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes No change in clear scientific consensus. We can't keep revisiting this nonsense every year. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:14, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes. This is a careful and accurate statement of fact that summarises a complex question about as simply as we can manage in line with scientific accuracy. There's a lot of prior discussion about the specifics but it boils down to: IQ is not culturally neutral; evidence of a racial component to IQ is thoroughly confounded by that fact. It's also exactly the correct question when we consider the wider issue of long-term advocacy by proponents. Science says: wrong measure, also, no, because racism. That doesn't make every advocate of a racial component to intelligence a racist, but the racists sure as hell think it does, so we should be seriously careful about that. Guy (help! - typo?) 22:26, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes per the above. See this 2020 statement by a group of prominent scholars including biological anthropologists Agustín Fuentes of Princeton and Jonathan M. Marks of the University of North Carolina, which discusses the question of why we see so few actual geneticists publishing research on the topic of race and IQ:
[W]hile it is true that most researchers in the area of human genetics and human biological diversity no longer allocate significant resources and time to the race/IQ discussion, and that moral concerns may play an important role in these decisions, an equally fundamental reason why researchers do not engage with the thesis is that empirical evidence shows that the whole idea itself is unintelligible and wrong-headed.
[18] For anyone who is skeptical as to whether this view represents a true scientific consensus, I'd suggest running a 20-year search of "race and intelligence" at Nature and Science. You will find plenty that agrees with this 2019 Nature editorial titled "Intelligence research should not be held back by its past" (coordinated to comment upon a meta-analysis in Nature Genetics published on the same day):Historical measurements of skull volume and brain weight were done to advance claims of the racial superiority of white people. More recently, the (genuine but closing) gap between the average IQ scores of groups of black and white people in the United States has been falsely attributed to genetic differences between the races.
[19] (see also [20], [21], [22] and [23]). But you will find nothing that affirmatively supports a genetic connection between race and intelligence. The most you will find are a couple which entertain the possibility that connections between cognitive abilities and race-like genetic clusters may be discovered in the future (see [24] and [25]). Even where the ethics of researching links between race and intelligence are defended ([26]), it is clearly stated thatThere is an emerging consensus about racial and gender equality in genetic determinants of intelligence; most researchers, including ourselves, agree that genes do not explain between-group differences.
Generalrelative (talk) 22:32, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks for providing sources. I am not sure that they support your conclusion. To take this Nature article as an example, the language they use is much more circumspect "There is broad consensus across the social and biological sciences that groups of humans typically referred to as races are not very different from one another. Two individuals from the same race could have more genetic variation between them than individuals from different races. Race is therefore not a particularly useful category to use when searching for the genetics of biological traits or even medical vulnerabilities, despite widespread assumptions." It is neither explicitly stated nor obviously follows logically from this that the opinion that there is some genetic component to the variation is fringe. Unless I missed something in the article. Alaexis¿question? 06:05, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- @Alaexis:
It is neither explicitly stated nor obviously follows logically from this that the opinion that there is some genetic component to the variation is fringe.
You are incorrect. - Consider this: everything we know about the genetic difference between different races boil down to a collection of traits, the combination of which is more or less unique to each race, even though none of those traits is unique to any ethnicity (a biologically meaningful term to describe ancestral lines). None of those traits have ever been shown to be related to brain structure.
- So let's say a person is defined by 5 traits A-E, 3 of which are strongly hereditary and the other two are weakly hereditary, we might get a picture of a person that looks like this:
A:1 B:7 C:2 D:9 E:5
. - Now, we can say that traits A-C are strongly hereditary, and then define their race based on those. If a person has traits
A:1 B:9 C:1
, they're considered Black, whereas if they have traitsA:9 B:1 C:7
, they're considered white. That seems clear enough, until you ask about a person who has traitsA:4 B:4 C:3
, who's somewhere in the middle. - This is why these frequent, forceful statements about how biologically meaningless racial categorizations are undermine the claim that there's a genetic link between intelligence and race. But that's not the whole problem.
- There's another issue in that, the only trait that we can clearly and positively associate with intelligence is
E
, such that a person withE:1
has a 30% chance of having an IQ less than 70, and a person withE:9
has a 10% chance of having an IQ greater than 130. - But there's a problem, in that there's this weird fact that people with
D:3
have a 10% chance of having an IQ over 150, but people with all otherD
traits are perfectly normal. Oh yeah, and they can't find anyone withE:7
with an IQ over 110, even though people withE:6
andE:8
are over-represented in the 110+ IQ group. - That's the state of genetic research on intelligence right now. There's literally no evidence that there's any genetic link between race and intelligence, and there's good reason to believe that the two aren't even remotely related, as the genes involved don't seem to interact. And given the size of the differences measured between races, any genetic component that we did find evidence for is far more likely to be a simple artifact of the normal hereditary nature of intelligence (which is estimated to explain about 50% of an individual's IQ), as any amount which can be attributed to genetics which is less than the clear majority of the difference would be statistically meaningless; less than the expected difference between the same person taking the same IQ test (with the tasks randomized) on different days. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 13:27, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- I don't know enough about genetics to assess how close your toy example is to the actual state of the science. To the extent that I do know, your reasoning appears valid (except that I don't think IQ is a good measure of intelligence except maybe for low IQ range). The differences between races are indeed small compared to inter-personal or even same-person-at-different times variability. My point was that the source you provided does not say explicitly that this is a fringe theory. By way of analogy, now the scientific consensus is that the Universe is about 14 billion years old. If a scholar publishes an article arguing it's in fact 16 billion years old we would not automatically say it's a fringe view and would use normal notability guidelines to decide if and how to mention it.
- Can you point to an article in a journal of the caliber of Nature/Science where it's written in a more explicit way? Not necessarily using the word fringe. Alaexis¿question? 14:44, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- @Alaexis: I think the statement by the editors of Nature, in an editorial paired with a huge meta-analysis on the genetics of intelligence, stating that attributing the black-white IQ gap to genetics is "false" is a pretty strong sign. In response to your initial comment, note that I provided those "see also" links for context on what you will find when you run a a 20-year search of "race and intelligence" at Nature and Science. You are responding to one of those, and they are not key to my argument. The key point is that real geneticists largely eschew the whole idea of a genetic link between race and intelligence as
unintelligible and wrong-headed
. I also wanted to keep my !vote as brief as possible, but if you'd like more sources which might persuade the persuadable, see "Why genetic IQ differences between 'races' are unlikely" by the geneticist Kevin Mitchell [27] and "Race, genetics and pseudoscience: an explainer" by the geneticists Ewan Birney, Jennifer Raff, Adam Rutherford and Aylwyn Scally: [28]. Neither of these are peer-reviewed publications, let alone published in Nature or Science, but they are both by respected subject-matter experts (especially Birney, who is a pretty big deal). Unlike the opinions of psychometricians as to what is likely genetic, the opinions of real geneticists should carry weight per e.g. WP:SELFPUB. Generalrelative (talk) 14:59, 4 May 2021 (UTC)- Okay, so out of three sources you mentioned, there is one source that is indeed very direct (More recently, the (genuine but closing) gap between the average IQ scores of groups of black and white people in the United States has been falsely attributed to genetic differences between the races) and two that use a more measured language (While genetic variation may help to explain why one person is more intelligent than another, there are unlikely to be stable and systematic genetic differences that make one population more intelligent than the next, In reality for most traits, including IQ, it is not only unclear that genetic variation explains differences between populations, it is also unlikely. Alaexis¿question? 16:14, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- That seems like a rather selective reading. The piece by Birney et al., for example, states that
claims about the genetic basis for population differences [in IQ], are not scientifically supported
. They then go on to explain why it is also unlikely that such a basis will be discovered in the future. And in the end they make it very clear that the reason they need to explain these things at all is that they feel it is incumbent on them to countera vocal fringe of race pseudoscience
. Though they do not call out "hereditarian" figures like Rindermann and Lynn by name, it would be a stretch to read the entire piece and come away with any ambiguity as to whom they're referring to here. I'm tempted to quote at length, but really, the whole thing is not very long. I would encourage anyone who is skeptical about this issue to read it: [29] Generalrelative (talk) 16:36, 4 May 2021 (UTC)- Generalrelative You wouldn't find sentences like 'Earth is unlikely to be flat' or 'Fossil fuels are likely to contribute to the global warming', so it feels that it's less fringe-y. Alaexis¿question? 06:50, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
- @Alaexis: A closer analogy would be to the claims that extraterrestrials have abducted humans, or that Bigfoot exists, or that there are humanoid forms of life on Mars. We can't say that science has proved that all are false. We can say that there is no scientific evidence for any of them and that it's unlikely that evidence for any of them will be found in the future.
- It's sometimes hard or impossible for science to prove a negative. Thus, it's theoretically possible, though unlikely according to scientific consensus, that some day a barely detectable genetic link between the nebulous and ill-defined concept of race and the nebulous and ill-defined concept of intelligence will be found. As mentioned in an earlier discussion, one recent source[1] pointed out that if such an unlikely event were to occur, it's just as likely that the advantage in intelligence would turn out to belong to people of African ancestry as to people of European ancestry. NightHeron (talk) 11:57, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
- +1 to this. Generalrelative (talk) 14:54, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
- Generalrelative You wouldn't find sentences like 'Earth is unlikely to be flat' or 'Fossil fuels are likely to contribute to the global warming', so it feels that it's less fringe-y. Alaexis¿question? 06:50, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
- That seems like a rather selective reading. The piece by Birney et al., for example, states that
- Okay, so out of three sources you mentioned, there is one source that is indeed very direct (More recently, the (genuine but closing) gap between the average IQ scores of groups of black and white people in the United States has been falsely attributed to genetic differences between the races) and two that use a more measured language (While genetic variation may help to explain why one person is more intelligent than another, there are unlikely to be stable and systematic genetic differences that make one population more intelligent than the next, In reality for most traits, including IQ, it is not only unclear that genetic variation explains differences between populations, it is also unlikely. Alaexis¿question? 16:14, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- @Alaexis: Quite frankly, you are dead wrong about how we would treat such a work in your hypothetical. We would (and should) treat it as a fringe view, and our general notability requirements would only determine whether we mention it at all.
- In addition, you have been shown sources that explicitly state that the genetics view is unsupported by science, including some that go so far as to call it "wrong-headed". You've also had plenty of opportunity to examine the sources used in the article, one of which is a 1995 publication commissioned by the APA specifically to address the question of what the scientific consensus is, which reaffirms that that mainstream science sees the genetics view as unsupportable. At this point, arguing that you've seen no source which explicitly calls it "fringe" looks more like a semantics game than a reasonable objection. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:28, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- @Alaexis: I think the statement by the editors of Nature, in an editorial paired with a huge meta-analysis on the genetics of intelligence, stating that attributing the black-white IQ gap to genetics is "false" is a pretty strong sign. In response to your initial comment, note that I provided those "see also" links for context on what you will find when you run a a 20-year search of "race and intelligence" at Nature and Science. You are responding to one of those, and they are not key to my argument. The key point is that real geneticists largely eschew the whole idea of a genetic link between race and intelligence as
- @Alaexis:
- Yes per Generalrelative, scientific consensus on this issue has only become clearer since we analyzed it last year. Levivich harass/hound 22:35, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes. The consensus of the RfC was clear and was nicely expressed by the closing administrator. The grounds for that consensus were solid, and nothing about them has grown weaker in the past year. --JBL (talk) 22:38, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes. There have been no new sources provided to indicate that scientific consensus has changed since the time of the last RfC. —Wingedserif (talk) 22:43, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes. I have followed research in this area for several years and there has been no change in the lack of seriously accepted evidence asserting a genetic cause for differences in intelligence between racial or ethnic groups among humans. Onetwothreeip (talk) 22:49, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes I intend to expand upon this later, but we are assessing what the mainstream concensus of scientists is, rather than whatever one individually views to be correct. The number of statements affirming that the idea that the differences between IQ of different racial groups is not genetic in origin is overwhelming and firmly puts the "hereditarian" idea into fringe theory territory. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:50, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- Oppose. It seems highly inappropriate that the editor rushed to start this RfC while there is discussion ongoing at RS/N about how best to word it, and where to hold it. The OP was well-aware of this discussion[30], and even acknowledged that "It would be bad form for me to be the OP, since I was the OP last year", but still chose to start the RfC here anyway. Stonkaments (talk) 22:57, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- Exactly this - this RfC is not carefully crafted - it doesn't even present sources on either side, and it was rushed by an editor to try and push something through without due consideration. This is, quite simply, a POINTy RfC that cannot form any consensus for or against because it ignores the actual argument presented in the RSN and doesn't even try and summarize it. This should be closed as out of process as multiple editors expressed a desire to craft an RfC to present each side adequately so people can make an informed consensus. I'll also note that this editor has been doing some borderline canvassing to try and bring people to this discussion - and failed to mention that they opened this prematurely and out of process. This is disruptive. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 23:04, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- I did not engage in canvassing, borderline or otherwise. As I explained above, I notified all EC-eligible editors on both sides of the debate, as well as relevant talk pages and noticeboards, and I would welcome any suggestions of additional places (such as WikiProjects) where a notification would be appropriate. NightHeron (talk) 23:30, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- Why on earth would it be appropriate to presented the argument of the OP at the RSN RfC or try and summarize it? That RfC was improper precisely because it was tendentiously formulated (among other reasons discussed at length). Why would this RfC list sources in its question? You are, of course, welcome to discuss sources here, but the idea that this RfC is improper because it
doesn't even present sources on either side
is almost perfect in its wrongheadedness. Generalrelative (talk) 23:13, 3 May 2021 (UTC) - Also:
it was rushed by an editor to try and push something through without due consideration
. Sounds like you must be a mind reader. That's gotta come in handy IRL, though we typically refrain from characterizing other editors' imagined motivations here. Generalrelative (talk) 23:27, 3 May 2021 (UTC) - And to Stonkaments' comment on "bad form": That's called changing one's mind upon reflection. [31] You might try it sometime. Generalrelative (talk) 23:15, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- No mind-reading; OP was very clear that their intention was to preempt the ongoing collaboration towards a new RfC on RSN:
...from what's been going on at WP:RSN it was clear that the choice was between a straightforward, neutrally stated RfC that revisits last year's RfC, or else a complicated, tendentiously worded RfC at a non-EC-protected forum...
[32] Stonkaments (talk) 23:36, 3 May 2021 (UTC)- Hmm, I think I'm detecting a rather tendentious logical leap from the one to the other. But perhaps you have superior insight into the meaning of words or something. Generalrelative (talk) 23:40, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- WP:Call a spade a spade. Stonkaments (talk) 01:29, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- That's exactly what Generalrelative just did. Jumping from
from what's been going on [..] non-EC-protected forum
towithout due consideration
is a tendentious logical leap, so he called it a tendentious logical leap. --Hob Gadling (talk) 02:14, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- That's exactly what Generalrelative just did. Jumping from
- WP:Call a spade a spade. Stonkaments (talk) 01:29, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Hmm, I think I'm detecting a rather tendentious logical leap from the one to the other. But perhaps you have superior insight into the meaning of words or something. Generalrelative (talk) 23:40, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- No mind-reading; OP was very clear that their intention was to preempt the ongoing collaboration towards a new RfC on RSN:
- Yes, the result of last year's RfC was solid, and nothing has come along in the interim to suggest that it needs to be revisited. XOR'easter (talk) 23:24, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes, Per Generalrelative's summary and the excellent sources already cited in the article in the section 'Research into possible genetic influences on test score differences'. If anyone evaluating this RFC is still uncertain about how this can be a fringe concept given that the heritability of IQ exists between individuals, This article by William Saletan, who has been on both sides of the issue, is a decent introduction to the problems inherent in making the leap from individual to group differences. - MrOllie (talk) 23:35, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- Comment - The consensus prior to about 1700 was that the universe gyrated around Earth.` Sure, Archimedes reported on Aristarchus's theory from 230 BC that Earth spins around the Sun; but during Copernicus' and Galileo's life, and in fact, long after their deaths in 1543 and 1642, their ideas were considered fringe by the bien pensant. So much so that both Tycho in 1587 and Kepler in 1609 published major works based on geocentrism. In fact, geocentrism was the "scientific consensus" so much so that in 1959 Arthur Koestler wrote that Copernicus was a coward for being reticent to publish his fringe ideas challenging geocentrism, which he had already developed by 1514, until the very year of his death. But hey, so what if a minority of subject matter experts have been bravely un-Copernican and have dared publish that there is a genetic component to intelligence? They are fringe and must be verboten as a legitimate debated subject by the bien pensant on Wikipedia! Burn the witches! E pur si muove, is all I can say. XavierItzm (talk) 23:41, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
- We are not discussing whether there is
a genetic component to intelligence
. We are discussing whether the contention that observed differences in IQ test performance between racial groups have a genetic component is currently a fringe view. If you're confused as to why those are separate questions, please see Heritability of IQ or the piece cited by MrOllie above. Generalrelative (talk) 23:45, 3 May 2021 (UTC) - @XavierItzm:, you do realize that you could take any theory currently considered fringe and make exactly the same argument about it, right? This logical fallacy even has a name: it's called the Galileo gambit. The French Wikipedia has a fuller article on it. Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 00:53, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Not only "could" you use the same argument for any other fringe theory, it probably has been used for every other fringe theory. When you cannot find a good reason for your position in one conflict, you talk about another conflict instead and claim that your position is somehow similar to the position that turned out to be right in that one; it is a form of red herring, avoiding the actual evidence. One can almost ignore all the Yes reasoning, look at the No reasoning desperately scraping the bottom of the barrel like that, and come to the conclusion that Yes is very likely the right answer. Almost. --Hob Gadling (talk) 01:58, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Kepler's 1609 published work Astronomia Nova was not based on geocentrism, and the RfC doesn't say what to change in the article.Peter Gulutzan (talk) 22:46, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- We are not discussing whether there is
- Yes All my reasons have already been covered by others. HiLo48 (talk) 01:08, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes. The only thing that has changed since the last such RfC is the names of the SPAs opposing it. --Hob Gadling (talk) 01:58, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Ugh. Such a landslide that I'm just going to play Devil's advocate. There are differences that are widely recognized, but they likely have more to to with "intelligence" than they do with race. If I design a test in English, people who only speak Spanish are quite likely to fail it. Intelligence is at best either an abstraction or a reification. In the abstraction, yes. In the reification, no. GMGtalk 02:26, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Honestly, you didn't do a good job as a devil's advocate. You did a great job spitting some facts, however, but you really need to work on that devil's advocacy. Damnit, GMG, I expected better of you. [FBDB] ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 03:02, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes with a caveat. The RfC as stated is true, because the various attempts to argue for such a link, mostly importantly that of Jensen, have fallen apart on closer inspection, and because the folk conception of race has been shown to rest on misconceptions. I don't think, though, that the stronger claim, that there is a consensus that there is no such link, is true. If you like, my reading of what consensus there is, is that it holds there is an absence of published evidence for such a link, not that there convincing evidence of absence of any such link. — Charles Stewart (talk) 06:23, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes The Climate change and Covid-19 are consensus, the Flat earth and the genetic link between race and intelligence are fringe. --Rsk6400 (talk) 07:05, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes. The arguments otherwise are invariably from a relatively small number of sources and their supporters, generally published in journals devoted to scientific racism. See eg. [33][34][35][36][37][38] - the last one is particularly relevant, since it directly discusses hereditarian efforts to claim their beliefs have more support than they have, going into detail on the deceptive tactics they use, why they do so, and how little support their beliefs actually enjoy in the scientific community. As the last source notes, most hereditarians, while trying to claim illusionary support by playing tricks such as narrowing the definition of who qualifies to only include hereditarians, simultaneously implicitly concede that their theories are fringe (hence their false narrative of oppression, which is needed to explain why it has continuously remained on the fringes despite decades of effort by dedicated, well-funded fringe journals devoted entirely to pushing them.) --Aquillion (talk) 08:26, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yesish I am not sure that (sorry for being a bit Platonic) that intelligence is sufficiently understood for us to say what it really even is. Different races do seem to react in different ways to different things, but that does not mean they are "less intelligent" rather that their intelligence is not the same kind of intelligence. Like a man who can fix your car, but cannot fix your body. Whether that is genetic or cultural however is not a given. So lean towards Yes.Slatersteven (talk) 08:34, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Slatersteven, the question being debated is not whether we as editors consider the theory to be or or not to be without merit, but only whether or not it we judge it to be a wp:fringe theory because there is a strong scientific consensus that has concluded that the theory is meritless pseudoscience. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:15, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- As I said I am unsure as to whether or not intelligence is so well defined that we can even draw any clear racial distinctions. But I am also aware that some (even in ethnic minority communities) have tried to argue that there are different kinds of intelligence. But (as I said) we do not really have any meaningful way of messing intelligence that does not have serious cultural issues. Now I have said we should treat it as a fringe theory, what more do you want?Slatersteven (talk) 15:11, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Slatersteven, the question being debated is not whether we as editors consider the theory to be or or not to be without merit, but only whether or not it we judge it to be a wp:fringe theory because there is a strong scientific consensus that has concluded that the theory is meritless pseudoscience. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:15, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- While it's true that the only thing IQ measures is IQ, it's also true that IQ correlates rather strongly with a number of signifiers that are widely considered indicative of intelligence. IQ is not intelligence, but the two are well correlated.
- That being said, your statements are correct, and most psychometricians agree that there are numerous different types of intelligence, some of which are exceedingly difficult to test (it's worth noting that IQ is comprised of tests intended to grade multiple types of intelligence, as well).
- Your statement is, in fact, fully compatible with a "Yes" !vote, and not compatible with a "No" !vote. The scientific consensus, as I have come to understand it after following this subject for a number of years, is that intelligence is too difficult to rate in a repeatable and accurate way, and race too difficult to define in a biologically meaningful way to make any claims about a genetic link between the two. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:38, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- That's definitely part of it: the absence of any agreed, objective, culturally neutral measure of intelligence, and of course the biological fact that race is very close to irrelevant in terms of the human genome, makes the question itself a pointless exercise. Guy (help! - typo?) 22:15, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes. Given that there's enough wiggle room in the definitions of race and intelligence that reasonable people can split a few hairs, unreasonable people will regularly attempt to drive a truck through it. I see no new evidence to challenge the conclusion of last year's RFC, and thus it should stand. Guettarda (talk) 16:06, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes.
"The theory that a genetic link exists between race and intelligence is enough of a minority viewpoint in the scientific consensus that it falls under Wikipedia's definition of a fringe theory"
including definitions outlined in Wikipedia's content guideline Wikipedia:Fringe theories#Spectrum of fringe theories. ---Sluzzelin talk 17:52, 4 May 2021 (UTC) - Yes but No. It is correct, but that does mean it warrants inclusion in the article. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 18:33, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- I don't believe anyone is suggesting we include that statement in the article. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:00, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- That is fine, but then I am not really sure what the RfC is trying to achieve. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 19:09, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Over the course of the year, opponents of last year's RfC have raised objections both to the RfC itself and to the edits that were made after the RfC to remove false balance. Hopefully, some of them will explain this in the course of this RfC. Any editor who believes that something relevant in the sources has changed over the last year also could enter the discussion and explain what it is. The purpose of this RfC is to give them the opportunity to make their case and if, as I believe is likely, it turns out to be a very weak case, then last year's RfC will be reaffirmed, hopefully putting the matter to rest, at least for the near future. NightHeron (talk) 19:29, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- @Emir of Wikipedia (talk · contribs) Regardless of people's stated intentions, this will certainly result in the sentence "The theory that a genetic link exists between race and intelligence is a fringe theory" being inserted on Wikipedia articles, in Wikipedia's voice, existing opposing scholarly articles notwithstanding. Enjoy. XavierItzm (talk) 19:37, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Possibly, but not necessarily. I’m happy (much happier than I was when I first encountered this article and its discussions in 2006) with “Today, the scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain differences in IQ test performance between racial groups, and that observed differences are therefore environmental in origin.” in the article’s lead, and with “The scientific consensus is that there is no evidence for a genetic component behind IQ differences between racial groups.” in the main body, further below. Your suggestion, that this sentence be included in the article, is premature, unless sources phrase just that. It’s a meta-comment, regarding these theories' due weight, editorially, in this article, not something that should be included. —Sluzzelin talk 19:52, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Agreed. But I believe that XavierItzm's intention was to cynically predict an undesirable outcome rather than to advocate for the inclusion of this statement. Generalrelative (talk) 20:04, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- I agree (about the statement not going in the article). Another reason for not including that statement in the article is that fringe has a well-defined meaning in Wikipedia. In the outside world it's not so clear how such a word would be interpreted. In the article Climate change denial the word fringe is used only when attributed, never in wikivoice. I'd hope that the same goes for the R&I article. Note that at present the word fringe does not occur in the R&I article. NightHeron (talk) 20:10, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Well that is a different question to what the RfC claims to ask then. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 18:35, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- That is fine, but then I am not really sure what the RfC is trying to achieve. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 19:09, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- I don't believe anyone is suggesting we include that statement in the article. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:00, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Bad location for this RfC and
Leaning no(Update: Very weakly leaning no). I have (as I recently expressed on another board) strong opposition to opening RfC's on extended-confirmed pages when we are seeking input from the community on topics of controversy. That being said, since the RfC is here and this has drawn significant comment anyway, I'll take part. It's not clear to me that it should be considered fringe when peer-reviewed publications continue to publish systematic reviews that reject the Scarr-Rowe hypothesis and question even if the Scarr-Rowe interaction exists; the systematic review suggests that the extent to which intelligence is hereditary does not vary by race. The review argues thatwhile it is not always explicitly stated in the literature, by the same logic, the finding of similar heritabilities across advantaged/disadvantaged groups supports the genetic difference hypothesis
. This appears to be the minority opinion, with the same review noting that Scarr-Rowe has general acceptance. However, the existence of the meta-analysis study (and additionally the studies listed therein) shows that the view is not so narrowly held that it qualifies for WP:FRINGE. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 20:24, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Lots of fringe and outright wrong stuff gets published in peer-reviewed journals, especially stuff that is easily to stastically fudge like psychology and biomed. This is why WP:MEDRS doesn't allow the citation of individual clinical trials. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:57, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- The Scarr-Rowe effect is literally but one of many proposed environmental factors. You could prove it definitively wrong tomorrow, and that would still not prove your case. In fact, it would barely even contribute to the case you're arguing here. In further fact, it is quite possible (likely, even) that a large number of the authors of those publications would agree with the stated consensus here. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:30, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- MPants at work, Well, maybe not Emil Kirkegaard, who has recently been writing for a white supremecist magazine called the American Renaissance. - MrOllie (talk) 21:37, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Intelligence is the only "peer-reviewed" journal that will touch anything from Emil, mostly due to the fact that he can't even properly read a scientific work, let alone write one. Hell, the guy spent most of the 2000's self-publishing his shit because even before he was known to be about as useful and worthwhile as a half-eaten colostomy bag, he was utterly incompetent at doing science. Look him up on RationalWiki if you want to know more about why no-one should ever take him seriously, or take seriously anyone who does, but I don't recommend it if you've eaten recently, or are within punching range of anything that might break.
- P.S. I hadn't checked that provided source, but was referring to hypothetical sources which Mikehawk might provide to show that there's academic pushback against the Scarr-Rowe effect. Now that I'm looking at it, this source is not that. I'll add it to the growing pile of sources which were blatantly misrepresented by the people citing them to argue this particular position. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:58, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- I hadn't even picked up on that. Why in the ever living fuck would any remotely reputable journal publish anything written by Emil? I initially thought JzG's reaction to Intelligence at RSN was harsh, but I totally understand now. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:30, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- @Hemiauchenia: and @MPants at work: The authors of the provided source (linked by Mikehawk), in addition to Emil O. W. Kierkegaard, include Brian Pesta and John Fuerst, reviewers and contributors at the fringe journal OpenPsych ((https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPsych). It would seem to be an example of a product of the "walled garden" spoken of earlier. Skllagyook (talk) 22:52, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- That's what a lot of people who are unfamiliar with the Race and Intelligence topic area don't understand. You'd automatically think that a journal published by Elsevier would be legit, but when you look under the surface you can see how murky it is. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:06, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- @Hemiauchenia: and @MPants at work: The authors of the provided source (linked by Mikehawk), in addition to Emil O. W. Kierkegaard, include Brian Pesta and John Fuerst, reviewers and contributors at the fringe journal OpenPsych ((https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPsych). It would seem to be an example of a product of the "walled garden" spoken of earlier. Skllagyook (talk) 22:52, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- I hadn't even picked up on that. Why in the ever living fuck would any remotely reputable journal publish anything written by Emil? I initially thought JzG's reaction to Intelligence at RSN was harsh, but I totally understand now. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:30, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- I'm seeing a lot of pushback on the source on the basis of the author's external biases (which are worrying given the topic). At the same time, typically to get into a peer-reviewed journal, you need to go through a peer review process and the paper has to be accepted by editors, which if done rigorously would eliminate fabrication in the content of the journal article itself. Are there issues with the peer review in this Elsiever-published journal, in particular? I'm not super familiar with how the community has handled this journal in the past, though I had assumed it was a reliable journal due to its publisher's reputation. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 23:54, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- @Mikehawk10: Intelligence is a truly odd duck; most of us familiar with it treat it akin to WP:SELFPUB: if the author of an article an acknowledged expert, it's generally okay, but not ideal. If the author is a questionable source, it's no good. Stuff that advances scientific racism tends to sail right through their "peer review" process. To be fair, they do give a fair shake to stuff that contradicts their racist science, but they've already poisoned the well, so I, for one, don't consider their peer review process to have any weight when it comes to reliability.
- And to be clear: Emil Kirkegaard is a straight-up White Supremacist, first and foremost. All of his "intelligence research" is done specifically to justify his racist beliefs. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 00:45, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- +1 to MPants's description of Intelligence. You can see their editorial board here: [39]. For the past five years the editor has been Richard J. Haier, who was a signatory to the infamous "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" letter back in 1994. The board consists of many other members of the hereditarian "walled garden" such as Heiner Rindermann, a contributor to the white-supremacist journal Mankind Quarterly, whose antics trying to fake a counter-consensus on race & intelligence are described quite well here: [40] (see Aquillion's !vote above).
- MPants at work, Well, maybe not Emil Kirkegaard, who has recently been writing for a white supremecist magazine called the American Renaissance. - MrOllie (talk) 21:37, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- And to respond to Mikehawk's point about
fabrication in the content
, the issue is not so much with the data being fake as with the interpretations of that data being fallacious or the standards of data collection being lax. Such methodological shortcomings are harder to call people out on or definitively prove than outright falsifying data, which is kind of the root of the issue here. Richard Lynn is the godfather of this strategy (his data was the basis for The Bell Curve) with later generations of hereditarians refining his approach. Generalrelative (talk) 02:20, 5 May 2021 (UTC)- That makes sense. I guess my bigger qualm is not whether the view is a minority (it is), but whether it is such a small minority view that it is WP:FRINGE. Sources like this seem to suggest the notion that there is an open debate on whether racial differences in intelligence will close, and sources like this at least seem to show that there is a substantial current of relevant researchers who are biological hereditarians in some capacity. My reading of sources is that it's a minority view that is not in line with a rough scientific consensus, but it's certainly a sizeable minority view and it's not clear to me that the debate is closed. I don't think that relegates it to being fringe, though I don't think that it's appropriate to present it on an equal weight with non-hereditarian views in articles where the two would be relevant. I'm not quite sure how to articulate an "it's almost fringe but isn't quite there with the current state of research" view except to say it like that, but that is where I think I am standing when I exclude results published in Mankind Quarterly and Intelligence. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 03:04, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- I find the argument in that article unconvincing, but don't take my word for it: Here's a deconstruction of Edwards' critique, which the article you linked accepts uncritically. Or look to what some geneticists actually say about it in Genetics. The confidence with which the author of the article you linked picks a side seems undue, though I don't deny that there's still arguments going on. It's just arguments between the mainstream and a... well... fringe competitor. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 03:28, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- I'm also not convinced by the argument in the article that attempts to persuade us that hereditarianism is correct (especially considering how race is often constructed owing to phenotypes and historical geography rather than genotypes, which calls into question the statistical method validity). That being said, I don't feel comfortable calling hereditarianism to be on the fringes based upon my own view of the source's statistical methods; it's clear that there is a prevailing view (hereditarianism is not true) and a sizeable minority view (hereditarianism is true), but it appears that the minority view is held widely enough by relevant scholars that I don't feel comfortable calling it fringe. It feels on the borderline to me, but if our job is to reflect what is written across scholarly sources owing to their relevant prevalence, then I don't think that this is something that is evidently fringe (though it is certainly a minority view). — Mikehawk10 (talk) 18:54, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
You're confusing two things: (1) genetic component in individual variation, which agrees with scientific consensus, and (2) genetic component in differences between races, which goes against scientific consensus
- ©Nightheron, 10:30 5 May (below). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:18, 5 May 2021 (UTC)- @John Maynard Friedman: I think you've misread Mikehawk, as his opening sentence is agreement with the mainstream about how human races are constructed, and the rest of his comment is simply expressing his own (perfectly valid) reading of the sources he's been exposed to. He and I are only apparently in disagreement about how prevalent the minority view is, and whether or not it's a small enough minority to consider it fringe. I, for one, am content at this point to leave Mike to his views, as he's justified them sufficiently that I'm not able to construct an argument to undermine them, even though I don't find them persuasive enough to change my mind on the subject. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:37, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- @MPants at work: I am not sure I have. Hereditarianism still has its adherents and a logical though simplistic basis, which is why it is broadly considered outdated. A given person's IQ is likely to correlate with their parents' IQs, though to what extent that is a function of nature v nurture is off-topic here. The leap of faith (or, more accurately, prejudice) is to extrapolate from the particular to the general, to construct a myth called race and to attribute to it hereditarian concepts. Hereditarianism is a minority view but not a fringe view and Mikehawk is not totally off the wall in giving it credence. Unlike so-called racial hereditarianism, it does not start from an answer and then try to shoe-horn other analyses and cherry pick evidence to support it. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:04, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- I agree with all that you said here, though I don't see how it applies to what Mikehawk said, unless you've misread him. That being said, I've no interest in starting another argument about that, so I won't push the matter. Mikehawk is, after all, better able to elucidate his own thoughts than I am, and it could be me that's misreading him. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:08, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- @MPants at work: I am not sure I have. Hereditarianism still has its adherents and a logical though simplistic basis, which is why it is broadly considered outdated. A given person's IQ is likely to correlate with their parents' IQs, though to what extent that is a function of nature v nurture is off-topic here. The leap of faith (or, more accurately, prejudice) is to extrapolate from the particular to the general, to construct a myth called race and to attribute to it hereditarian concepts. Hereditarianism is a minority view but not a fringe view and Mikehawk is not totally off the wall in giving it credence. Unlike so-called racial hereditarianism, it does not start from an answer and then try to shoe-horn other analyses and cherry pick evidence to support it. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:04, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- @John Maynard Friedman: I think you've misread Mikehawk, as his opening sentence is agreement with the mainstream about how human races are constructed, and the rest of his comment is simply expressing his own (perfectly valid) reading of the sources he's been exposed to. He and I are only apparently in disagreement about how prevalent the minority view is, and whether or not it's a small enough minority to consider it fringe. I, for one, am content at this point to leave Mike to his views, as he's justified them sufficiently that I'm not able to construct an argument to undermine them, even though I don't find them persuasive enough to change my mind on the subject. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:37, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- I'm also not convinced by the argument in the article that attempts to persuade us that hereditarianism is correct (especially considering how race is often constructed owing to phenotypes and historical geography rather than genotypes, which calls into question the statistical method validity). That being said, I don't feel comfortable calling hereditarianism to be on the fringes based upon my own view of the source's statistical methods; it's clear that there is a prevailing view (hereditarianism is not true) and a sizeable minority view (hereditarianism is true), but it appears that the minority view is held widely enough by relevant scholars that I don't feel comfortable calling it fringe. It feels on the borderline to me, but if our job is to reflect what is written across scholarly sources owing to their relevant prevalence, then I don't think that this is something that is evidently fringe (though it is certainly a minority view). — Mikehawk10 (talk) 18:54, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- I find the argument in that article unconvincing, but don't take my word for it: Here's a deconstruction of Edwards' critique, which the article you linked accepts uncritically. Or look to what some geneticists actually say about it in Genetics. The confidence with which the author of the article you linked picks a side seems undue, though I don't deny that there's still arguments going on. It's just arguments between the mainstream and a... well... fringe competitor. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 03:28, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- That makes sense. I guess my bigger qualm is not whether the view is a minority (it is), but whether it is such a small minority view that it is WP:FRINGE. Sources like this seem to suggest the notion that there is an open debate on whether racial differences in intelligence will close, and sources like this at least seem to show that there is a substantial current of relevant researchers who are biological hereditarians in some capacity. My reading of sources is that it's a minority view that is not in line with a rough scientific consensus, but it's certainly a sizeable minority view and it's not clear to me that the debate is closed. I don't think that relegates it to being fringe, though I don't think that it's appropriate to present it on an equal weight with non-hereditarian views in articles where the two would be relevant. I'm not quite sure how to articulate an "it's almost fringe but isn't quite there with the current state of research" view except to say it like that, but that is where I think I am standing when I exclude results published in Mankind Quarterly and Intelligence. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 03:04, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- And to respond to Mikehawk's point about
- I believe that MPants at work is reading me correctly here. I agree that there is a difference between individual genetic variation (which enjoys scientific consensus) vs group genetic variation (which gets a lot more dicey for the reasons that groupings in these sorts of studies do not generally appear to be done in a genotypic way, but than in a phenotypic way). Individual genetic variation in g doesn't logically demonstrate that groups that have historically had large environmental factors that affect intelligence. (Think of a moving average model where the means are the same but the immediately proximate terms are the same, and let the time series t represent generations of people born. The long-run mean between two groups can be the same and still have different current measurements, and if this particular model actually were to reflect the underlying truth, then it would allow for a rejection of Scarr-Rowe while also rejecting hereditarianism. This is all WP:OR, though, so I don't think it should hold water in this sort of discussion.)
- My issues is more that, based off my reading of reliable sources, a very large minority of intelligence research that is reflected in reliable journals argues that either there is some hereditarian difference or that the question is open. I could provide my own analysis based off of what I think is true regarding logical claims made in papers (as I did in parentheses above) and what I think is statistically robust, but ultimately the call on whether acceptance of a hypothesis is fringe shouldn't involve my own analysis as an editor on the merits of the science. Instead, it should involve a reading of reliable and relevant academic sources to see how they provide coverage of the topic, and to reflect the coverage of the topic in a manner that gives due weight to each hypothesis in line with how the hypotheses are covered in reliable sources (and avoids the undue weight of describing hereditarianism as being equal footing with its negation owing to its status as a minority view). Again, hereditarianism is certainly a minority view, but I don't think it's quite so small of a minority view to be considered fringe (though it's certainly close).— Mikehawk10 (talk) 21:26, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- That was what I was driving at: the RFC is not about 'pure' hereditarianism (which we agree is a minority view but is not fringe); it is about racial hereditarianism, which is a whole other kettle of rotten fish. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:55, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- @Mikehawk10: Like MPants I respect the nuanced reasoning behind your position even if I disagee. I will try one more approach before conceding that I can't persuade you though. What do you make of the fact that roughly 100% of racial hereditarians are psychologists rather than geneticists? If the question were, e.g. about the construct validity of IQ, psychologists would surely be the relevant experts we would look to when determining the scientific consensus. But when the issue hinges entirely on genetics, isn't it rather geneticists whom we should be consulting? You might know something I don't, but I've been trawling through the literature on this topic for the last year and I cannot point to a single racial hereditarian of the current generation with a university position as a geneticist or biological anthropologist.
- That was what I was driving at: the RFC is not about 'pure' hereditarianism (which we agree is a minority view but is not fringe); it is about racial hereditarianism, which is a whole other kettle of rotten fish. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:55, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- I think the closest thing would be David Reich, who caused a stir by suggesting in a 2018 NY Times Op-Ed that it might be possible in the future to discover genetic causes behind racial differences in behavior, and drew a forceful rebuke in the form of an open letter signed by, among many others, geneticists Joseph L. Graves Jr. and Erika Hagelberg, biologists Anne Fausto-Sterling and Robert Pollack, and biological anthropologists Jonathan M. Marks, Agustín Fuentes and Alan H. Goodman. The signatories state:
Reich’s claim that we need to prepare for genetic evidence of racial differences in behavior or health ignores the trajectory of modern genetics. For several decades billions of dollars have been spent trying to find such differences. The result has been a preponderance of negative findings despite intrepid efforts to collect DNA data on millions of individuals in the hope of finding even the tiniest signals of difference.
[41] (In a follow-up, Reich clarified that, while he believes thatvery modest differences across human population in the genetic influences on behavior and cognition are to be expected [...] we do not yet have any idea about what the difference are
. [42] So it's clear that even he is quite far removed from the racial hereditarian position that the black-white IQ gap is explained by a genetic advantage that white people have over black people.)
- I think the closest thing would be David Reich, who caused a stir by suggesting in a 2018 NY Times Op-Ed that it might be possible in the future to discover genetic causes behind racial differences in behavior, and drew a forceful rebuke in the form of an open letter signed by, among many others, geneticists Joseph L. Graves Jr. and Erika Hagelberg, biologists Anne Fausto-Sterling and Robert Pollack, and biological anthropologists Jonathan M. Marks, Agustín Fuentes and Alan H. Goodman. The signatories state:
- Marks and Fuentes, who both have backgrounds in genetics, were also signatories of the other letter I quoted above, which states that
empirical evidence shows that the whole idea [of a genetic race-IQ connection] itself is unintelligible and wrong-headed
and explains that this is afundamental reason why most researchers in the area of human genetics and human biological diversity no longer allocate significant resources and time to the race/IQ discussion
. [43] For more in this vein, see the two pieces I recommended to Alaexis above: "Why genetic IQ differences between 'races' are unlikely" by the geneticst Kevin Mitchell [44] and "Race, genetics and pseudoscience: an explainer" by the geneticists Ewan Birney, Jennifer Raff, Adam Rutherford and Aylwyn Scally. [45] As I mentioned above, the latter of these is rather emphatic, noting thatclaims about the genetic basis for population differences [in IQ] are not scientifically supported
and stating that their motivation for writing is to countera vocal fringe of race pseudoscience
(my emphasis). Though they do not call out "hereditarian" psychometricians by name, it is clear from the context whom they're referring to here. And then there's that Nature editorial, which was coordinated to appear alongside a huge meta-analysis on the genetics of inteligence, which flat-out states that attributing the black-white IQ gap to genetics is "false" and characterizes it definitively as an idea which should be relegated to the past. [46]
- Marks and Fuentes, who both have backgrounds in genetics, were also signatories of the other letter I quoted above, which states that
- I could go on but this is already quite lengthy. And I won't keep hammering this if you still disagree. I just think that what we're looking for when we say
in the scientific consensus
should be the relevant scientific consensus. Which is why I think it's important to note that, while racial hereditarianism is a minority view among psychometricians today, it appears to be a truly negligable view among geneticists. Generalrelative (talk) 03:22, 6 May 2021 (UTC)- Thank you for the long and well-thought out reply. You definitely bring up a point that I had not been responding to well, notably that the sources that tend to hold some sort of racial hereditarianism tend to have a background in psychology or psychometrics rather than genetics. And, as I continue to pour through google scholar, the only other sources I can find that hold some form of racial herediatrianism are indeed written by psychologists. I'm torn a bit, since psychometricians seem to be the right field for making claims about intelligence while not necessarily having expertise in specific genetic mechanisms, while geneticists also don't necessarily have experience in psychometry. The claim falls at the intersection of the two fields, and it appears to be extremely widely rejected in one of the two fields while it is accepted by a large minority in the other. I'm also seeing some works that refer to Intelligence as a "mainstream" journal even when attacking it for its choice to publish certain studies on race and intelligence, so I'm really stuck here on how to evaluate it in a WP:USEBYOTHERS context. It feels odd to call this particular form of hereditarianism fringe from a standpoint of the publications in the field of psychometrics. From the standpoint of genetics it seems simple and clear that it's fringe. The only way around this would be for there to be some non-genetic thing that would provide for a mechanism of racial hereditarianism, and I haven't seen any proposed. At the same time, we see psychologists (and even sociologists) use genetics more and more within their respective fields, and this practice seems to be accepted as generally fine when we aren't speaking in a racial context (which brings into the discussions a context of genes not aligning well with race writ large). This is all to say, I think I'm not confident that the answer is a clear "it's fringe" but also I'm feeling less and less that this is a large enough minority view across the relevant fields that it isn't fringe. I still very weakly lean no, largely owing to the psychometriticians view on it, but it's right up against the threshold for me.— Mikehawk10 (talk) 21:06, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
- Fair enough! I very much appreciate your thoughtful engagement. Generalrelative (talk) 22:39, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
- Thank you for the long and well-thought out reply. You definitely bring up a point that I had not been responding to well, notably that the sources that tend to hold some sort of racial hereditarianism tend to have a background in psychology or psychometrics rather than genetics. And, as I continue to pour through google scholar, the only other sources I can find that hold some form of racial herediatrianism are indeed written by psychologists. I'm torn a bit, since psychometricians seem to be the right field for making claims about intelligence while not necessarily having expertise in specific genetic mechanisms, while geneticists also don't necessarily have experience in psychometry. The claim falls at the intersection of the two fields, and it appears to be extremely widely rejected in one of the two fields while it is accepted by a large minority in the other. I'm also seeing some works that refer to Intelligence as a "mainstream" journal even when attacking it for its choice to publish certain studies on race and intelligence, so I'm really stuck here on how to evaluate it in a WP:USEBYOTHERS context. It feels odd to call this particular form of hereditarianism fringe from a standpoint of the publications in the field of psychometrics. From the standpoint of genetics it seems simple and clear that it's fringe. The only way around this would be for there to be some non-genetic thing that would provide for a mechanism of racial hereditarianism, and I haven't seen any proposed. At the same time, we see psychologists (and even sociologists) use genetics more and more within their respective fields, and this practice seems to be accepted as generally fine when we aren't speaking in a racial context (which brings into the discussions a context of genes not aligning well with race writ large). This is all to say, I think I'm not confident that the answer is a clear "it's fringe" but also I'm feeling less and less that this is a large enough minority view across the relevant fields that it isn't fringe. I still very weakly lean no, largely owing to the psychometriticians view on it, but it's right up against the threshold for me.— Mikehawk10 (talk) 21:06, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
- I could go on but this is already quite lengthy. And I won't keep hammering this if you still disagree. I just think that what we're looking for when we say
- Yes Per reasons already laid out by several users here. Skllagyook (talk) 22:45, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- comment I'm not sure the article should even exist, positing false premises as a legitimate 'debate', it would be akin to us having an article on the something like, hmmm … the Jewish question? ~ cygnis insignis 22:53, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- There was a long AfD debate just over a year ago, see Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Race_and_intelligence_(4th_nomination), which closed as keep. I agree that it is a notable topic though, and hopefully with ECP this article can be substantially improved. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:06, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Ta for the link. I see ways greatly improving this article, rather than a rejoinder to those who believe in, or profit from, doubt-mongering, and the other one about an earnest "debate" that got a bit out of hand. I won't though, trying to remember that these talk pages and their article are shit museums, you know, look but don't touch. ~ cygnis insignis 00:16, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- I didn't get far before seeing there is an article History of the race and intelligence controversy. Thanks again. ~ cygnis insignis 00:26, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- There was a long AfD debate just over a year ago, see Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Race_and_intelligence_(4th_nomination), which closed as keep. I agree that it is a notable topic though, and hopefully with ECP this article can be substantially improved. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:06, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes Per previous RfC. There's no new evidence that would challenge the reasoning behind that consensus. –dlthewave ☎ 02:34, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- No, the exclusion is overstated. Avoiding the political and just speaking to science, consensus, and RFC wording. The line seems not scientifically correct as stated, not supported by evidence of a scientific consensus, and does not seem to reflect the prior RFC and recent concerns. Think it needs to look for stating a limited inclusion.
- Scientifically, my limited perception is scientists generally think it is Nature *and* Nurture, that genetics *is* a factor but disapprove of the extremes of Hereditarian Determinism or Societal Determinism and allows for individual cases to vary outside either influence as just not deterministic or well understood. So to me it seems FRINGE to totally *not* allow mention as it would be FRINGE where it portrays heredity as the sole or dominant determinant.
- There really doesn’t seem evidence of scientific consensus provided here in the form of multiple scientific bodies making official statements of scientific fact. Criticisms for some works or some non-science misuse sure - but not more. I would tend more to see that broad and vaguely phrased statements of the phrasing shown above are not the style for scientific bodies. Specific bits about a specific measure such as GCSE results are more amenable to a study.
- The prior RFC ... whichever of the threads I followed ... did not seem to use the phrasing above. And I am not seeing really neutral statements of science and positions here. That seems to reflect it has been brought up repeatedly.
- Cheers Markbassett (talk) 05:57, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- You're confusing two things: (1) genetic component in individual variation, which agrees with scientific consensus, and (2) genetic component in differences between races, which goes against scientific consensus. Also,
does not seem to reflect the prior RFC
makes no sense. The wording is taken verbatim from the close of last year's RfC.NightHeron (talk) 10:30, 5 May 2021 (UTC)- Nope, you’re not seeing the contradicting there. By stating (1) you seem to be saying a link to genetics does exist is the consensus and that is inconsistent with the phrasing of RFC here that such is fringe. The RFC as stated simply goes too far. About hereditarian determinism extreme would be one thing but simply “a link” I believe is scientifically accepted. I did not see the phrasing of this RFC at the prior discussion closes, but I may have missed it in all that, please link to where you think it says those words verbatim. And again, I do not cites to statements by multiple scientific bodies as evidence that an actual “scientific consensus” is shown, so I think that claim is also simply overstating things, and I am dubious that scientific bodies would deal in broad statements on vague items like “race”. Simple links could prove the case, lack of such evidence leaves it unsupported. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 03:00, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
- NightHeron is right, you are confusing 1 (individual variation) with 2 (differences between races). The RfC is about 2. There is no point in explaining it any further, since you did not take the time to try to acknowledge, let alone understand, the difference in the first place. This is WP:CIR territory. --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:51, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
- Again, show me the links to support the way the RFC is phrased and I think lack of links leaves it gone too far. This is strongly and vaguely phrased that “theory that a genetic link exists between race and intelligence” has “minority viewpoint in the scientific consensus” calling for a strong LABEL judgement of FRINGE. I think there needs to be limited and precise phrasing of what “scientific consensus” is or a strong LABEL, that the combination of claims and banning should require strong support, and feel this phrasing is actually misrepresenting scientific views. My general impression is the scientific views are that both nature and nurture are influences rather than deterministic, plus that ‘intelligence’ and ‘race’ are vague societal and not scientifically used phrasings — that studies make use of more precise items in more limited ways. A response back about missing a distinction is contradicting against a broad and strong RFC statement, and is still showing a lack of a RS scientific body statement. I think a narrower exclusion about science for hereditarian determinism is doable, or about both terms “race” and “intelligence” being not scientifically correct. Instead a claim science has consensus using those terms seems outside where science actually is, plus the call for judgement is asking a lot on no attached support. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 11:54, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- NightHeron is right, you are confusing 1 (individual variation) with 2 (differences between races). The RfC is about 2. There is no point in explaining it any further, since you did not take the time to try to acknowledge, let alone understand, the difference in the first place. This is WP:CIR territory. --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:51, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
- Nope, you’re not seeing the contradicting there. By stating (1) you seem to be saying a link to genetics does exist is the consensus and that is inconsistent with the phrasing of RFC here that such is fringe. The RFC as stated simply goes too far. About hereditarian determinism extreme would be one thing but simply “a link” I believe is scientifically accepted. I did not see the phrasing of this RFC at the prior discussion closes, but I may have missed it in all that, please link to where you think it says those words verbatim. And again, I do not cites to statements by multiple scientific bodies as evidence that an actual “scientific consensus” is shown, so I think that claim is also simply overstating things, and I am dubious that scientific bodies would deal in broad statements on vague items like “race”. Simple links could prove the case, lack of such evidence leaves it unsupported. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 03:00, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
- You're confusing two things: (1) genetic component in individual variation, which agrees with scientific consensus, and (2) genetic component in differences between races, which goes against scientific consensus. Also,
- Yes Current tests for measuring intelligence lack validity, because they measure test taking skills and "impress the professor" skills instead of actual intelligence which is vastly broader than measuring such superficial skills. "Race" is a powerful sociopolitical notion but not a valid scientific concept. The idea that people of Norwegian ancestry or Russian ancestry or Greek ancestry or Spanish ancestry are all "White" to be lumped together, and those of Nigerian ancestry or Ethiopian ancestry or Sudanese ancestry or Zulu ancestry are all "Black" to be lumped together is an utterly unscientific concept based only on skin color. This bizarre concept is spurious but deeply rooted in U.S. culture because the early history of that country was based on enslaving and dehumanizing and torturing people for considerable profit based only on the darkness of their skin. Other cultures engaged in similar dehumanization for similarly spurious reasons. So now we have communities subjected to brutal and ugly discrimination, and a coterie of fake academics who build dubious careers spreading the hate. These people thrive on arguing that the darker a person's skin is, the stupider they are. The entire "race and intelligence" construct is illegitimate and repulsive, and must be rejected by Wikipedia editors. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 07:24, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- you seem to be saying we should avvoid areas because they are controversial. As I understand our purpose, it's pretty much the opposite--the proposition that there is a connection has been extensively discussed both in the past and the present, and this means that it's appropriate to cover here. If t at either or both terms are ill-defined, that's no different from most of the rest of social science. Whether or not current test for intelligence lack value is a matter for discussion, based on the sources, not rejection. They seem to have some value by your own statement: they predict success in the traditional school system. I think actual studies nowadays use somewhat more precise definitions. That race depends only on skin color is outmoded, and I don't think anyone seriously believes that literally, but uses it as a shorthand, (though it may have been seriously used as a plain fact in the past--and is still used this way in the US and elsewhere today). "black" is not literally a race, but in the current discourse it normally means Afro-Americans. (I think it means other things elsewhere) But race almost certainly has a number of more complicated meanings, and they needs discussion.. In both cases I don't mean discussion by us. That's not what we're here for--it means presentation of the various views in the past and continuing. Having readthem, he reader can decide. Not having read them the reader is either left in ignorance that there ever was a controversy, or--much more likely in the present world, unfortunately,--left to rely upon their prior prejudices.
- Most academics think that a substantial number of those in other fields are talking through their hats--it's a cliché dating back to Plato. Most non-academics, at least in the US, seem to think that all academics are doing that. I don't think I want to make that sort of judgment, and I do not see on what basis you do. What is correct, from the point of view of science, morality, or social policy, is something that neither you, or me, or any of us individually or collective are entitled to determine here. None of us writes as experts in any of these fields. What we do have the right and obligation is to report accurately on what others have said. If you should be an expert, you should write instead in a peer-reviewed venue. Hee, all you can rightfully do is give the opinion of others, without judging them.
- Speaking at a admittedly more personal level, I assume that you, and I, and essentially everyone here, hates prejudice based on "racial" or other grounds. If we do, what are we to do about it here? What we can do is only give information, and report what at various times has passed for information--and misinformation. . Then those of us who wish to take action, as I suppose many of us do, and the much greater number of people in the world outside WP who want to do also, will have knowledge they can use. They don't need only knowledge about their already formed opinions; if they don't know what the uninformed think, they are not likely to make much of an impression on them. Even more bluntly, if they do not even admit that there is an opposition, that there are in fact racists, they're setting themselves up to be victims.
- Prejudice in favor of justice is a good thing. It is only meaningful if it also talks about injustice. DGG ( talk ) 08:16, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- I don't think Jim is arguing that we should avoid this because it's controversial. I read his comment as saying that we should not promote this because it's racist. That's different. We document, without endorsing, white supremacy, neo-Nazism and all manner of other nonsense. This is no different. This discussion has been going on here for over a decade, and the superficial controversy is in fact sustained by a tiny number of highly motivated advocates who flatly refuse to accept any consensus that goes against them.
- Wikipedia should not "teach the controversy" in areas like this, where a small self-referential group deliberately create an appearance of scholarly endeavour, in effective isolation from mainstream thought. It's like the studies purporting to find out how homeopathy works, when the consensus is that it doesn't, and can't, and there's no reason to suppose it should. Race is a bogus concept, and there's no objective culturally neutral way of measuring intelligence, so piling up studies of non-neutral measures based on the assumption that race is a thing, meets the definition of pseudoscience.
- Added to that, the principal motivation underlying its promotion and amplification is racism. It's not a coincidence that the most disruptive presence on this article is a neo-Nazi. Guy (help! - typo?) 08:42, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- DGG, by no means am I saying that Wikipedia should avoid the controversy. I was responding to a specific proposition: "The theory that a genetic link exists between race and intelligence is enough of a minority viewpoint in the scientific consensus that it falls under Wikipedia's definition of a fringe theory." I answered "yes" because I believe that it is a fringe theory. I then tried, briefly, to explain why. Nothing at all about avoiding controversy. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 17:03, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- I agree it is presently a minority view. But your argument above seems to be saying that the reason it is fringe is because you think it wrong. And the reasons you think it wrong seem to be based upon long outdated versions. In general, people who want WP to reflect their own judgment either have coi, which does not apply here, or else bias. The more one is committed , the stronger the likelihood of bias. I recognize that this applies to myself also, so I do not judge views I oppose as fringe because I oppose them. DGG ( talk ) 02:34, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
- I'm very pleased to see this statement, the elephant in the room is post-colonial societies and the mechanisms that maintain hegemony: South Africa, Australia, the United States (in no particular order). Racism permeates society on every level, received wisdom impressed on the psyche before a child can formulate a sentence. ~ cygnis insignis 14:23, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes, based on the previous Rfc discussions. Idealigic (talk) 15:39, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes. You can argue it's not a fringe theory based on how ordinary people use the phrase "fringe". Many people of varying political persuasions believe this, and there is certainly evidence that supports it; why are there more Jews and Asians at Harvard, and fewer Blacks and Latinos? The actual scientific research points out problems with that argument; there are cultural and environmental factors to consider as well, you can't assess average IQ based on outliers, and most world-wide IQ studies are too problematic to even consider. I'm not confident you can reliably measure a 10 point IQ difference between individuals, though a 50 point difference is certainly meaningful. I would not go so far as to say that there is evidence that "racial hereditarianism" is false; however, the claims that this theory is proven true (as opposed to being something that is unclear) is clearly fringe by Wikipedia's definition. Not one participant has presented evidence in support of the claim; even the book The Bell Curve does not claim that such a link is proven. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 19:42, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
- But the correctnes of the theory is not for us to decide. Myself I personally don't like to rely on staaticical evidence; I want biochemically demonstrable mechanisms. Just as theory must be proven by observations, observations by themselves only make sense when there is theory behind them, to show that they're not mere correlation. I don't know what will be found in the future, so the only safe course is to leave the question open. DGG ( talk ) 02:34, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
- Comment. Yes, claiming that a direct "genetic link exists between race and intelligence" (as in the RfC) would be incorrect. If that is what specific authors say (I am not sure), then their work would be "fringe". But one should be careful here. For example, studing the genetic differences among ethnic groups] would be very much mainstream. The importance of Human genetic variation, including chromosome abnormalities as an extreme example, in definining human phenotype (including mental capabilities), is also undeniable. My very best wishes (talk) 03:12, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
- My very best wishes, of course. There are a lot of studies of heritability for example among Ashkenazi people (e.g. Tay–Sachs disease) and African-Americans (sickle-cell anaemia). The issue is narrowly one of the study of "intelligence", however that might be measured, and "race", whatever that might mean, and I hope there is no suggestion that it would be interpreted any more broadly than that. Guy (help! - typo?) 11:26, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
- Sure, I am just saying there is nothing wrong with studies of Human intelligence, Human genetics, Human evolutionary genetics or even Genetics of human intelligence. I also think this page and Race and genetics are well written, and do not see any point in conductiong this RfC. My very best wishes (talk) 16:07, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
- My very best wishes, the RfC is required because a handful of highly motivated advocates will not accept a consensus that goes against them. Guy (help! - typo?) 17:01, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- @JzG and My very best wishes: No, this RfC was opened in order to preempt and disrupt the formulation of a more productive RfC―discussion of which was ongoing at RSN prior to this RfC being started. A productive RfC would have actually addressed the pertinent issues (namely sources potentially being excluded from the article, and claims that arguably fail WP:VERIFIABILITY), rather than wasting everyone's time reconfirming last year's RfC. Stonkaments (talk) 17:20, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- @Stonkaments:
in order to
is speculating about the motivations of other editors, it is also the opposite of WP:AGF andwasting everyone's time
. --Rsk6400 (talk) 17:58, 7 May 2021 (UTC) - Stonkaments, false. There was no RfC at RSN. It was not formatted as an RfC (it did not pose a short and neutral question) and it was a trojan horse, pretending that the question of what weight to give fringe sources was actually about their reliability.
- Analogy: There are papers in superficially reliable sources advancing the idea of excited delirium, a condition that only ever seems to be diagnosed in the death of people being physically restrained by cops. Mainly (I know you'll be socked) Black dudes. The mainstream medical profession does not accept that it is a thing. It doesn't help that it has its origins in a diagnosis made by a white pathologist in a series of deaths of Black prostitutes, who later turned out to have been suffocated by a serial killer.
- Same here. A small walled garden of self-referential researchers writing papers that are referenced only by other believers. This is not a WP:RS question, it's a WP:UNDUE question. So this RfC is exactly on point. First, is it actually a fringe view; and if it is, second, how do we represent it. That's the right way to do it.
- ECP is also necessary for reasons that are blindingly obvious. At least three new socks of permabanned neo-Nazi troll Mikemikev have been blocked this week around exactly this topic. Guy (help! - typo?) 18:23, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- Please read more carefully; I said there was ongoing discussion about the formulation of a more productive RfC (found here, which you closed, coincidentally), not that there was another RfC ongoing. The questions surrounding sourcing and verifiability have been at the crux of many recent debates on this article's talk page, and this RfC does nothing to address them.
- And OP was very clear about their intentions to preempt that proposal by opening the RfC here[47]. Stonkaments (talk) 18:39, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- Guy's points also apply to the post-close RSN discussion. The possibility of "sources being potentially excluded" is not a surprising consequence of finding a theory to be fringe. I challenge you to find a single Yes !voter that doesn't expect that sources promoting the fringe view will be mostly excluded from Wikipedia. If you feel the !voters are uninformed, you are welcome to paste in the big list of sources from the pseudo-RFC. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 20:49, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- Stonkaments, why would there need to be ongoing discussion around formulation of an RfC, when this is the first step, and any RfC will necessarily depend on the outcome of this. Guy (help! - typo?) 13:52, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
- Why would we want to formulate a constructive RfC that could actually address the recent issues on this article, rather than simply rehash the RfC from last year which won't solve anything? Seriously? Stonkaments (talk) 15:43, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
- The RfC last year solved a lot, allowing the editors who wished to bring the article into accordance with the mainstream view to do so. Recently problematic and/or single-purpose editors have re-initiated attempts to move the article away from the mainstream view, and rehashing the last RfC will almost certainly solve that problem. Perhaps what you mean is that it is unlikely to produce an outcome you desire, but that's a rather different thing. (If there really is a fundamental issue not addressed by this RfC, then this RfC does not prevent someone from opening a proper RfC to address it.) --JBL (talk) 17:10, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
- Why would we want to formulate a constructive RfC that could actually address the recent issues on this article, rather than simply rehash the RfC from last year which won't solve anything? Seriously? Stonkaments (talk) 15:43, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
- @Stonkaments:
- Well, I am just not sure what the consequences of admittting the theory is fringe would be. Per WP:FRINGE, Wikipedia article should not make a fringe theory appear more notable or more widely accepted than it is., and so on. Yes, sure, but I think it is already described as such on our pages. Simply following WP:NPOV produces an appropriate description of this and other similar subjects. My very best wishes (talk) 19:03, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes the article currently describes racial hereditarianism in a way that is consistent with WP:FRINGE. This RfC demonstrates the community support enjoyed by those of us who have been laboring –– under heavy opposition and a near-constant rain of personal attacks –– to keep it that way. That's why it's important. Sure, certain editors are likely to continue claiming that the consensus is
ideologically driven
[48] and that its defenders simplycan't handle the truth
[49], but this RfC makes it clear at least that we are not alone. Generalrelative (talk) 19:20, 7 May 2021 (UTC)- +1 to this. I'd also like to add that you've made the point multiple times that there isn't any appeciable support for this theory from geneticists, and in fact, geneticists and anthropologists frequently compare this claim to such classic pseudosciences as creationism and climate change denial. That point has been thoroughly ignored by those accusing us of being ideologically driven. Furthermore, the claim higher up on this very talk page that the Mackintosh 1998 source doesn't support the article's claim about the consensus has become laughable since I dug up my old copy of Mackintosh 1998. If I were to describe the tone of that textbook when it discusses the notion of a genetic link between intelligence and race, I'd have to go with "disgusted". ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:49, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- @My very best wishes: It might be instructive to compare this old version of the page: it predates the first RfC, and if you look at the editing of the article since then what you see is that opponents of the current RfC preferred something like that version, while the proponents of the RfC prefer something like the current version. The "yes" view in this RfC is essentially an endorsement of the status quo. --JBL (talk) 20:10, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- +1 to this. I'd also like to add that you've made the point multiple times that there isn't any appeciable support for this theory from geneticists, and in fact, geneticists and anthropologists frequently compare this claim to such classic pseudosciences as creationism and climate change denial. That point has been thoroughly ignored by those accusing us of being ideologically driven. Furthermore, the claim higher up on this very talk page that the Mackintosh 1998 source doesn't support the article's claim about the consensus has become laughable since I dug up my old copy of Mackintosh 1998. If I were to describe the tone of that textbook when it discusses the notion of a genetic link between intelligence and race, I'd have to go with "disgusted". ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:49, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes the article currently describes racial hereditarianism in a way that is consistent with WP:FRINGE. This RfC demonstrates the community support enjoyed by those of us who have been laboring –– under heavy opposition and a near-constant rain of personal attacks –– to keep it that way. That's why it's important. Sure, certain editors are likely to continue claiming that the consensus is
- @JzG and My very best wishes: No, this RfC was opened in order to preempt and disrupt the formulation of a more productive RfC―discussion of which was ongoing at RSN prior to this RfC being started. A productive RfC would have actually addressed the pertinent issues (namely sources potentially being excluded from the article, and claims that arguably fail WP:VERIFIABILITY), rather than wasting everyone's time reconfirming last year's RfC. Stonkaments (talk) 17:20, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- My very best wishes, the RfC is required because a handful of highly motivated advocates will not accept a consensus that goes against them. Guy (help! - typo?) 17:01, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- Sure, I am just saying there is nothing wrong with studies of Human intelligence, Human genetics, Human evolutionary genetics or even Genetics of human intelligence. I also think this page and Race and genetics are well written, and do not see any point in conductiong this RfC. My very best wishes (talk) 16:07, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes, theories that link race, as commonly understood, with intelligence are fringe theories. Intelligence is known to have a large heritable component, and so is heritable within groups. Efforts to establish a linkage across groups, especially across groups as large as those normally considered racial, have either been sloppy, or have been affected by pre-existing racial discrimination, or have had fraudulent aspects. The circumstances under which this RFC has been rushed out to the Wikipedia community seem also to be affected by an ulterior, possibly racist agenda. Theories that link race to intelligence are fringe theories. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:17, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
- @Robert McClenon:
The circumstances under which this RFC has been rushed out to the Wikipedia community seem also to be affected by an ulterior, possibly racist agenda.
For context you might want to see the tendentiously worded RfC that was launched last week on RSN. I would agree with your characterization if it were applied to that one. Note the closing admin's statement:Some have suggested starting a properly formatted, neutrally worded RFC on the article talk page instead.
NightHeron, who implemented this suggestion, has been a truly stalwart defender of the view you (and so many others here) have expressed. Generalrelative (talk) 16:30, 6 May 2021 (UTC)- Comment to User:Generalrelative - Yes. I may have been imprecise in my wording. I had seen the version of the RFC at RSN, and I wasn't adequately distinguishing between the two RFCs. The topic was rushed out to the community for racist reasons. This version of the RFC, by User:NightHeron, was then moved out to the community in a hurry in order to squash the offending prior RFC. An RFC is a content forum, and we are not discussing whether to topic-ban the original proponent. My language was sloppy as to who I was criticizing. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:59, 8 May 2021 (UTC)
- @Robert McClenon: Thanks for clarifying. More precisely, the poorly formatted RfC started by Ferahgo had already been closed before I started this RfC, but AndewNguyen had proposed starting a differently worded RfC that still was not either brief or neutral. The no-!voters on last year's RfC also wanted to hold the RfC on a non-EC-protected site, which in practice would guarantee the participation of SPAs and socks. Although AndewNguyen got little support for their proposal, it was leading to another long discussion on the wrong venue (RSN), and the no-!voters seemed determined to start a tendentious RfC one way or another. I (after consulting with Generalrelative on our user talk pages) decided to start this neutrally worded, EC-protected RfC before they started their tendentious one. NightHeron (talk) 17:31, 8 May 2021 (UTC)
- Comment to User:Generalrelative - Yes. I may have been imprecise in my wording. I had seen the version of the RFC at RSN, and I wasn't adequately distinguishing between the two RFCs. The topic was rushed out to the community for racist reasons. This version of the RFC, by User:NightHeron, was then moved out to the community in a hurry in order to squash the offending prior RFC. An RFC is a content forum, and we are not discussing whether to topic-ban the original proponent. My language was sloppy as to who I was criticizing. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:59, 8 May 2021 (UTC)
- @Robert McClenon:
- Yes. We've been over this many times before. The short version is that some primary research papers purport to show very narrow findings of heritabilty of minor but quite variable skews in certain aspects of cognition. These are primary sources. Even if validated later, they would translate neither to "intelligence", which doesn't really have a firm definition in the first place, nor to "race", which doesn't either. See also WP:R&E. WP cannot support any such notion that "intelligence" is heritable much less a "racial" characteristic unless an overwhelming preponderance of highest-quality secondary sources in the related fields (i.e. systematic reviews) came to this conclusion. This is not SpeculationPedia. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 06:51, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes. As far as I can tell, the idea that race itself is a genetic category (rather than a social category based on selective grouping of biological traits) is itself widely considered fringe, so the idea that race and intelligence are genetically linked is necessarily also fringe. Loki (talk) 18:45, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes. "Race" is an ill-defined and scientifically worthless concept, and only survives as a group-identity token in strongly segregated societies (e.g. the United States). Grafting research out of such an objectively meaningless concept is per se fringe, and from its very beginning, "Race-and-intelligence"-related research has been linked to suprematist ideologies. It's as fringe as research about "Infidels and fornication", an article which per WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is overdue after every AfD of "Race and intelligence" has failed. –Austronesier (talk) 18:52, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
- Yes Theories on the genetic link between race and intelligence are a minority viewpoint in the scientific consensus that they fall under Wikipedia's definition of a fringe theory. BristolTreeHouse (talk) 05:19, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
references
|
---|
References
|
Mackintosh 1998
I've dug up an old copy of IQ and Human Intelligence if anyone is interested in exactly what it says, or how else it can be used in the article. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 00:47, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
Fixing "harvtxt error"
Does anyone here know how to fix the "harvtxt error" message that appears after each instance of the inline citation Nisbett et al. (2012a)? I can't figure it out. Thanks y'all, Generalrelative (talk) 20:02, 8 May 2021 (UTC)
- It's because the same citation template is repeated in the article in two different places. I will try to fix it. (There's also a second example, involving Dickens & Flynn 2006.) --JBL (talk) 21:51, 8 May 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks! Generalrelative (talk) 21:57, 8 May 2021 (UTC)
- I believe I have succeeded, but please double-check that I haven't screwed anything up. (There are many more instances of duplicative referencing, but no others that conflict with how sfn and the harv templates figure out what paper is being referenced.) --JBL (talk) 21:59, 8 May 2021 (UTC)
- Looks good to me. Generalrelative (talk) 22:29, 8 May 2021 (UTC)
- I believe I have succeeded, but please double-check that I haven't screwed anything up. (There are many more instances of duplicative referencing, but no others that conflict with how sfn and the harv templates figure out what paper is being referenced.) --JBL (talk) 21:59, 8 May 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks! Generalrelative (talk) 21:57, 8 May 2021 (UTC)