Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 74

Proper way to object to edits without getting in an edit war?
I object to at least one of the edits made in the last day. I changed it. That change was reverted back. I do not want to get in an edit war, but I believe that T34CH (talk) is changing this article in a manner that does not reflect consensus. Specifically, I object to this clause in the lede: "emerging consensus that "races" as they are commonly understood are a social rather than a biological category." There is no such "emerging consensus", as the Wikipedia article on race makes fairly clear. I think that this sentence should be removed and/or replace with what was there before. Should I just edit it back? David.Kane (talk) 19:36, 21 October 2009 (UTC)


 * David, here's the guideline on what is considered acceptable editing practice concerning edits and reverts: BOLD, revert, discuss cycle -- Nealparr  (talk to me) 22:22, 25 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually, that was one of my edits. Please let me quote verbatim from the introduction of Race (classification of human beings):


 * The academic consensus is that, while racial categories may be marked by sets of common phenotypic or genotypic traits, the popular idea of "race" is a social construct without base in scientific fact.[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]


 * I'd say this is pretty much in line with what I wrote... wouldn't you say?--Ramdrake (talk) 19:43, 21 October 2009 (UTC)


 * To say that an "idea" is a "social construct" is a truism, and therefore filler. To say that race is "marked by sets of common phenotypic or genotypic traits" then to say it is "without base in scientific fact" is to contradict oneself. Phenotypic and genotypic traits are facts. It stands the scientific process on its head. Whether a proposed classification is scientifically useful is decided by experiment and statistics that address the question "does the classification allow us to make better predictions?" The scientists who study humans most closely, medical scientists, don't seem to think that racial categories are unscientific or useless. A search for "race" in core medical journals indexed by MEDLINE produces a torrent of hits. Sometimes it passes their tests for statistical significance, sometimes it doesn't, but they almost always look. Qemist (talk) 08:54, 3 November 2009 (UTC)


 * This is a highly dubious statement. Note e.g. that the concept of race, while problematic, is also used for animals. Further, these concepts have a very clear foundation in (biological) science. While I have often heard the position "there is no such thing as race" (in many variations and guises), it has invariably been from people motivated or influenced by an ideological agenda, rather than scientific reasoning. In analogy, consider someone claiming that terms like "large", "small" "medium" should be disallowed because they have a number of problems associated with them (consider e.g. that there are contexts where a specific insect is consider large, and others where an elephant is considered small), while over-looking the fact that they are immensly useful terms which few scientists would hesitate to use in a text where their meaning was sufficiently clear from context. (This notwithstanding that scientists prefer actual numbers.) A good scientist would be cautious not to make categorical black/white/yellow/... statements, to respect that individual variations are larger than racial variations in many cases, to beware of drawing distinct borders where reality has a fuzzy and inconsistent border, etc. To actually deny the existence of race, that he would not do.

88.77.186.196 (talk) 00:25, 22 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I was too quick to praise the Race (classification of human beings) article. David.Kane (talk) 02:15, 22 October 2009 (UTC)


 * To the anon IP: if you read the Race (classification of human beings) article, you will see the difference between the term "race" as it is used for animals and the same term as used with humans. They "do" have different meanings. To David Kane: I'm sorry if the scientific consensus about human races doesn't agree with your conception of races, but this consensus is particularly well-documented.--Ramdrake (talk) 02:44, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

If that statement is going to be referred to, please include something equivalent to the phrase "while racial categories may be marked by sets of common phenotypic or genotypic traits", as that is the whole point being made by credible researchers. (I'm the one who wrote the statement Ramdrake refers to - though something tells me it is going to be edited shortly after I post this comment.) The bulk of the scientifically valid criticism of the notion of "race" is directed at the social conception of race as being far too imprecise a term to be of any use scientifically. No credible scientist, on the other hand, is going to deny that there are phenotypic and genotypic differences which largely correspond to aspects of "race" as popularly conceived. This important distinction is at the heart of that part of the debate with anything resembling scientific integrity. Simply put, "race", as popularly conceived, is a piss-poor concept. This cannot be misrepresented, however, as being equal to the statement that "race is an unscientific concept" or any variation thereof, as the IP user above has noted. "Race" can be a very "scientific" concept, provided that the scientist using the term has been very careful in defining what s/he intends the term to indicate. If one were to limit "race" to mean clusters of genotypic/phenotypic traits, for example, it is thoroughly possible to conduct perfectly valid scientific research on "race". The problem here comes from (a) a social hypersensitivity to the word "race" itself, and (b) a misrepresentation of what credible experts are actually saying, not from any real problem within the expert community itself. '''Note that both the extreme left and the extreme right like to misuse this information, with the left slanting it to mean "race is an unscientific concept", and the right slanting it to mean "racial differences exist and can be proven by science". Both POVs are wrong if you listen to what the experts are saying.''' That is what NPOV means in this case: Making sure that none of the information in this article is being slanted one way or the other. Good luck. :) -- Aryaman (talk) 02:53, 22 October 2009 (UTC)


 * And how careful do you figure test givers were in properly determining the race of test takers to gather the data that served to determine that "Blacks" scored lower than "Whites" on IQ tests? I'd say they were most likely using the same "piss-poor" concept of race (your words) that's commonly used by just about everybody.--Ramdrake (talk) 02:59, 22 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Very good point, Ramdrake. But all you're doing is ignoring that very key statement which I just indicated. There are points at which the possible scientific conceptions of race and the possible popular conceptions of race overlap (use a Venn Diagram if you need help visualizing this). This is why the results of IQ tests on various racial groups are still taken seriously by the scientific community. They fully recognize that overlapping segment. You, apparently, do not want to admit that it even exists. -- Aryaman (talk) 03:31, 22 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, this might be why it keeps getting pointed out that most of these surveys let participants self-report their race. T34CH (talk) 03:56, 22 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, I have perceived as much, though it strikes me as odd and I've made mention of it before. I can only assume that people keep adding in the belief that it should somehow nullify any scientific value of tests administered/classified on the basis of self-identification. It doesn't. What it tells us is that the individual's identification was determined by his or her understanding of social conventions regarding race. It is not a commentary on how much the possible social conceptions and the possible scientific conceptions overlap. That they do to some degree, however, is not under dispute. If you need help understanding why this is important, please see the Venn diagram comment posted immediately prior to you last post. -- Aryaman (talk) 04:19, 22 October 2009 (UTC)


 * "Simply put, "race", as popularly conceived, is a piss-poor concept." Or so I've been told.  Thanks for all your assumptions.  We'll certainly miss them around here.  T34CH (talk) 04:24, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
 * What part of this don't you understand? The concept "race" as popularly conceived is "far too imprecise a term to be of any use scientifically", meaning, the definition is too wide, hence, "piss-poor". It's the portion of the popular convention which overlaps with solid, scientific research which has people upset. If genetic research did not support - in part - the common usage of the term "race", we would have eliminated "race" from our vocabulary with the discovery of the gene. The fact that neither you nor Ramdrake can even admit that this overlap exists - and that this is the reason why such tests continue to be taken seriously by the scientific community - is a prime example of what I was referring to as the "left-leaning view". Have fun pushing it. -- Aryaman (talk) 04:41, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Varoon Arya, please do not use this talk page as some kind of forum. Please provide academic references which back up your claims. Mathsci (talk) 04:48, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

It seems this particular discussion has been made largely superfluous by recent changes. Nonetheless, I feel the point is an important one, as it is bound to come up again. (Particularly when it comes time to discuss the actual significance of "self-identification" in IQ tests.) Through my previous comments, I intended to point out that to use any statement which professes to reflect scientific consensus as stating that "the concept of race has no scientific basis" is flawed unless it makes sufficiently clear that the fault resides in the popular conception. If an example of this distinction as made in the literature is required, we could look at Jorde, Lynn B.; Wooding, Stephen P. (2004:32). Genetic Variation, Classification and "Race":

"Data from many sources have shown that humans are genetically homogeneous and that genetic variation tends to be shared widely among populations. Genetic variation is geographically structured, as expected from the partial isolation of human populations during much of their history. Because traditional concepts of race are in turn correlated with geography, it is inaccurate to state that race is "biologically meaningless". On the other hand, because they have been only partially isolated, human populations are seldom demarcated by precise genetic boundaries. Substantial overlap can therefore occur between populations, invalidating the concept that populations (or races) are discrete types."

As you can see, what is under discussion are the shortcomings of the popular notions or traditional conceptions of "race". To make it appear as though there is a blanket rejection of race is therefore misleading. Rather, researchers are interested in identifying the overlapping portion of the popular and the scientific concepts to "illuminate and diffuse" the race issue (to use the words of Jorde and Wooding). All I'm asking for is that editors - particularly the ones who appear to swerve sharply to the left - recognize the subtle yet important differences involved here and apply them to their edits with impartiality. Thanks, -- Aryaman (talk) 22:13, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

This is in support of Aryaman and David.Kane. The source that is cited for "emerging consensus" dates from 2001. I argue that there has been a large discussion thread on naturenetwork about the question whether it is desirable to continue research into the connection of race and IQ, in February 2009 (http://network.nature.com/groups/naturenewsandopinion/forum/topics/3871?page=1). This discussion clearly shows that there is no such "emerging consensus". The question of the overlap between a scientific concept of race ( i.e., I presume, this would only make sense on a genetic basis ) and the public opininion of race is clearly a hotly debated thing, and in no way allows to speak of emerging consensus. The debate even seems to get hotter and more specific, with a new nature opinion article on the subject this october (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7265/full/461726a.html) and the ongoing debate on this subject (http://network.nature.com/groups/naturenewsandopinion/forum/topics/5623). I think these discussions fully preclude the statement that there is "emerging consensus" in particular in the sense of this article. At the verly least, the opposite could be said; let me explain. It seems that the discussion about this and related subjects is rather going to start again, as opposed to be going to an emerging conensus. This article from 2007 (Hunt, Earl & Carlson, Jerry. Considerations Relating to the Study of Group Differences in Intelligence. Perspectives on Psychological Science 2 (2), 194-213.; this article is also in the references section)- written by authors that rather back up the "pro-environment" view - argues that way. As I understand it, these authors perceive the debate to be started from a rather "pro-environment" point of view; i.e., they seem to say that, at the least in public opinion, the view that racial differences are rather superficial instead of "deep", was the consensus that had been reached up to this point. The discussion threads on nature, the nature opinion article this october, that all bring into play arguments of a "pro-genetic" view, therefore are the ones that bring "new" arguments into the debate (new as in publicly-perceived new for the old data - and new as in "more knowledge about functional polymorphisms that overlap with groups originating from a common geographical place - construct that would correlate with 'commonly perceived' race" - thereby bringing the issue further away from a "consensus" in favor of the "race-is-a-social-construct-and-genetic-differences-are-negligible" side. As these developments are much more recent than the article that backs up the "emerging consensus" quote, I strongly oppose such a phrasing in this wikipedia article. Don't know how to properly sign this edit. -- bjrnfrdnnd  (talk) Tue Nov  3 13:05:40 UTC 2009

Footnotes in table
In the Caste-like minorities section of this page, there is a table that is very well rendered and very informative. But its footnotes are confusing.

The table is introduced with the words "The following table from the same book..." and a footnote (# 78) to the book Inequality and Design. This would seem to indicate that this table is taken from that book. In other words, the entire table is taken from a single source: Inequality and Design, page 92.

But then there are a great number of additional footnotes (#79 to #90) on the table itself and its three explanatory notes. Where do these come from?

The final sentence in footnote 78 says "The footnotes given are also from this book." That seems to suggest that footnotes #79 to #90 are taken literally from the Inequality book -- in other words, these are the footnotes that actually appear on page 192 of that book. But this seems hard to believe, since these footnotes are extremely sketchy. For example, one of them reads simply:

"Church Academic Achievement"

It's hard to believe that an academic book written by six scholars and printed by Princeton Press contains footnotes that have poor punctuation, no bibliographical information (publisher, date), and no page numbers. So I can't believe that this footnote is really take from that book. But if not, where did it come from?

Can someone verify what these footnotes come from? If they do in fact come from the book itself, I don't know whether Wikipedia policy requires they be here or not, since the source of the table as a whole is already specified. But no Wikipedia page should have a footnote that reads simply "Church Academic Achievement" without telling the reader Church's first name (or at least initial) and page numbers in the book. &mdash; Lawrence King ( talk ) 19:07, 23 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I fixed that Church ref. As for the rest, but for the notes under the table it looks like it's copied from the book.  First insertion in mainspace.  Last revision by Futurebird in sandbox.  Futurebird commenting on it's creation.  And (for reference) here's the version that has existed on the web since some time in 2006.


 * I think we can take out the extra foot notes, but I also wonder if the table can't be improved on. Any suggestions?  T34CH (talk) 23:20, 23 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm sure the table can be improved, but let me say that I am very happy with its content. (This is apropos of User:Fixentries who deleted the entire table and User:Ramdrake who put it back.)  I don't always read a Wikipedia page from top to bottom.  I came to this page initially not as an editor but as a reader, curious about this topic.  I personally found the table to be the most important thing on the entire page.  From my perspective as an editor, the table is clearly NPOV (assuming it hasn't been doctored by some editor, and I have no reason to think it has been).  And yet from my perspective as a reader (who has a POV), it was extremely powerful -- it seems inconceivable that intelligence could be racially based given the incredible coincidence that the table's content would represent.  So this is the best kind of Wikipedia article:  one that gives pure NPOV facts, and allows individual readers to draw conclusions and even points of view from these facts.  User:Fixentries wrote that the table was "irrelevant to article, restates obvious claims made" but I disagree.  The paragraph before the table gives the interpretation of the data made by the authors of the book Inequality and Design.  The table then gives the raw data -- which is not redundant with the interpretation of that data.  My two cents.  &mdash; Lawrence King ( talk ) 22:18, 24 October 2009 (UTC)


 * At first reading, I thought this was a powerful argument for the inclusion of additional figures such as this. On second thought, however, this is a serious problem. The table (and any similar insert that argues for a particular POV) is only acceptable as a presentation of the views of the author of the table. If it's not perfectly clear that this table only represents the views of its author, then it is a neutrality problem. Such a table would not withstand scrutiny if it were created by editors of this article (before, for example, many equally valid permutations on this table would destroy its message). To fix the table, the inline references must be moved to the table footnote and the table must be explicitly titled as being the view of the authors of the book it came from. If not for readability issues, this table should be an immutable graphic. --Distributivejustice (talk) 18:25, 25 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm wondering why you think this table "argues for a particular POV". In my estimation (which, admittedly, may be influenced by my own views), the table is neutral, even though it influenced my own POV.  That's not meant to be paradoxical:  it happens all the time.  Consider the following statements that I am copying from various Wikipedia pages:  (a) "A 2003 ABC News poll found that 70% of respondents suspected there was an [Kennedy] assassination plot."  (b) "In 2000, cases of rape or incest accounted for 1% of abortions [in the United States]." (c) "These basic conclusions [i.e., the global warming consensus] have been endorsed by more than 40 scientific societies and academies of science, including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries."  Wouldn't you agree that all of these statements are 100% factual, and completely satisfy the NPOV policy?  And yet surely Wikipedia readers have been led to form their own POV after reading these facts.


 * This is a good thing. Our goal at Wikipedia is to present facts, and a variety of opinions about them, in an NPOV manner.  But that doesn't mean that we should hope to prevent our readers from forming opinions.  This table contains facts, and therefore (assuming that the information in the table has not been falsified, or cherry-picked in a tendentious manner from a larger set of data) it is NPOV.  My point was that since it helped me form my own POV, I believe the table contains valuable information.  The value of information is greater if it can shape someone's point of view.  (If, for example, I were to read all the pages on Wikipedia on global warming and still remain in a vague agnostic attitude with respect to that topic, that would be a very bad sign about those pages!) &mdash; Lawrence King ( talk ) 22:55, 25 October 2009 (UTC)


 * A note for posterity -- The problem with the table (if it were a work of NPOV) is that it is highly "cherry-picked". In short, test score differences also exist independent of caste systems. This is one of the reasons why this hypothesis has not gathered much traction, although the basic observation (that caste and test scores are associated) does certainly hold where caste hierarchies exist. --DJ (talk) 05:28, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Does the article which contains the quote "A 2003 ABC News poll found that 70% of respondents suspected there was an [Kennedy] assassination plot" also have a large pie chart which demonstrates this fact dead center in the page? And is that pie chart labeled "Likelihood of a Kennedy Assassination Plot"? -- Aryaman (talk) 23:29, 25 October 2009 (UTC)


 * No, and no. Your argument appears to be the following:  Regardless of the intrinsic value of the table in question, it is unfair for the table to be so large and so close to the physical center of this page.  I have no opinion on those issues.  Indeed, I didn't even know that "center of the page" was coveted real estate in long Wikipedia articles.  My only assertion was its intrinsic value. &mdash; Lawrence King ( talk ) 00:10, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not doubting its potential value. It is a bit redundant in my opinion, given the fact that it goes to great and colorful lengths to say what has already been said in the text in a much more succinct fashion, but I'm not pushing for wholesale removal. I think DJ's suggestion is doable, and I'd even volunteer to do the .png (or whatever format is preferred), provided that others agree. -- Aryaman (talk) 00:17, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I think that making an image is OK. I don't think we necessarily need the footnotes in the image, as it would clutter the image.  Best to leave them in the image description.  Aryaman, would you use the footnotes exactly as written in the source book, or expanded to MLA (or whatever) format?  It might be a good idea for whoever takes this on to get a copy of the book so the table is assured to be accurate.  I do have an issue with Aryaman denigrating the color in the table.  There are relatively few tables in Wikipedia without color.  When you remove color, a table becomes harder to parse and looks worse.  T34CH (talk) 00:37, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

(ec):::::::::::::Actually, that would be a good thing, I believe. It would prevent the ceaseless additions and vandalizations this table has suffered over the years. It *is* there to represent the view of its authors, and not to track new caste systems or to give some editor the chance to rearrange what the authors saw as caste systems; that is, provided it remains legible (but I have little doubt of that considering what you did with Alun's png.) All that remains is to figure out converting the inlines to footnotes, and to see if we want to keep all the footnotes.--Ramdrake (talk) 00:41, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Well, I didn't consciously think about changing the colors, but since T34CH brought it up, I do think it would be wiser to go monochromatic with this (think of a well-designed infobox, for example). I find that shades of one color achieve the same readability with far less eye strain. But I'm entirely open as to which color should be used as the base (except for red, which is a personal preference). -- Aryaman (talk) 00:45, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Could you be talked into monochrome with different shades of the same base color (e.g. differing shades of blue) to improve readability while still avoiding the distraction of juxtaposing different colours? That would be my personal preference, but I'm wide open to suggestions on this one. OK, my turn not to read properly what somebody else wrote:) Fully agree with Varoon on this one.--Ramdrake (talk) 00:50, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Are you arguing that the table constitutes undue weight?--Ramdrake (talk) 23:31, 25 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I think what DJ is saying is that this might better belong in an image with a clear caption rather than a table. Personally, I'm wondering whether the chart is an example of belaboring a point which could easily be summed up with one sentence. -- Aryaman (talk) 23:37, 25 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Varoon, please re-read what DJ wrote. I'm fairly sure you misunderstood his meaning. I take it he said the table should be properly titled and attributed, with all the inline refs converted to footnotes, and the whole thing converted to an image (I'm assuming so as to avoid further changes). I don't think he is suggesting that some image can render the same info as the table (except specifically an image of the table).--Ramdrake (talk) 23:44, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * You're right. I assumed that he meant the table would best be represented as an image rather than an editable feature of the article, though it might be difficult to do so and retain the necessary degree of readability. Man, was I off. Thanks for the clarification. -- Aryaman (talk) 23:59, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Modifications to the format of the table
I've volunteered to convert the table to an image file. We need to get a few things sorted out first, however.


 * Granting that we're going with a monochromatic scheme, which color would look best? (I personally favor blue or yellow, but I'm open to anything except red.)


 * Should the table have a title in the image, i.e. a title above the table as part of the image, or not? If so, what should that title be?


 * Should the source be indicated in the image, i.e. as a small yet legible note at the bottom of the image, or not?


 * Exactly which of the notes should be included in the image? I'm somewhat puzzled by the current footnotes, as it gives the impression that this table has been expanded by editors rather than being a reproduction of the table as presented in the work in question. Further, if these are footnotes from the original table, I'm not entirely sure whether it is necessary to include them or not. In a quote from a work which references another work with an inline citation or a footnote, e.g. (Scholar et al., 1996), I don't make a footnote mirroring the reporter's footnote, and I don't include a citation on Scholar et al. in the article's bibliography, as it is clear we're assuming the accuracy of the report on the reliability of the reporter. I would think a table should work more or less the same way. This, however, is my personal practice, and I don't know if WP has a MoS standard on this kind of thing. Comments or links to relevant policy would be helpful.

Please post your comments/suggestions immediately under the point being commented upon. Any other relevant suggestions are of course welcome - just add them to the list. Thanks, -- Aryaman (talk) 01:19, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Looking a bit further, it looks like most of the footnotes are from the original addition, but they were somewhat truncated to just the author and sometimes the title of the work it was taken from. Good news is, this confirms the work as at least a secondary source in its own right.--Ramdrake (talk) 01:41, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Varoon, this is the diff where the table was first added, so presumably it has no modifications from the source. I would suggest you may wish to use this as a starting point. It should also tell you which footnotes are original and which aren't. I would personnally recommend only keeping the original footnotes (doh!) Hope it helps!


 * I hesitate to declare this a secondary source. I think the footnotes make clear that this particular claim is original research on the part of the authors. This doesn't discredit their work in the least. But the fact that they refer to several works as sources for their data does not make the resultant synthesis any more credible than it is. They could be cited as a secondary source on the specific data, but the synthesis appears to be new to them.
 * I would suggest something of a compromise. Let's add something in the body to the effect that the authors reviewed a number of works to produce this table, and have a footnote which lists all the sources in that footnote. This would eliminate the need to have so much text in the image. Does that sound reasonable to you? (Also, could you give your preferences regarding the questions above?) Thanks, -- Aryaman (talk) 02:35, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I got bored and made a version... no color changes though to keep the work simple (that can be done later and very easily). What do you guys think?  I'm sure as long as we list Inequality by Design as the source of the image in this article, we can list the sources given in the book in the image description.  That will cover all sourcing requirements and keep the image clean.  T34CH (talk) 02:46, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, I notice at the regular size it can't be read. At 500px it's legible, but the font is fuzzy.  Any comments on the fonts used/relative sizing?  T34CH (talk) 02:48, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * One suggestion: the source of the table itself should definitely be in the image itself, methinks. Also, I'd prefer 550 or 600px - less fuzzy.--Ramdrake (talk) 02:49, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I appreciate the effort, but I was under the impression that we're discussing the details of the table. There are a number of issues which need to be addressed (please see my fist comment in this section). -- Aryaman (talk) 02:55, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Sorry for being overenthusiastic there. In order:
 * Granting that we're going with a monochromatic scheme, which color would look best? (I personally favor blue or yellow, but I'm open to anything except red.)
 * Like I said, I'd prefer blue or green, but I'm not particular in the end.


 * Should the table have a title in the image, i.e. a title above the table as part of the image, or not? If so, what should that title be?
 * I'd keep the current title and indicate the source (book and authors) as a subtitle for clarity's sake.


 * Should the source be indicated in the image, i.e. as a small yet legible note at the bottom of the image, or not?
 * I'd put it as a subtitle, right up there. I hate putting important info into legal-size (read nigh-illegibly small) font. Hope it helps.--Ramdrake (talk) 03:04, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Exactly which of the notes should be included in the image? I'm somewhat puzzled by the current footnotes, as it gives the impression that this table has been expanded by editors rather than being a reproduction of the table as presented in the work in question. Further, if these are footnotes from the original table, I'm not entirely sure whether it is necessary to include them or not. In a quote from a work which references another work with an inline citation or a footnote, e.g. (Scholar et al., 1996), I don't make a footnote mirroring the reporter's footnote, and I don't include a citation on Scholar et al. in the article's bibliography, as it is clear we're assuming the accuracy of the report on the reliability of the reporter. I would think a table should work more or less the same way. This, however, is my personal practice, and I don't know if WP has a MoS standard on this kind of thing. Comments or links to relevant policy would be helpful.
 * I'd can the footnotes. For references, the reader should be directed to the book by the authors of the table. But that's just me. I'm unaware of a MoS guideline on this one, unfortunately.--Ramdrake (talk) 03:08, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, I put the book ref in the image. How does it look.  I think the foot notes in the table are important in case readers want to see where the info came from originally.  Cuts out the middle man if they don't have to look up Inequality by Design first.  Having the notes in the image description keeps this article (and any other where this might be used) uncluttered. Like I said, this is very easy to change, so feel free to play around with it.  Any one can email me if they want the source table to play with.  T34CH (talk) 03:19, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * There is certainly no Wikipedia rule (or, for that matter, any rule in academic publishing) that says you need to list all the sources used by your source. But I agree it's nice.  Here is a suggestion: Don't have footnotes within the table.  Instead, give just one single footnote to Inequality by Design, and then add at the end of this footnote, "The authors of Inequality cite the following sources for the information in this table:  x, y, z, etc.".  This is a compromise suggestion:  it gives the individual sources, but doesn't specify which cells in the table come from which.  Just an idea. &mdash; Lawrence King ( talk ) 03:25, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Since we both seem to approve of blue (and we're the only people reading each others comments, apparently), let's go with that. I'm curious to know if that title came as is from the source or not, though I suppose nothing short of a trip to the library would clear that up. I will include the current title, but follow WP MoS policy on capitalization. Unless you strongly object, I would prefer to put the source in parenthesis directly underneath the title as (Fischer et al., 1996:192). (The image file should contain a note on the source should other editors find some use for the image outside this article.) I've noticed that the article's footnote format is in a bit of a shambles, and many are formatted in different ways (some are also incomplete), but I would move all of them to this format eventually. If you don't object to my suggestion regarding the specific sources, then we can eliminate the numbered notation from the image altogether. I'll also be using either Verdana of Arial font, as those seem to adjust well when images are resized. If that's it, then I'll start on the image now. -- Aryaman (talk) 03:27, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Sounds like you read Lawrence's mind and mine, at least. T34CH's effort demonstrate what I meant by "avoid legal-size font for the source!" (no disrespect intended!) The font used for the source can be a bit smaller than that used for the title (why I said "as a subtitle") And I'll defer to ytour experience for the best scalable font. :) --Ramdrake (talk) 03:32, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * No offense taken. I had made that version before I read your comment.  My intention was to give us a visual aid to get the ball rolling.  Looks like it's working.  T34CH (talk) 04:04, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I just finished when I noticed that I had been working off the current version of this table (one of the downsides of tabbed browsers). Then I compared it with the earliest version Ramdrake diff'ed, and I noticed there are significant differences. Either folks have been tampering with this thing, not realizing that it's from a book, or the original version was not correct and it was corrected later. It would seem to be the former, but how can we be sure? (And would they really compare "Great Britain" with "Irish, Scottish"?) Until we can verify this, I'm hesitant to put up either version. I will upload the version I have now (which reflects the "original" table), but we collectively need to verify this as soon as possible. -- Aryaman (talk) 05:04, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
 * PS: For some odd reason, the new image isn't showing up on this page; the old version still displays, though I have updated the file. If you want to see it, I guess you'll have to click through until you get to it. Odd indeed. -- Aryaman (talk) 05:25, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, if you take a look at the image page, you'll notice that, although the new image appears at the top, the file history reports that I uploaded T34CH's file again. Hmm. Maybe it will correct itself? -- Aryaman (talk) 05:31, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I think we can get away with reducing this down to 400px. I have no problems reading it at that size. -- Aryaman (talk) 05:54, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Looks good. I like the layout fonts and colors.  What program did you use?  You can see how I handled "Great Britain"ish people in the file history.  Like I said 3 days ago, here's another version that has been on the web for at least a year before Futurebird made his version, for comparison.  Some one should confirm the accuracy by looking at the actual book.  T34CH (talk) 14:46, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Sorry to be picky, but I would have expected the book title to be included in the table's subtitle. Do you folks think it is possible/appropriate? Otherwise, it looks really good.--Ramdrake (talk) 14:55, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Glad you like it. I use Paint.Net for nearly all my images - which, for freeware, is quite powerful if you understand how to use it. We definitely have to verify this table. I'll be making a trip to the university library today, so I will be able to do this myself. As for the title, I'm fine either way. Changing the image would only take a few mouseclicks, so once people have voiced their opinion, I can do it easily enough. -- Aryaman (talk) 15:42, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I think it looks excellent. Of course, when you get your hands on the actual book, the text of the table should match the book's text (barring unforeseen problems).  I see that you deleted some entries, such as "East Asian" / "Southeast Asian", because they weren't in the original edit that produced the table.  Hopefully the current one matches the book, although "Great Britain" as a race does look odd, as you mentioned. &mdash; Lawrence King ( talk ) 17:25, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I compared the table with the original as it appears in the book, making the necessary changes. The table now reflects the data correctly. However, I would like to mention that the authors themselves explicitly point out the weaknesses of this table as: (1) "the information is not complete"; (2) "the tests and procedures varied considerably from study to study" and thus "there is no simple way to compare the size of group differences"; (3) "in some cases, a few studies have yielded more mixed findings than those shown [in the table]" (all from pg. 191 of the same volume). In other words, this table should be taken with a grain of salt, and admittedly sacrifices accuracy for the purpose of making a point. They give us nothing of note in the way of numbers regarding actual differences, and thus the magnitude of difference is left up to the reader's imagination. For example, a close reading of the actual footnotes reveals that the Jew/Arab comparison in the table is based on the fact that, in 1992, 26% of Jewish high school students passed their matriculation exam, as opposed to 15% of Arab students. If we view this kind of reporting impartially, we could easily demonstrate that Fischer et al. are consciously committing exactly the same errors they accuse Herrnstein and Murray of committing. But this kind of impartiality is not condoned on WP; we must simply report the findings. The table image in its current state does this. -- Aryaman (talk) 18:16, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * As much as I hate to say it, you're dead right on this one... :-/ --Ramdrake (talk) 18:19, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Agreed on both points. I personally think the WP:NOR rule has serious flaws, but we have to abide by it.  (In articles about fictional characters the NOR rule is downright silly, but that's another argument....)  If you want to mention the caveats somewhere (maybe in the footnote?) that would be great, or if you omit them that's great too. I'm easy. &mdash; Lawrence King ( talk ) 01:38, 27 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Aryaman, are you going to put the new table in the article? &mdash; Lawrence King ( talk ) 06:01, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Does this table actually belong in the article?

 * Why is this table even in the article? it doesn't touch on the question as to whether intelligence differences between races are environmental or hereditary because the results are equally consistent with the two hypotheses (i) lower average intelligence leads to lower status and (ii) lower status leads to lower average intelligence test scores. Moreover the groups are not, in many cases, what would commonly be called "races". The table seems to more in the nature of propaganda than science, and indeed the source is avowedly partisan. Qemist (talk) 09:14, 3 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Even if you are correct that this table "doesn't touch on the question as to whether intelligence differences between races are environmental or hereditary", that doesn't mean the table doesn't belong here. Because this Wikipedia topic is not merely about the "environmental or hereditary" debate -- as you can see from the first paragraph of the article.


 * Moreover, in my opinion the results of this table are not equally consistent with your hypotheses i and ii.  I think that the results of this table are more strongly supportive of ii.  That's my opinion of the implications of the table, and I respect that you have a different opinion of the implications of the table.  Therefore I favor including the table (but not including my opinion or your opinion of its implications).


 * Finally, the table purports to include factual information. It is true that the authors of the book it comes from have opinions, but that isn't a problem.  A respected academic text can be a valid source for factual data (on Wikipedia, and in the academic world itself) even if the authors of that text have opinions.  In fact, you would be hard-pressed to find any Wikipedia source that is written by someone without an opinion. &mdash; Lawrence King ( talk ) 00:18, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the table does not belong in the article because too much of it concerns groupings that no one describes as a "race." (If this were an article about "ethnic groups and intelligence," then it would be fine. So, I would either delete the table or delete the rows in the table that are not clearly related to race. David.Kane (talk) 16:18, 4 November 2009 (UTC)


 * In this case, it's an all or nothing situation. As I've said before, I think the table belabors a point, but I didn't think there would be any support for removal. Given the concerns raised by Quemist and David Kane, perhaps a reconsideration is in order. -- Aryaman (talk) 18:05, 4 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Two points: first,the very first line of the article says: This article also discusses issues regarding ethnicity and intelligence. And second, we've been belaboring the point here of genetic population differences and between group heritability. Under the circumstances, I think it would be ill-suited to adopt a narrow definition of race in this specific instance to exclude this otherwise informative comparison between ethnic populations.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:02, 4 November 2009 (UTC)


 * VA has pointed out here that the authors who created this table have admitted to distorting certain data in order to fit the point they wished to make, such as listing the French as socially "above" the Flemish, when the opposite would be a more accurate description.  Assuming that there's a WP:RS which points out this criticism of the table, if we're going to include the table we should also mention this flaw in it. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:12, 4 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually, if you re-read what VA said, he didn't say that about the French-Flemish divide; he said that about the table in general, and that I'm aware, he included those caveats in his version of the table (with the accompanying text). I don't have an issue with the caveats (they need to be there for honesty's sake), but that's no reason to remove the table: it's still a valid point.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:22, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

A systematic literature review of the average IQ of sub-Saharan Africans
Here is the abstract of the above 20 page article by Jelte M. Wicherts, Conor V. Dolan and Han L.J. van der Maas published in 2009 in Intelligence.

Here is the article. I have also placed a copy here temporarily. Mathsci (talk) 15:05, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

here's Lynn and Meisenberg's response to Wicherts, Dolan, and van der Maas:

 --DJ (talk) 10:28, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * He also has written this article . Once his scientific methodology has been exposed as flawed and his use of statistics criticized by respected academics, Lynn's discredited assertions cannot be used without considerable qualification. In other words a lot of controversy and question marks hang over his academic output. The study by the scientists from Amsterdam was peer-reviewed. This was probably not the case for Lynn's rebuttal. Elsewhere Donald Templer from Alliant International University, Fresno writes in Lynn's defense, "The Big Picture is that Blacks average a lower IQ and all that goes with it and are prone to HIV/AIDS."  Interesting to read that whites in the USA or Africa are genetically less prone to HIV/AIDS than blacks. Templer also writes, "When I tested the theory I found an r–K super-factor that accounted for 75% of the variance across 129 national differences in IQ, life expectancy, birth rate, infant mortality, HIV/AIDS, skin color, and GDP (median r = .68; Templer, 2008). Rushton and Templer (2009) extended these results and found 113 national IQs predicted violent crimes such as murder, rape, and serious assault." Even more interesting. Mathsci (talk) 14:48, 2 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Wasn't the Lynn article published in Intelligence (journal)? And, though this is going off-topic somewhat: Could you provide more specific information regarding Rushton & Templer's findings on IQ and/or r/K over on the talk page at Race and crime in the United States? Though you sound incredulous, IQ theory and r/K theory are heavily discussed theories of causation in that sub-field, and the article could perhaps benefit from the inclusion of this material.
 * As I said, as long as we discuss the findings of the Wicherts report along side the original Jensen & Rushton 2005 review, I don't see a problem. And, of course, Lynn's rebuttal needs to be taken into consideration, especially given the fact that Wicherts admits to using a potentially troubling method in handling the data. -- Aryaman (talk) 15:50, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The r/K scale, as commented by its author, has been decried as not being applicable to a single species, let alone to human "races". Rushton hasd been heavily criticized for it . The fact that Rushton has kept rehashing the same drivel in several articles, however, does not make the concept of r-K selection any more "heavily discussed". It's just a lot of noise coming from basically just one person.--Ramdrake (talk) 16:11, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * If you look through some of the books in the bibliography of the Race and Crime article, you'll see that within the field of criminology, Rushton's r/K theory receives a large amount of coverage from other authors about this topic. Varoon Arya can provide more information on this, since he's the main person who researched that article, but two major criminology works I'm aware of that cover Rushton's theory are The Encyclopedia of Race and Crime (2009), and Race and Crime (2005), both by Gabbidon and Greene.  As pointed out on the Race and crime talk page, universities which offer courses on race and crime use the latter book as required reading more often than any other book, so it is the single most useful available standard by which to judge the degree to which various theories about this topic are considered. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:56, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Try not to get distracted by causal hypotheses when writing about the nature of test score differences. The causes are mostly unknown (Neisser et al 1996), but a great deal is known or at least well supported with regard to the properties of test score differences. --DJ (talk) 18:04, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

This is all good material. You ought to add it to the article. David.Kane (talk) 16:19, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to Remove All Tags
I believe that this article suffers from WP:OVERTAGGING, potentially even WP:TAGBOMB. I tried to remove one tag last month and a different one today. My changes were reverted. It is not clear to me that, no matter how excellent the article became, it would ever be possible to remove these tags. So, I propose removing all tags now and then starting afresh. If, after discussion, there was consensus to add these tags (or others) back to the article, that would be fine. What do other editors think? David.Kane (talk) 20:21, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree to the overtagging, but the article still isn't balanced. There needs to be a section added on the criticism of the 100% environment thesis in all of its forms. Jensen (2002), for example, goes through 10 of the most popular environmental theories and debunks them all, yet none of this criticism appears in the article. We could also go through the criticism of Rushton, Gottfriedson, etc. Until that is done, I think the unbalanced tag should remain. However, I think the worldwide tag and the expert tag are overkill, and would not object to their removal. -- Aryaman (talk) 20:29, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose the tag removal. The problems need to be addressed before the tags are removed. We've barely begun the work. Give it some time.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:33, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
 * First, I think that the problems have been addressed. Second, I see no evidence that any amount of improvement would satisfy Ramdrake. See our discussion about the Worldwide tag. Third, with regard to the balance tag, I believe (corrections welcome) that Aryaman  (talk) thinks the balance is off in one direction (needs more Jensen) while Ramdrake thinks it is off in the other direction. There is no way to make you both happy! David.Kane (talk) 20:56, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Then, submit the existence of the tags to an RfC. We can go by community input if we're divided between us.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:25, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Before going to the WP:RFC, I want to solicit opinions from other editors on this page. "Before asking outside opinion here, it generally helps to simply discuss the matter on the talk page first." If most feel that all the tags are warranted, then there is no need for an RfC. I like to think that, if most editors agree with me, an RfC would be unnecessary as well . . . David.Kane (talk) 21:32, 4 November 2009 (UTC)


 * “I believe (corrections welcome) that Aryaman thinks the balance is off in one direction (needs more Jensen) while Ramdrake thinks it is off in the other direction. There is no way to make you both happy!”


 * I think we shouldn’t look at this in terms of balancing different authors so much as balancing different viewpoints. NPOV requires that we include criticisms of each of these theories that have been published in reliable sources, but if any theory has multiple well-known supporters who hold similar viewpoints, we don’t need to cite every proponent of this theory an equal amount.  In this case, since Eysenck’s death Jensen is probably the most prominent adherent of the hereditarian view, so we shouldn’t consider it a problem if most of the arguments against the environmental view are cited to him rather than to this theory’s other supporters.


 * I agree with VA that the article needs to include some of the criticism of the 100%-environment theory. If Jensen’s paper is the best available criticism of this theory, then it should be used for this.  I also agree with David.Kane that the "worldwide" tag is no longer necessary, and I think this was established by the earlier discussion that he linked to.  I'm not sure either way about the expert tag, though, since I don't recall that having been discussed here recently. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:44, 4 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I believe there are two opposed viewpoints here, much like David Kane: those who think the balance is off in one direction, and those who think it is off in the other direction. This is why I would oppose devoting any more space to the pro-hereditarian view, or to the critic of the environmental view (which is already criticized in the article, BTW). I just don't see that our two positions can be reconciled lest we request wider, outside input from the community. This in all likelihood would break the stalemate one way or the other.--Ramdrake (talk) 22:35, 4 November 2009 (UTC)


 * If you look at the actual content of the article, you’ll see that although it devotes a large amount of space to the hereditarian view, almost all of that space is taken up by either background information about this theory or criticism of it. This is particularly ironic considering the section is titled “evidence for genetic factors”, and almost none of the evidence cited by proponents of the hereditarian view is actually described there.  I don’t think the hereditarian view needs any more space per se, but the aspects of the article pertaining to this theory need to be rewritten in order to summarize the arguments that are made in favor of this view.  If the article doesn’t include this anywhere (as it currently doesn’t), then it simply isn’t doing its job. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:21, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

African IQ "Paradox"
The article currently states:

"There is a paradox from IQ studies in Africa that has yet to be resolved. Europeans with an IQ of 70 are considered mentally retarded. However, the Africans found to have an IQ of 70 were perfectly normal with the apparent ability to function normally in their social environment. This has led to questions of the validity of these IQ tests."

It gives the following sources for this claim:
 * Sarich (2004). "Race and Behavior". Race. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. ISBN 0813340861.
 * Nathan (2004). "A review of Race: the Reality of Human Differences" (PDF).

This is an interesting claim. Though I don't doubt that someone has made this observation, I'm wondering if these sources support this claim. I don't have the book by Sarich & Miele at the moment, but I've perused the piece by Mark Nathan Cohen. (Did I forget to mention? Ignore the poor format of these citations, including the names; the author is "Mark Nathan Cohen", not "Nathan".) First of all, the Cohen article is a book review of Sarich & Miele's Race: The Reality of Human Differences (yes, that's the same "Sarich (2004)"), and not exactly the place to look for well-reasoned argumentation. Here's what Cohen actually says (pg. 261):

"These authors themselves suggest that 70 is borderline educable retardation. Colleagues in psychology suggest that the figure approaches that of mental retardation or even developmental disability implying that a very substantial proportion of Africans (almost half) are retarded. They consider the estimate preposterous, because it would produce a barely functional society that would have essentially no capacity for abstract reasoning--hardly a prescription for societies with the rich and vibrant artistic, symbolic and spiritual lives evident in the cultures involved."

Note that the "they" in this train wreck of an argument are Cohen's colleagues, not Sarich & Miele. I think we're better off ignoring Cohen's assessment of the viability and functionality of African society. Let's simply focus on the claim that Africans with an IQ of 70 have been observed to be "perfectly normal" with the ability to "function normally" in their social environment. Given the nature of a phrase such as "perfectly normal", I'd like to see direct quotes from reliable sources on this. As it stands, Cohen is not the place to look for support for this claim.

Also, I hope it is apparent that Cohen's argument is both fallacious and potentially offensive for several reasons, the least of which is that it appears to operate on the assumption that people with an IQ of 70 or less can neither lead artistically and spiritually rewarding lives nor make a positive contribution to society.

As for the Sarich & Miele book, a quick reading of the abstract might give one second thoughts regarding its use to support this claim. The book is a defense of the concept of race, and attempts to demonstrate, among other things, that "racial differences in humans exceed the differences that separate subspecies or even species in such other primates as gorillas and chimpanzees". Something tells me Sarich & Miele are not going to support the claim as it stands above.

Lastly, please note that the 4 statements in the passage quoted above form a logical chain. That is, this information is being mentioned to support the claim: "This has led to questions of the validity of these IQ tests". Are these authors discussing the African IQ as part of their attack on the validity of IQ testing? I don't think so. While I fully accept that there are scholars who doubt the validity of IQ testing, I don't think their doubt is founded - even in part - in the "African IQ Paradox". Do you?

Like I said at the start, I don't necessarily doubt that someone out there has made this claim, and perhaps even done some field research to back it up. Let's either get real research to replace what is there now, or rephrase the statement to something which can be cited to a reliable source. Thanks, -- Aryaman (talk) 23:16, 29 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I remember that Richard Lynn claimed that the bushmen of the Kalahari had the same intelligence as an eight year old European child in his book Race Differences in Intelligence. Lynn's claim that they were mentally retarded and that the eight year old child could survive as easily in the bush was dismissed in the review by Cambridge Professor of Experimental Psychology N.J. McKintosh mentioned here. Mathsci (talk) 23:33, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Ah, Right. The original passage from Lynn was:

"An IQ of 54 represents the mental age of the average European 8-year-old child, and the average European 8-year-old can read, write, and do arithmetic and would have no difficulty in learning and performing the activities of gathering foods and hunting carried out by the San Bushmen."

I'm willing to bet that most if not all 8 year old Kalahari Bushmen children have already mastered much of the day-to-day requirements of living in the Kalahari - which is not exactly the Sahara, if you know what I mean. -- Aryaman (talk) 00:15, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think there are any bushmen in the Sahara, if that's what you mean. What disturbs me about some of the WP articles on the books of Richard Lynn is that they reproduce tables as if they represented reliable data. Reading McKintosh's review (in this case Lynn used data gathered by McKintosh), it seems that these tables are probably not reliable and reproducing them violates WP:UNDUE. Still that's wikipedia for you. Mathsci (talk) 05:32, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The point is how reliable is a study that states that a significant proportion of a population is mentally retarded based on their IQ, when the individuals in question are not mentally retarded by all other indicators. Maybe the study is not reliable enough to warrant a mention. According to IQ and the Wealth of Nations, many countries that have an average IQ below 85 have populations that are significantly "mentally retarded". Wapondaponda (talk) 05:54, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Muntuwandi, it's not for us to debate this here. We have to find this in sources. This detailed book review Black Intellectual Genocide of IQ and the Wealth of Nations by Girma Berhanu from 2007 is particularly scathing. 28 pages long with detailed references to the academic literature, it concludes that the authors show poor scholarship, rendering the book useless scientifically. The reviewer concentrates on the case of Ethiopian Jews. Nevertheless the dubious table has been reproduced in the article, which I think is probably inappropriate (WP:UNDUE). Mathsci (talk) 06:25, 30 October 2009 (UTC)


 * On a related note, the USCDC reports that the distribution of mental retardation among the races (occurrence per 1000 individuals) is: White (5.7), Black (10), Asian (4.9), Hispanic (7.0). There is also a very interesting passage from Flynn which discusses the fact that, apparently, an IQ of 70 in White children denotes a more severe retardation than the same IQ in Black children:


 * "A few words about the lower end of the IQ scale: schools tend to use IQ tests to diagnose mental retardation, the usual criterion being an IQ below 70. However, as Jensen himself has observed, while middle-class children who score below 70 just seem much more retarded than black lower-class children below that level. In her study of Riverside, California, Jane Mercer developed a test of adaptive behavior to see whether or not there were important differences between social groups classified as mentally retarded. She used an age-graded set of indicators, for example, can set the table at 3, lace his own shoes at 5, run errands with money at 6, and as an adult, can keep score at baseball, work with little or no supervision, read books and newspapers, and so forth. A pass (at this level) meant that one could perform approximately two-thirds of the tasks appropriate to one's age group. On the basis of a tested subsample, Mercer asserts that none of the whites with IQs of less than 70 passed, while 20 of 22 blacks passed. (Flynn, 1980:204)"


 * Apparently, Blacks with a low (<70) IQ can function better than Whites with the same IQ, at least in regards to menial tasking. This, however, is a far cry from saying Africans with an IQ of 70 or less are "perfectly normal with the apparent ability to function normally in their social environment". Thus, the search continues... -- Aryaman (talk) 10:56, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the message of these book reviews is that Lynn's attempt to internationalize the black-white "gap" to Africa and elsewhere instantly raises problems possibly less evident in the USA, namely the failure of Lynn and others to properly take into account factors from anthropology, sociology, nutrition, etc. In a certain sense, even in  statistical considerations, psychologists like Lynn seem to be quite out of their depth here. This is what I understand from McKintosh's review; and I think Girma Berhanu also points this out more forcefully in his review, which deserves  careful consideration as a "debunking" of precisely the things presented by Lynn and others as "fact". It shows what traps they fall into when trying to use an intelligence test devised for those raised in the West (originally for US army recruits?) outside its original context. The shift from the USA to Africa (or elsewhere) immediately highlights these problems. A general criticism of the whole article is that it is centred on a debate in the USA. It's probably best not to confuse Africans and African-Americans. With his expertise in anthropology, Slrubenstein will correct me if I'm wrong, but this kind of jump would seem to be making a fundamental error with all sorts of preconceptions attached. How is it possible to blur the distinction between Africans and African-Americans?  What the sources indicate is that Lynn and others have been accused by reputable academics of applying a flawed scientific methodology in their discussion of race and intelligence outside the USA.  Mathsci (talk) 13:13, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * With regards to Africans in Africa I don't see the paradox. If Africans generally have low IQs and IQs of 70 or less are common in Africa, then you would expect people low IQs to fit in and function in their society. Being surprised at this "paradox" is like being surprised that people 5ft tall are not considered short in pygmy society. The fact that Americans of African descent with an IQ of 70 are more capable and functional than white Americans with that IQ is consistent with the test under-measuring the intelligence of African-Americans. If that were the case, then it would be unsurprising if the test under-measured the intelligence of african Africans even more. This seems a more parsimonious explanation than hypothesizing some sort of biological functional retardation among people of African descent. Qemist (talk) 22:21, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting we "blur the distinction" between African Americans and Africans. I mentioned the Flynn passage because it discusses racial differences in the perceived severity of mental retardation, not because I wanted to apply this result directly to Sub-Saharan Africans. Regarding the "failures" of "Lynn and others", I think you'll find that Jensen takes nutrition and other such factors seriously. And all psychometricians take potential cultural bias in IQ testing very seriously, which is one reason why Jensen stopped talking about "intelligence" some time ago and instead refers to g. Whether g-loaded tests have been used in the measurement of African populations is certainly an interesting question, but ultimately falls outside the scope of the present discussion, the point of which is to determine whether any reliable sources can be found for the above claim as it appears in the article. -- Aryaman (talk) 13:29, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

PS: In case anyone is curious (I was), it would appear that the internationalized WISC-R test has been used for IQ assessment in African countries such as South Africa and Zimbabwe. If you would like to see the results of Black-White comparisons in those populations: Zimbabwe, South Africa. Alternatively, if you're interested in an example of the attempts to overcome social and cultural bias in IQ testing in Africa, this study details the use of the old "ratio IQ" in preference to the more modern "deviance IQ" method, and reports some success. -- Aryaman (talk) 15:40, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Varoon Arya, I think you are departing into original research. At the top of this section you wrote African IQ "Paradox". Apparently this topic was concocted by you, since you haven't provided a specific recent source that discusses this exact topic. The references cited are all rather old and much recent "research" has been discredited. It might be an idea to spend a little time reading the 28 page book review by Berhanu before using this talk page as a forum. Your approach seems quite unscholarly. By not considering the arguments of Berhanu, you are simply repeating the faulty scientific methodology of Lynn. Am I mistaken in thinking that you believe that various African peoples can be labelled as " severely mentally retarded" and are searching for evidence? Is this not the province of anthropology? Do anthropologists use this terminology? What does Laurens van der Post have to say? Mathsci (talk) 16:01, 30 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Back up a sec there, Mathsci. Please re-read everything I've said. The passage I quote at the top of this section is currently in the article. I didn't write it. My point in discussing it here is to point out that I think the sources cited as supporting this claim are being misused. If reliable sources can be found which support this claim, then we should use them to replace what is there currently. Otherwise, I am all for deleting the whole passage. That's policy, and has nothing to do with me "concocting" anything. Frankly, I'm a bit perplexed as to your response, seeing as everything I've said has been with a view towards improving a very specific part of this article. -- Aryaman (talk) 16:15, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree that the use of the word "paradox" in that sentence is not justified nor the "scare" phrasing of the sentence. However, I believe that since the two reviews I found mentioned various factors that need to be taken into account when interpreting measurements in Africa, this should be included in the article. I also believe that if Lynn's recently published assertions about race and intelligence in Africa have been contested by academics, this should be recorded in the article. In other words the sentences should be replaced by something more accurate, up-to-date and very carefully written that agrees completely with reliable sources. I am sorry for any confusion. Mathsci (talk) 13:57, 31 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I believe I added the references to Miele and Nathan one or two years ago. Miele though arguing for the existence of race is also confounded by the "paradox". Whereas Nathan 2004 suggest that it is the testing that is problematic. Whatever the case, there is an inconsistency which I believe has yet to be resolved, and I thought it was worth mentioning since IQ=70 has been frequently mentioned. It is principally in the US where issues of "race" are a major part of the policy debate, whereas it is not a dominant issue in other parts of the world. The French government by its secular ideals doesn't even recognize race and doesn't consider race in demographic surveys. Furthermore explicit IQ testing may even be illegal in some parts of the world. All this makes internationalizing the race/IQ debate, at this stage, still problematic as highlighted by the perplexing discord between African IQ and the lack of mental retardation. Wapondaponda (talk) 20:59, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't see how the fact that race is not such an issue elsewhere or that the French government does not like to record race or that IQ testing may be illegal somewhere (where? I have never heard of such a thing) prevents taking an international perspective. I note that you refer to "the debate". The page we are discussing isn't supposed to be a "debate", it's an encyclopedia article. Qemist (talk) 21:57, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

We are getting way out of hand here. The fact is that the "There is a paradox from IQ studies in Africa..." text is not properly cited. I'm sure with near absolute certainty that credible academic researchers have made this connection, but that work is not what we have before us.

I would support removal of the text. The Squicks (talk) 02:46, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
 * If one has an amazon account, you can get a preview of Sarich and Miele page 225 where the authors directly discuss this issue. I would describe the book as outright "racialist" possibly "racist" so read at ones own risk. Of course racialists would enjoy such a book. Wapondaponda (talk) 06:47, 31 October 2009 (UTC)


 * "I don't like it" is a very lousy argument for the inclusion or exclusion of material. The fundamental issue here is that the text that I believe is currently in the article is not properly sourced, and should thus be removed (or a proper source found). The Squicks (talk) 07:00, 31 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Seeing as we apparently agree that this passage is not supported by these sources, I suggest we remove it. Of course, this needs to be done with a view towards improving the section, and it should at least discuss African IQ test results. If studies can be found which specifically discuss Black-White comparisons made in African countries, we should discuss these as well. I linked to two such studies above, and there are very likely more which could and should be mentioned.
 * As for factors which may reduce the reliability of such results, I think we need to group this criticism together rather than keeping it sprinkled throughout the article. The claim that cross-cultural comparisons of IQ are (inherently or methodically) flawed can be well-sourced and deserves a good presentation. -- Aryaman (talk) 17:34, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I am pretty sympathetic to Aryaman's claims and suggestions here. if I have misse dor misread something I'd appreciate someone explaining it to me but a little more slowly and detailed so I can follow the objction. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 18:20, 31 October 2009 (UTC) Unfortunately, the "we" that Aryaman refers to does not include me as I believe the statement is supported by the sources. If there is a consensus to remove it because we don't like it, then that is a different matter. Here is an excerpt from Sarich and Miele

I believe this is quite consistent with the current text. Wapondaponda (talk) 20:19, 31 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Unless I'm mistaken, Sarich & Miele are talking about the Jensen study - to which Flynn referred and then corroborated with the results of the Mercer study (see the quote from Flynn I provided above). The results of both seem to indicate that Blacks with a low (<70) IQ can function "better" than Whites with the same IQ, at least in regards to the kinds of menial tasking described in Mercer's study. As I've said, I think this is an interesting result, and it might very well be worth mentioning in the article. All I ask is that we first consider the implications. It would seem that Sarich & Miele are saying that having a mean IQ of 70 does not pose a serious problem for Africans, both for the reason that (a) African Americans with an IQ of 70 seem to perform better than White Americans with an IQ of 70 (the implicit assumption being that we can apply these results to African populations), and (b) the relative complexity of African society does not require a high mean IQ (though this may be an inference on my part; it's hard to tell with all the ellipsis). Let it be noted that this argumentation operates on the assumption that the African test results are accurate, i.e. that the African mean IQ is 70. If we are willing to let that stand, then I suppose there isn't really a problem with presenting Sarich & Miele's argument for what it's worth. But I think before we do so, a more thorough examination of the literature is necessary. Do most experts accept the 70 mean, and emphasize that this 70 mean in African communities does not necessarily imply the mental retardation that it does in White American communities? Or are they arguing that the tests have been conducted incorrectly, and that if conducted correctly, the African mean should be closer to the White American mean of 100? Or are they arguing that there is no good method for comparing the results of two different cultures where intelligence has different meanings? I don't lean towards any one of those options particularly, but I think the article should reflect which ever is the main line of argumentation in the literature, or possibly all of them if found in reliable sources. -- Aryaman (talk) 20:58, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
 * PS: Just to clarify: I think the "apples and oranges" comment is meant to imply that Whites and Blacks are two different races, and that these results confirm this. I haven't read the book, but that would be appear to be the interpretation most consistent with the synopsis. In other words: As the distance between 70 and the African American mean of 85 is far less and thus less significant than the distance between 70 and the White American mean of 100, it should not surprise us that 70 represents a far greater degree of retardation in the White population. I'm not arguing the point for them, and I'm not commenting upon whether I find the argument convincing, but I do believe that this is what the passage Muntuwandi quoted is actually driving at. Either way, I don't think it is saying anything about the reliability of IQ tests other than that they help support the pro-race thesis. That's why I brought up the issue of source misuse in the first place. -- Aryaman (talk) 22:03, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I believe you are introducing your own somewhat biased opinion here especially when you state that "the relative complexity of African society does not require a high mean IQ". This is not what Sarich suggests, if one reads the book they in fact make the opposite argument. They are confounded by this paradox and suggest that the issue is not resolved. However, they offer only one side of the story as they are self-admitted racialists. I believe the [review offers another that you have not considered, that these IQ estimates are "preposterous". With regard to your comment about societal complexity and IQ. There is a hypothesis that complex societies select for high mean IQ, which is a somewhat reasonable hypothesis. At the same time, evolutionary psychologists wonder why homo sapiens is an intelligent species, when for the vast majority human evolution, homo lived in relatively simple societies. Homo sapiens has only lived in complex agricultural societies for the last 10,000 years, yet homo sapiens was obviously intelligent before then. IOW, homo sapiens have had more intelligence than required by the environment. Consequently Stephen Jay Gould have argued that intelligence is an "accident of evolution". I digress, but simply wanted to point out that simplistic reasoning for the origins and causes of intelligence are currently insufficient to explain this phenomenon. [[User:Muntuwandi|Wapondaponda]] (talk) 03:45, 1 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Please stop referring to people as racists. It's very unhelpful to this discussion, which was civil, reasonable, and evenhanded in tone before and should be as civil as that in the future. The Squicks (talk) 05:32, 1 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Muntuwandi referred to "racialists", not "racists". Please look up the difference.--Ramdrake (talk) 14:29, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

←If wonder if editors could stop interpreting books for other wikipedians and also be more careful about relative phrases like "mental retardation" and "different race", which I do not believe anthropologists use to describe Africans. (The phrase "IQ score differences" is fine, if measurements have been made.) An assessment of a book like "Sarich, V. & Miele, F. Race: The Reality of Human Differences" on wikipedia should be made through a secondary source - ideally book reviews. There are also plenty of other articles available. I found this scholarly article by Mountain (anthropology) and Risch (genetics) from Stanford University ("Assessing genetic contributions to phenotypic differences among 'racial' and 'ethnic' groups", Nature Genetics  36, S48 - S53 (2004)). The terms used in the title of their article and their discussion are very carefully chosen and avoid falling into the traps that I have mentioned. Mountain and Risch write about Sarich and Miele's book

They then give a very detailed discussion. There is also a discussion of the book by Rushton and Jensen here. This article, "Wanted, more race realism, less moralistic fallacy", seems to be a polemic. They freely cite Lynn's statistical evidence without question, despite the criticism of his flawed scientific methods by academics already mentioned. I think there are plenty of other book reviews of Miele and Sarich, eg Journal of Clinical Investigation (Morris W. Foster, J. Clin. Invest. 113(12): 1663-1663 (2004)). Foster writes:

This indicates that the book contains flawed scientific methodology. The book is also severely criticized as being "racist" and distorting evidence by the anthropologist M. N. Cohen here in addition to his review here (already cited). There is another review here by S. A. Gardner in MultiCultural Review, v. 13, no. 4 (winter 2004): 83. The abstract states:

And so on. For example the poor scholarship in the book is dismissed again here by C. Knowles in Sociology, Volume 40(1): 189–192 (the reviewer compares one of their assertions directly to a not dissimilar assertion in Mein Kampf). The book is a primary source and any reference to it or its claims must be carefully qualified, like the books of Lynn. I did also find the additional fact that most anthropologists in China freely use the term "race" as explained in "The Status of the Race Concept in Contemporary Biological Anthropology: A Review" (2007) here. Mathsci (talk) 14:39, 1 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Interesting stuff, some of which I had not yet come across. Thanks to Mathsci for the links. If we are to refrain from interpreting works for other editors, let's not characterize the work of Jensen & Rushton as a "polemic". I think it's fair to say we can expect editors to approach this material with slightly more critical acumen. The work referred to is a defense of the pair's Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability (2005) which reiterates and replies to the arguments which critics made in their evaluation of that work. Before commenting upon Jensen & Rushton's use of Lynn (1991), we need to look at both Lynn's work as well as the original 2005 work by Jensen & Rushton. Lynn (1991) is a literature review of 11 other works, and Jensen & Rushton (2005) corroborates the Lynn (1991) findings through comparison with the summary provided by Lynn & Vanhanen (2002) of the findings of Glewwe and Jacoby (1992) in Ghana, Sternberg et al. (2001) in Kenya, Zindi (1994) in Zimbabwe, and Owen (1992) as well as Skuy, Schutte, Fridjhon, and O’Carroll (2001) in South Africa. They then bring forward the results of more recent research in Africa, such as that of Sternberg in Tanzania (2002; 2005). Now, we can certainly roll out the long list of critics who reviewed the Lynn & Vanhanen (2002) book, but let's not overlook that fact that the bulk of that criticism is directed at Lynn & Vanhanen's use of the data (e.g. their method of projecting IQ over time and their methods of correlating IQ with GDP) and not at their reporting of the results of the above-mentioned studies. (If there is criticism to that effect, I have not seen or heard of it.) Most of the reviews I have seen either accept this data as reported, or point out supposed flaws in subsequent calculations. Note also that the contested results (such as those regarding Ethiopia) have not been repeated in Jensen & Rushton (2005).
 * While the quotes provided by Mathsci are useful in their own right, I hope it's clear that they boil down to the academic version of WP:JDLI. The others, which "indicate that the book contains flawed scientific methodology" are setting up straw men, as no proponent of the concept of race in science is suggesting that races are isolated biological entities. I hope we won't see editors attempt to obscure the question of the value of sources behind some vacuous interpretation of "policy". -- Aryaman (talk) 18:39, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately the title of the short comment by Rushton and Jensen reveals it as a polemic. The long article mentioned below severely criticizes the methodology and data of Lynn which is what the book of Sarich & Miele and many other texts rely upon. Please read it as it reveals the selective way Lynn discards data that he finds unhelpful. The same criticism has been mentioned by McKintosh. Anything that uses Lynn's data is probably unreliable: that much seems to be clear. The review below is fairly definitive for 2009. We don't need wikipedia editors to put there own spin on a wide set of data, which they are not in a position to evaluate. Fortunately that evaluation has already been done in the article cited below. In particular, the authors say that an examination of the data gives an average of 82 rather than 70, although they say testing is too incomplete at present. Please read the article, because it is probably one of the most relevant recent articles for these sub-Saharan issues. Indeed it claims to review all previously published data. Mathsci (talk) 04:55, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Anyone who cites Lynn inherits all the criticism directed at him? Interesting. Has Lynn's rejoinder to the Wicherts et al. report been published yet? And what critical reviews are there? (Google Scholar gives 2 citations.) My first search produced only Templer (2009). In extra-journal chatter, Lynn criticizes the Wicherts report in regards to its methodology. A working paper by Jensen and Rushton (2009) makes a partial response to Wicherts. Much of the same analysis can be found in Jensen & Rushton (2005). As long as these results are compared side by side, I don't see a problem. I also think differentiation similar to that done by Jensen & Rushton on pp 241-245 of the 2005 article could be more useful than giving one mean score in the article. Comments? -- Aryaman (talk) 06:57, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Flawed scientific methodology and discredited manipulation of statistics are exactly that. Question marks and controversy hang over all that Rushton, Lynn and Jensen have claimed. Any citation must obviously be immediately qualified by the subsequent criticism in the academic literature. I have quoted Templer below (what are his academic credentials?) for making a number of assertions that would normally raise eyebrows. There are assertions that crime rate (rape. murder, etc) can be predicted by national IQs and that Blacks are more prone to HIV/AIDS than Whites. Varoon Arya appears to be proposing to use, without qualification, the questionable data of a small group of controversial academics. Again Varoon Arya seems to be using this talk page as a forum and is confusing wikipedia policies about primary sources, particularly when there are issues of controversy and shoddy scholarship. In response to Varoon Arya's first question, I would indeed say that any wikipedian editor intent on citing a severely criticized source without any qualification is not making useful edits and is actually being disruptive (POV-pushing). Usually on wikipedia this kind of disruption is remedied by page or topic bans. As the Amsterdam survey explains, not enough measurements have been carried out in Africa at the moment: there have been fewer studies than countries. Perhaps Varoon Arya has been trying to say this. Mathsci (talk) 15:32, 2 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Am I suggesting using "a severely criticized source without any qualification"? Hardly. In fact, I wasn't even arguing that Lynn's data should be included at all. If you recall, you are the one who brought Lynn up in the first place. If you want to question the relevance and/or acceptance of Lynn's findings, then look at the Wicherts report:
 * "This [i.e. Lynn's] estimate features prominently in several evolutionary theories of intelligence (Kanazawa, 2004; Lynn, 2006; Rushton, 2000). Moreover, Lynn and Vanhanen's (2002, 2006) estimates of national IQ have featured in over twenty scientific studies (Barber, 2005; Dickerson, 2006; Gelade, 2008a,b; Jones & Schneider, 2006; Kanazawa, 2006, 2008; Kirkcaldy, Furnham, & Siefen, 2004; Lynn, Harvey, & Nyborg, 2009; Meisenberg, 2004; Morse, 2006; Ram, 2007; Rindermann, 2006, 2007, 2008a,b; Rindermann & Meisenberg, in press; Rushton & Templer, in press; Shatz, 2008; Templer, 2008; Templer & Arikawa, 2006a,b; Voracek, 2004; Weede & Kampf, 2002; Whetzel & McDaniel, 2006; Woodley, 2009)."


 * This "questionable" data apparently finds very wide circulation. I have never said that this should be presented without qualification, and I have never suggested that the findings of the Wicherts report not be included. But I have objected to your attempts to blacklist Lynn's work, as it is unjustified. If that is "disruptive" behavior, then so be it. -- Aryaman (talk) 17:14, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The fact that other authors quote Lynn does not mean the content of Lynn's book has been accepted by the scientific community. Prof McKintosh's criticism mentions for example that Lynn misuses data that McKintosh gathered himself; Lynn apparently did not gather any data himself. Numerous academics have criticized Lynn's shoddy methods and manipulation of statistics.  I don't have any interest in Race and crime in the United States. However, I note that Donald Templer claims to have proved that countries with lower average intelligence have more crime, notably rape and murder (this article is cited above). Given that piece of scholarship, I fully expect contributors to this page to produce new articles on Race, intelligence and crime. I don't understand why Varoon Arya is using a citation count to establish the legitimacy of a book. That is not how wikipedia works. What might be permitted in the article is to mention the assertions of Lynn's book, then immediately list the alternative theories, shortcomings and lack of comprehensive sets of data as well as the criticisms of his methodology and scholarship from peer-reviewed journals. Using a citation count is WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. Mathsci (talk) 07:48, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not going to indulge in refuting your straw man arguments anymore, Mathsci. Nor will I dignify your veiled personal attacks with a response. Instead, I'm going to request that you remain on-topic. If you can't, then please keep your comments to yourself. Your participation here up to this point has been anything but constructive.

Re: the actual issue: The passage quoted at the beginning of this section is not properly sourced. I do not find Muntuwandi's argument - the only one provided in defense - convincing in the least. Until it can be sourced, I'd like to remove it. Constructive suggestions for a replacement (e.g. something covering IQ in Africa) are certainly welcome. Thanks, -- Aryaman (talk) 12:24, 4 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I think most of the passage is in fact supported. The only point where I tend to agree is that the question is probably not on the validity of the tests in question. Therefore, I would suggest:
 * There is a paradox from IQ studies in Africa that has yet to be resolved. Europeans with an IQ of 70 are considered mentally retarded. However, the Africans found to have an IQ of 70 were perfectly normal with the apparent ability to function normally in their social environment. This has led to question the meaning of those results in terms of the existing African society.
 * I'm not married to those exact words of course, but I think something along those lines is properly supported between Varoon's and Mathsci's references.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:07, 4 November 2009 (UTC)


 * That would take us right back to the beginning. Is there a "paradox"? According to whom? Have Africans with an IQ of 70 been found to be "perfectly normal" and "functioning normally" in their social environment? By whom? When? And what on earth did they use to objectively determine something as inherently ambiguious as "perfectly normal"? The only thing I've seen "sourced" here is the fact that critics of an African mean of 70 greet such a claim with incredulity.
 * I support the introduction of sourced statements regarding the African mean, and I think something which combines the Jensen & Rusthon findings with the Wicherts findings would be appropriate (e.g. a mean somewhere between 70 and 80, depending upon which segement of the population is being considered, with African college students topping out somewhere in the 80s or low 90s). We might also want to mention the effects of colonialism and apartheid, and that studies conducted after independence in several African countries typically do not evidence any change in the mean IQ (e.g. the scores of children born after the end of White rule do not differ significantly from those born during White rule). Judging from the literature, I think the strongest argument against the African mean is that leveled against any cross-cultural IQ comparisons. -- Aryaman (talk) 19:31, 4 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I'll try to answer your question: the "paradox" comes from the fact that Africans (which according to some IQ tests have a mean IQ of 70) have been manifestly able to build civilizations (including culture, a complex social structure, etc.) with a group average IQ that would be the equivalent of barely educable in White society. So, how come in Black society this "barely educable" level allows for the development of a complex society? This is the reason for their incredultiy, and I think it is well-stated in the references as they are.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:47, 4 November 2009 (UTC)


 * The closest thing to the proposed statement which has been cited so far (other than the contested work of Sarich & Miele and the weird logic of Cohen) is Gardner (2004), where he writes: "How could a continent of functionally retarded people survive?" You don't see a problem with using this rhetorical question to source the statement "Africans found to have an IQ of 70 were perfectly normal with the apparent ability to function normally in their social environment"? If not, please review: WP:Sources. -- Aryaman (talk) 20:14, 4 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I'd say that this, which you quoted yourself, is closer to what I meant: These authors themselves suggest that 70 is borderline educable retardation. Colleagues in psychology suggest that the figure approaches that of mental retardation or even developmental disability implying that a very substantial proportion of Africans (almost half) are retarded. They consider the estimate preposterous, because it would produce a barely functional society that would have essentially no capacity for abstract reasoning--hardly a prescription for societies with the rich and vibrant artistic, symbolic and spiritual lives evident in the cultures involved.' (emphasis mine)


 * I'd say this would fully support my proposition.--Ramdrake (talk) 20:35, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I've mentioned the problems with Cohen before. Do you really want the article to read: "According to some psychology colleagues of Mark Cohen, people with an IQ of 70 or less are incapable of leading artistic and spiritually meaningful lives, and thus estimates of an African IQ of 70 are preposterous."? Because that's what his statement boils down to. I'd prefer to avoid getting into a discussion as to whether or not African countries with very low mean IQs should be considered "functional" by international standards, as I don't think it's exactly fair to pit a country such as Equatorial Guinea (59) against the United States (98) because doing so almost necessitates we ignore the enormous differences in their histories. At the same time, however, that has to be pointed out, because this is the kind of thing you are proposing we introduce into the article. Are you sure this is what you want to do? -- Aryaman (talk) 21:04, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, if you mean to say that African civilizations are "dysfunctional" compared to Western civilization, that is your argument. Another argument, straight from the Cohen review, would support the previous formulation, rather than us getting into an argument about whether African are "truly" civilized: Either environments, not genes, have changed remarkably (they have, of course) or IQ tests, as often used, aren’t competent to measure of innate intelligence. (They aren’t.) Cohen directly challenges the competence (read validity) of IQ tests to measure African intellect. So, I suggest we go back to the previous formulation and just leave the Cohen ref in, as it fully supports the statement.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:23, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
 * If you absolutely must use Cohen, then the best we could queeze out of his book review would be:
 * "According to Mark Cohen, the frequently reported African mean IQ of 70 is "preposterous". Using Western standards, this would mean that African countries evidencing such a low IQ would be largely disfunctional. Given that individuals in these countries lead vibrant artistic and religious lives, this is, according to Cohen, clearly not the case. Thus, he concludes, the IQ test results from Africa do not reflect actual intelligence levels."


 * If you want to add that and reference it to Cohen, I won't object. If you want it to say anything else, then please find better sources. -- Aryaman (talk) 06:52, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) I'm fine with that wording.--Ramdrake (talk) 18:52, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Rageh Omaar documentary film
There was a documentary presented by journalist Rageh Omaar on Channel 4 in the UK recently on this topic, called Race and Intelligence: Science's Last Taboo. This article in The Times gives a summary of it:. The conclusion was that using IQ results of 'races' to claim a real difference in intelligence between 'races' was simplistic. IQ doesn't measure 'intelligence'; it measures certain cognitive tasks that are valued and taught in modern industrialised and literate societies. 'Races' may not reflect biological reality. Culture, education and environment are so important in their effect on IQ scores that those like Richard Lynn who fail to take them into account are making flawed analyses. There was also mention of a finding that there was no correlation between IQ and levels of white ancestry among Africa-Americans. Fences &amp;  Windows  17:14, 7 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I think most of the editors here are agreed that the structure of this article should be based on the manner in which this topic is covered in the academic literature, not how it’s covered in the popular media (such as newspapers, magazines, or TV documentaries). This is a good policy for Wikipedia articles in general, but it’s particularly important for this one, because studies such as  Snyderman and Rothman have concluded that the popular media tends to misrepresent the views of scientists about this topic.


 * Since he’s a journalist rather than a scientist, I don’t think Rageh Omaar can be considered an authority about this topic. His documentary might be useful as a source of information about the views of scientists whom he interviews, but I don’t think its conclusions per se are reliable enough to be used in the article. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:46, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
 * They're good points though, and they reflect the academic consensus. IQ =/= intelligence. Culture, environment and education matter. Race is more a social construct than a biological reality. Those like Lynn who look at differences in IQ between races and conclude that there is a genetic difference in intelligence between ethnic groups are making an oversimplistic analysis. Fences  &amp;  Windows  22:25, 7 November 2009 (UTC)


 * If they’re good points, then they’ll be discussed in the academic literature. In this case they are, so there’s no need to cite them to a documentary.


 * This report in the journal Intelligence, with the signatures of 52 specialists in the relevant fields, addresses the question of what IQ measures. Although it may not be literally synonymous with intelligence, it clearly measures something meaningful.  The report states


 * IQ is strongly related, probably more so than any other single measurable human trait, to many important educational, occupational, economic, and social outcomes. Its relation to the welfare and performance of individuals is very strong in some arenas in life (education, military training), moderate but robust in others (social competence), and modest but consistent in others (law-abidingness). Whatever IQ tests measure, it is of great practical and social importance.


 * This study also addresses the question of whether race is socially or biologically based. It compared people’s self-identified “race” to their genetic biogeographical ancestry, and found a 99.86% correlation between the two.  So while race can be considered a “social construct”, it correlates so strongly with genetic clusters that any genetic difference between these clusters will manifest itself as a difference between “races” also.  This topic is more appropriate to cover in Wikipedia articles such as Race and genetics, though.


 * If the documentary claims that IQ does not measure anything meaningful, or that race has no correlation to anything in biology, then it is not accurately representing the consensus of scientists who study these topics. This would be an example of the type of thing that the Snyderman and Rothman study discussed, and is one of the reasons why it’s important for Wikipedia articles to be based on the academic literature rather than popular media. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:44, 7 November 2009 (UTC)


 * The Gottfredson paper represents only the opinions of its 52 signatories. If you want something representative, please at least pick the APA report's conclusions. Also, the Tang paper does not address the question of whether race is socially or biologically based: it merely finds a strong correlation between self-identified race and one specific clustering scheme on one set of populations. We've been belaboring in these pages that genetic variation increases clinally by distance and does not really correspond to discrete races. Please again, do not misconstrue the current scientific consensus based on your reading of a few articles.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:47, 7 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Why do you need bring up irrelevant issues here? I wasn’t claiming that my comment describes the entirety of research on these topics.  The only relevant question is whether the academic literature addresses the topics that Fences & Windows brought up, and my post demonstrates that it does, so there’s no need to cite a documentary for it.  That’s the only thing being discussed here. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:57, 7 November 2009 (UTC)


 * No, the issue is relevant. You are misrepresenting the academic consensus: 1)IQ is a good social life outcome predictor, but only a minority say that it accurately measures intelligence. 2)genetic variation correlates with geographic distance. The actual correlation with the classical "races" is coincidental and also due to geographic separation, and breaks down in several places (i.e.: the Australian Blacks vs the African Blacks, to name the most obvious example).--Ramdrake (talk) 00:15, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Captain Occam frequently brings up the Wall Street Journal advertisement. I do not object to that, but i do object to the claim that whatever other people are talking about, the discussion has to come back to this ad.  First point: one issue relevant to this article is popular perceptions, and a major TV documentary is relevant not as an authoritative source on what scientists think, but as a source concerning popular perception.   Second, when we do want authoritative sources for what scientists think, statements by professional organizations like the AAA or APA, as well as articles in peer reviwed journals (esp. in Annual Reviws) certainly count more than a TV documentary - but they also count for more than an advertisement taken out by a collection of conservative scientists.  The ad first appeared in the Wall Street Journan and was not peer-reviewed and certainly has no more standing than any letter to the editor or op-ed any scientist writes "ex cathedra."  I think it is disturbing than an opinion piece first presented as a paid advertisement is now presented as some kind of authoritative scholarly document.  That gets us nowhere, and certainly far from what this secton is about, which is the status of a recent TV documentary.  So to stick to the point, I'd say we can mention it in the context of a section on how the press reports scientific debates, or a section on popular perceptions. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 02:14, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Slrubenstein, you'll notice that I cited it to the psychology journal Intelligence rather than to the Wall Street Journal. This was an article in a peer-reviewed journal, even though it didn't start out that way.  The reason why articles in peer-reviewed journals are the most reliable sources available is because peer review is the most rigorous fact-checking process that exists in the academic community.  The "Mainstream Science" statement has passed peer review for this journal, which is the same criterion used to judge accuracy for everything else published in it.  Since it has met these criteria, where it was published originally no longer matters.


 * In any case, I agree that the TV documentary can be mentioned in a discussion about popular perceptions of this topic, as long as it's made clear that this documentary does not necessarily represent the views of scientists. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:29, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

If describing an article cosigned by 52 university professors as having some academic weight behind it is "disturbing" to anyone present, I suggest they procure a crash helmet, because Wikipedia will "disturb" the socks right off your feet. To the point:

I think the most we can get from this is perhaps a short sub-section on recent media coverage of the issue, e.g. mentioning that "race and intelligence" was the subject of a documentary. (Though, it might also be worth mentioning that this documentary was aired as part of a series which also included titles such as Is It Better To Be Mixed Race?, Bleach, Nip, Tuck: The White Beauty Myth, and The Event: How Racist Are You?. I wonder if that helped goose their season ratings. :) -- Aryaman (talk) 02:40, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

UN Statement on Race (1951)
Of perhaps purely historical interest (though it deals with the issue of race and intelligence directly) is the 1951 UN Statement on Race. This is an interesting document, seeing as it preceded Jensen's article in Harvard Educational Review (1969) which set off the whole modern debate. -- Aryaman (talk) 02:46, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Historically interesting but the science and the scientific concepts on which it rests is obviously somewhat dated.--Ramdrake (talk) 16:40, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to add content from an earlier version
This is an idea that I discussed with several users recently, but I know I need to propose it here before going about it.

In its current state, the article has several issues, one of which I mentioned here recently: that despite the amount of background information it provides about the hereditarian hypothesis, it provides almost no information about what arguments are presented in favor of this viewpoint. Considering that the strengths and weaknesses of these arguments are one of the central points of the debate on this topic, the fact that the article does not include this information is a significant problem, and should be fixed. There are also a few other important pieces of information it leaves out, which aren’t specifically related to arguments in favor or one explanation or another. Editors have been trying to fix these problems one at a time for the past month, and have made very little progress.

My original proposal for a way around this problem was to revert this article to the state that it had in December of 2006, but upon further consideration, I think that’s probably overkill. Not all parts of the article in its current state are problematic and need to be replaced. What I would like to do, however, is to incorporate certain information from the earlier version of the article into its current version.

There are a few reasons why I think some of the content from December of 2006 would be preferable over the current content:


 * 1) December of 2006 was before this article had a significant problem with its content being affected by POV-pushing. Although there appear to have been individual editors involved in it who wished to push a POV, there were enough other editors involved in it that the overall quality of the article didn’t suffer as a result.
 * 2) Possibly for that reason, this appears to have been the most stable version of the article that existed at any point in its history. Its overall structure was supported for at least six months by a consensus which was considerably larger than the number of editors who are currently involved in it.
 * 3) The earlier version of the article includes most of the information that’s missing from its current version, and which need to be reincorporated into it.

Here are the most important changes I’d like to make:


 * 1) The current intro section needs to be revised.  T34CH changed it along with all of his other edits that he made within a period of 24 hours, despite the fact that this change went against the consensus that had been established for this section only around a week earlier.  Because of how many changes he made at once, this particular change was never discussed here.  The intro section of the 2006 version was better than the current one, although in this case it might be sufficient to change this part of the article to what it was before T34CH’s edits.
 * 2) I would like to include the 2006 version’s discussion of the meaning of race. It seems like a strange omission for an article on race and intelligence to not include an explanation of the meaning of one of the two concepts in its title.
 * 3) The few paragraphs on brain size and reaction time ought to be included, since those topics are also an important element of the debate on this topic which the article does not currently mention.
 * 4) As stated earlier, I would like to add the 2006 version’s explanation of arguments presented in favor of genetic factors. The current section titled “evidence for genetic factors” does not actually include this evidence, and it should.
 * 5) I’d like to add back the “significance of group IQ differences”. Regardless of whether the hereditarian or environmental view is correct, the functional significance of the IQ difference is one of the most important aspects of this topic, and it seems inappropriate for an article about the topic to not discuss it.

The idea of reverting this article to its state in December of 2006 was first suggested by Aprock. He appears to no longer be involved in the article, but this idea was also supported by Varoon Arya, David.Kane and DistributiveJustice, all of whom still are. I’m hoping that these users will also approve of my more moderate suggestion to add back information from the earlier version of the article, rather than to revert the whole thing. However, they (and others) are welcome to suggest ways that my proposal could be changed, in terms of making either more or fewer changes than I’ve suggested here. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:20, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Strongest possible oppose: The version which existed in December 2006 was one where the article was basically one large essay trying to make all the points that Rushton makes in the hereditarian hypothesis: about the classical races being biologically meaningful (refuted) about brain size having a correlation with intelligence (only moderately, but then the evidence about Blacks having smaller brains is flimsy and easily refuted -- see Lieberman 2001), etc. The article ended up being one large OR piece. That's why it's no longer the same. While I'll admit it's still not in an ideal condition (there's a lot of work still to be done), going back is not the way to proceed. The issues with the current article have been enumerated more than once by now, and possible solutions proposed. It's just for us to agree upon those solutions and enact them.--Ramdrake (talk) 02:31, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Considering that the earlier version of the article devotes around twice as much space to evidence for environmental explanations as it does to evidence for genetic ones, I find it rather strange that you view it as “basically one large essay trying to make all the points that Rushton makes in the hereditarian hypothesis.” But in any case, you seem to be making it clear that you’re not to be reasoned with about this, although other editors who agree with my suggestion can try doing so if they want.


 * Thus far, a total of five editors (myself included) have expressed approval for my suggestion. As I stated earlier, one of them (Aprock) is no longer involved in the article.  However, if the opinions expressed here end up being four to one against you, I think you’ll need to accept the fact that consensus goes against your viewpoint about this. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:49, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * However, in this case, I would strongly suggest an RfC.--Ramdrake (talk) 02:53, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Filing an RFC is never appropriate before the issue in question has been discussed by the editors involved in an article on its talk page. In fact, when Jagz was editing this article you criticized him for doing this exact thing.  If VA, David.Kane and DJ all express agreement with this idea and you're the only editor who expresses disagreement, then an RFC isn't appropriate because four out of five editors is definitely as a consensus.  We can have an RFC if building a consensus on the talk page proves to not be possible. --Captain Occam (talk) 03:06, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * No. If I still disagree, I am free to pursue the normal avenues of WP:DR (dispute resolution), and that does include the possibility of an RfC. I criticized Jagz for bringing up several RfCs in a row because he was losing them one at a time. However, if I'm still the only one protesting, it may be a strong sign that even at RfC, my opinion will be in the minority. However, I doubt that will be the case.--Ramdrake (talk) 03:10, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Agree: I think that the changes suggested by Captain Occam would make the article better, so I am in favor. A second best choice would be to just revert the whole article to the December 2006 state. That versions seems much better (to me) than the current version. Given the conflict between Captain Occam and Ramdrake, I would recommend an up-or-down survey on the option of just reverting to the December 2006 article. (This avoids any conflict over what aspects of the 2006 version or most important.) David.Kane (talk) 03:23, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * (Tentative) Support: I think the version linked to by Occam is far superior to what we have now in terms of content, balance and general encyclopedicity. My only criticism of Occam's suggestion is that I do not think it goes far enough. I think it would be better to approach this the other way around, i.e. use that version of the article as our starting point and integrate any pertinent information from the current article into that older version. If this is not a possible course of action due the current editing climate, I would suggest that Occam take the older version into his Sandbox and invite editors to improve it there. Once the Sandbox version has been sufficiently updated, then we can go the RfC route, if necessary. However, if other editors think we can make more progress with Occam's proposal as it stands, I'm certainly in favor. -- Aryaman (talk) 03:24, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I think that the 2006 version is so superior that there is no need to wait for Occam, or anyone else, to go through the trouble of trying to improve it in their Sandbox prior to the move. Better to get it in quickly. I certainly would not recommend that anyone spend a bunch of time trying to improve it first. After all, it is clear that almost no conceivable improvements could be made to that version which would lead some editors to vote for it over the current version. David.Kane (talk) 03:36, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Good point. Some are disturbed by dissatisfied with the very existence of an article titled "Race and intelligence". -- Aryaman (talk) 03:41, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, this is interesting. I’d initially thought that watering down my original proposal (that is, proposing to incorporate elements from the 2006 version rather than to revert the whole article) would be necessary in order to get support for this suggestion, but it looks like consensus may end up going against this change to my proposal.  I’ll be fine with either reverting the whole article or just incorporating parts from it, depending on which idea receives more support. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:20, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Please don't start a sandbox version, and don't restore version from 3 years ago. This really sounds like editors taking sides and forming teams to push through edits. Work together with all editors, not just those who agree with your point of view. I've steered clear of this article due to the constant disagreements, but I can't just watch from the sidelines as collaborative editing goes by the wayside. By all means take ideas from earlier versions, but discuss those that might prove controversial first. Fences  &amp;  Windows  04:15, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * As an aside, I think that just taking content from the earlier version (rather than reverting the whole article) is the most reasonable way Ramdrake’s concerns can be taken into consideration, even if Ramdrake himself will never approve of any content from an earlier version being used. Ramdrake claimed that the earlier version is unbalanced.  I don’t think it is, but even assuming he’s right about this, it should be possible to use content from that version of the article without affecting the article’s overall balance.


 * For example, the earlier version’s description of genetic explanations for the IQ difference is actually shorter than the current version’s, although it’s also better-written and more informative. So we don’t have to worry about it violating WP:UNDUE if we were to replace some of the current content of this section with content from the earlier version.  WP:UNDUE requires that we not give minority viewpoints excessive space; not that our explanations of them need to be uninformative. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:32, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * With all due respect, the "teams" were formed long before I, Occam or David Kane became involved in this article. I've watched such groups of editors grind lone editors into dust on this article before, and seen them push through some ridiculously POV edits at the same time. I'm all for collegiality and cooperation, but that allowing this behavior to go unchecked has had detrimental effects on the article is evidenced by the drastic difference in quality between the 2006 version and what we have today. If there were such a thing as a "neutral" or "uninvolved arbitrator", I would be willing to submit to a supervised revision process. But given the nature of the issue, I don't see how that's possible.
 * There are basically 4 POVs involved in this issue:
 * Between-group differences are 100% genetic.
 * Between-group differences are 100% environmental.
 * Between-group differences are the result of both genetic and environmental factors.
 * There is not yet enough evidence to reach a conclusion.
 * Everyone agrees that the supporters of #1 are a fringe minority. Everyone also acknowledges that #4 makes up a sizable portion of the academic community. The struggle is between #2 and #3. According to the Snyderman and Rothman study, the majority of experts hold #3. This position was also left open as a possibility in the public statement Mainstream Science on Intelligence, signed by 52 university professors. The APA report Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns tells us that there is no empirical evidence supporting #3, and that many of the environmental factors proposed by the advocates of #2 have been disproved. Thus, while making a sharp and not uncontroversial statement against #3, it tends more towards #4. There are no other sources that we are willing to agree upon as representing consensus, as all of them published after the APA report are highly opinionated, and put more effort into arguing against a position than providing evidence for a position.
 * In my experience, the conflict in editing this article stems from the fact that some editors want to present #2 as the only credible academic view, and portray #3 as "fringe" science with a minority of followers who have a dubious history and are either racists or simpletons. Any attempt to present #3 as a viable theory are consistently met with heavy criticism if not outright disdain by the proponents of #2. This is often accompanied by claims of "racism", "racialism", or some such label meant to either scare off the editor or make other editors hesitant in supporting anyone attempting to inject neutrality in the presentation, regardless of whether they support #3 or #4. In this situation, "discussion" yields very little in the way of positive results, and even non-controversial points become launching pads for personal attacks. It's highly frustrating, and the article is suffering heavily under the present circumstances.
 * If someone uninvolved can propose a constructive way forward, I'm all ears. -- Aryaman (talk) 05:06, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Arya, what is your source for saying these are the four basic points of view? I didn't know that there was any mainstream research by geneticists making any clear claims as to how much of the difference owes to genetic factors.  Isn't this one area where scientific research is still wide open? Slrubenstein   |  Talk 19:05, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Given that the question is "What are the causes behind and/or contributing factors to the widely observed 15± point difference in IQ between American White and Black populations?", I think the 4 options presented above are the result of applying common sense. Snyderman and Rothman apparently came to the same conclusion, and that's how they put the question to the experts they polled. If you're looking for research from geneticists (of the non-behavioral sort) discussing the causes behind IQ difference between populations, then chances are you won't find much. But, then again, that shouldn't come as a surprise, and I trust you understand why.
 * I'd like to see the article take position #4, as that is the position (IMO) the APA report takes. This, however, does not preclude the necessity of discussing #1, #2 and #3 in appropriate depth. Pushing any of these views as the "right" one, however, is not acceptable, nor is presenting any of them as "inherently flawed". -- Aryaman (talk) 20:05, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I'll try to open a possible avenue of resolution here. If we can admit that proposition #3 is highly controversial, is in fact a minority opinion overall in science (despite the Snyderman & Rothman survey, which within science only polled intelligence experts and totally ignored biologists, anthropologists and philosophers of science which seem to be the main opposition to the proposition -- we can even say that while #3 finds support among psychologists, it seems to be rejected by other sciences, with appropriate references, of course), then I would not object to a proportional representation of #3 (and I never really have, for that matter). I don't know how palatable or not you'd find this. And for the record, it is quite possible that some elements from the 2006 version may be salvageable for inclusion here, but these elements should be discussed and consensus built for their inclusion on an individual basis. I think you'll find wholesale revert will just fast-track us to ANI. Not constructive. --Ramdrake (talk) 16:36, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Given the collection of opinions that have been expressed thus far, I kind of doubt that we’d be able to build the necessary consensus for reverting the entire article. David.Kane and Varoon Arya both have said that they would prefer reverting the entire article to the 2006 version, although they would also approve of just reincorporating certain elements from it; I would find either solution acceptable; Fences & Windows would approve of reincorporating elements from the earlier version but not of reverting the whole article; and your own opinion (at least, the one you expressed in your initial comment) is that you would not want to use any content from the earlier version.  So the opinions for vs. against reverting the whole article would be three to two, while going by the opinion you expressed originally, the opinions about reincorporating certain elements from the earlier version would be four to one.  I don’t think three to two can be considered a consensus, but four to one definitely is.


 * Considering your own opinion as well as everyone else’s, I think re-using elements from the 2006 version (rather than reverting the whole article) is the best possible compromise here, as well as the one most supported by consensus. You’re welcome to make suggestions about the way in which we go about this, but as long as the other four editors involved in this article approve of the changes being made, I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the rest of us to avoid making certain changes because of a single editor disagreeing with them. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:47, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Like I said, I do not want my opinion to come down as my opposing to import any content from the Dec 2006 version (and if it did come across as that, I misspoke and apologize for it). However, I must insist that each proposed import be subjected to discussion and consensus before importing. Right now, there seems to be a small consensus to import some of the material, but which material has not been discussed (certainly not agreed upon). Let's then discuss which material. Also, I would recommend waiting until a few more editors have chimed in. After all, this is the weekend, where fewer editors are usually active. This article has waited for a long time: there is no rush.--Ramdrake (talk) 17:53, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I see no sense to turning the clock back a few years especially when that version was contentious. Why? Slrubenstein   |  Talk 19:05, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * “I see no sense to turning the clock back a few years especially when that version was contentious. Why?”


 * VA and I already answered this question in our earlier comments. At this point, Ramdrake appears to no longer have a problem with this idea, so if you oppose it you’re the only editor here who does.


 * Ramdrake: I think having to discuss each edit individually probably isn’t necessary, and may actually make it more difficult to fix the problem with this article that I’m hoping to fix here.  The problem that I’m trying to address is the fact that when an editor to this article is trying to push a POV, they tend to tear through the article changing everything that they want to, regardless of whether doing so goes against consensus—we saw this most recently in T34CH’s case—while any attempt to undo these types of changes tends to require a lengthy discussion resulting in consensus for each change.  What this has usually meant is that the article becomes more unbalanced and less encyclopedic considerably faster than it can be improved.  One of my goals with this proposal is to find a way that the article can be improved more quickly than the rate at which it tends to degenerate.


 * If you look at this article’s talk pages from any point in fall of 2006, you’ll see that the general content of the article during that period was supported by a consensus that’s considerably more robust than anything we currently have. As I stated before, one reason I consider this version a good model to use is because it was before the article’s content was significantly affected by POV-pushing.  I’m including POV-pushing from both sides here; Jagz seems to have done this in favor of the hereditarian perspective, but December of 2006 was before he became involved in the article.


 * I’ve already given an overview in my initial proposal of what changes I’d like to make, and at this point everyone except Slrubenstein has said that they either approve of this or at least don’t oppose it. Beyond what we’ve resolved already, I think some amount of WP:BOLDness is appropriate here.  We’ve already discussed my proposed changes in considerably more depth than any of the changes that T34CH made last month, and after he had made these changes, you argued in favor of keeping them until there was a consensus to undo them.  So if in my case you require each change to be discussed ahead of time before it can be made at all, you appear to be applying a double standard. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:32, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Strangely enough, you oppose unilateral action against your POV (such as T34CH's - which wasn't unilateral editing at all but attempts based on talk page discussions), but you want unilateral (read undiscussed) action when it serves your POV "I think having to discuss each edit individually probably isn’t necessary". I'll make my point clear: I generally oppose reverting to the Dec 2006 version. I don't oppose introducing some of the material from that version, though, if it has been discussed and consensus to include it has been secured. Otherwise, I do oppose the idea. So, please don't twist other editors' words and positions to try to present your position as stronger than it is. And in the future, I would appreciate you refraining from canvassing off-page to gather voices to push the article towards your POV, as you just did yesterday night.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:42, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Both of those users were already currently involved in the article, and my request for their input was brief and neutrally worded. If you read WP:canvassing, it’s pretty clear that my actions were not a violation of this.


 * The difference between T34CH’s actions and what I’m proposing is that most of his edits were never discussed at all. In my case, we’re discussing them right now.  Including DJ’s opinion, there are now five editors who agree that material from 2006 should be incorporated into the article, and four of the five have also agree that the balance of the article is skewed in favor of the environmental hypothesis and that this needs to be corrected.  There was no such consensus in favor of the changes T34CH made.


 * The only question here is whether this consensus would be sufficient to edit the article. Since this is considerably more of a consensus than what existed in T34CH’s case, I think it’s sufficient.  In your own case, you think it’s insufficient, whereas that T34CH’s blatantly unsupported edits were acceptable.  Considering the consensus supports my proposed changes considerably more than it supported what he did, why do think his changes were acceptable but mine are not? --Captain Occam (talk) 22:12, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * However, notifying only those three editors which you knew were likely sympathetic to your idea is a type of canvassing called votestacking. So, it's still canvassing. I'm not sure we're discussing your edits, as I haven't really seen a list of points to incorporate from the 2006 version (those that were suggested were totally unacceptable -the race OR, the brain size non-issue, etc.) And please, don't play on the fact that a few editors support you in some ways. I don't think there's a consensus either way yet, and I'm left with the impression you're trying to steamroll changes with as little discussion as possible, as rapidly as possible. Just prove me wrong. We could begin with a note at WP:NPOVN or an RfC to test whether your proposition indeed does have consensus. Right now, four people is really limited.--Ramdrake (talk) 22:21, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Going to RfC or NPOVN without a concrete suggestion in hand would be premature, IMO. Nevermind. Ramdrake made the decision for us. -- Aryaman (talk) 22:43, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Ramdrake: I contacted all of the editors who were currently involved in the article except you, and the only reason I didn’t contact you also is because you’d commented on my proposal already. It’s a bit of a stretch to call it “votestacking” when I’ve sent notices about a discussion to all of an article’s active users who weren’t already participating in the discussion.  If I were actually trying to stack votes in my favor, I would have contacted Aprock also, since he’s someone who approved of my suggestion and is no longer participating here.


 * In any case, the impression I’ve gotten from Varoon Arya, David.Kane and DistributiveJustice is that they approve of also incorporating the elements from 2006 that you have problems with, but I’m willing to wait a little while longer to see whether anyone other than you and Slrubenstein has any problems with what I’ve suggested. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:51, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I see two problems with the current article, of which one is also present in the previous article. Problem 1: there's a lengthy empirical debate described in great detail which is mostly unimportant (in the details) for the vast majority of readers. This is true of both versions. Problem 2: The current version reads like one side of that argument. Conclusion: reverting or otherwise merging would reduce the number of problems from two to one, but there would still be one big problem. Possible fix: blank the hypotheses section entirely. Pull material from both past versions as appropriate or rewrite entirely as appropriate. In rewriting, I would suggest that arguments about theory are more important to detail than arguments about data (to the average reader). It should be enough to point out that almost every piece of data is contested and give examples of different kinds of data with different interpretations (pick canonical examples; or even highlight what kind of data people say would be convincing if it existed). Consensus "knowns" would be great too of course, but there appear to be very few. --DJ (talk) 21:16, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Considering that the debate over environmental vs. genetic effects is one of the central aspects of the topic of race and intelligence, I think it would be inappropriate to not provide any coverage of the arguments made by either side in this debate. However, this section could possibly be reduced.  Do you have any specific suggestions on how it could be reduced without removing it entirely? --Captain Occam (talk) 21:38, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Oh, I don't disagree. To clarify, that topic should be covered in that section, but I think it can be done with a reduced level of detail describing debate over individual studies. It should be possible to abstract that out a level while preserving the meaningfulness. --DJ (talk) 21:50, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Note a few opinions are not sufficient to revert 3 years of collaborative effort. This talk page just keeps going in circles the last few months among the same 4-8 or so editors, so an RFC/Mediation is highly advisable to move the article forward. Also, I'm tired of seeing people complain about my edits but never say what was wrong with them.  The only attempt I saw was by Dave, who pointed to one of Ramdrake's edits.  The majority of my edits were to restructure the article as discussed.  I also wrote some intro paragraphs to sections which were just a start and eventually got edited by everyone.  If there's beef with my edits, discuss the edits directly, or take my actions to ANI.  Otherwise, stop discussing me as you have.  It's very childish and has nothing to do with improving the article. T34CH (talk) 23:59, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Agree: I saw this issue being brought up on the NPOV noticeboard and thought I'd offer a comment here. The current version of the article looks considerably more unbalanced and disorganized than the 2006 version. I think it would be a good idea to either revert entirely or to at least incorporate most of the old version into the current one. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 04:12, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose deep reverts, rather than reverting, if there is any specific material that one would like to add, simply present it to the community on the talk page, if there is consensus to add then it can be added. Wapondaponda (talk) 06:27, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
 * All right, at this point I think we’re probably not going to revert the whole article. However, your suggestion of presenting specific material and building support to add it back is what I’ve been doing here, so I’m glad you approve of that course of action. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:13, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I would advise you to do an Rfc with the question being: "Is the December 2006 version of higher quality than the current version and, if so, should we revert to it?" As best I can tell from the constellation of editors involved in this page, you will have little success (and spend endless hours) trying to present "specific material and building support to add it back." It seems hopeless to me, whereas starting from December 2006 provides a much easier path forward. David.Kane (talk) 13:37, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
 * After all, I can't even get consensus to remove a single one of the tags! What hope do you have of adding the sort of substantive material that existed in the December 2006 version. Here is a test: What material from that version would the editors against reversion ever consent to being added? That is an honest question. If Wapondaponda or Ramdrake could point to specific sections of the December 2006 version that they think should be incorporated, then I would stand corrected. David.Kane (talk) 13:51, 10 November 2009 (UTC)


 * The first paragraph from the "Race" subsection is good, but the rest of the section comprises of extraneous material, as well as material that is not strictly speaking "Background". The "History" section might be interesting to include, along with the section on the Pioneer Fund.   I see a lot of material in that version that belongs in other articles... which strangely enough Occam, Varoon, and Dave have brought up as problems with the current article in the past.  There are some nuggets, but the 2006 version spends more time explaining what intelligence is and how to measure it than it does on the topic of "Race and intelligence".  T34CH (talk) 16:13, 10 November 2009 (UTC)


 * David, I actually proposed in my original post here what material I wanted to re-add, so the editors who expressed approval of reusing material from 2006 were already able to see what specific material this was being discussed with regard to. We can consider an RFC if building a consensus about this proves to be impossible, but I think it's been going fairly well thus far.  Here's how the opinions expressed here have been divided:


 * You, me, Varoon Arya, DistributiveJustice, and Ferhago the Assassin all approve of either reverting the whole article or re-using the material from 2006 that I suggested.


 * Slrubenstein opposes using any material from 2006 (I guess, although he hasn't been completely clear about this.)


 * Muntuwandi and Fences & Windows oppose reverting the whole article, but approve of re-using the earlier content, as long as doing so has been discussed and supported by consensus.


 * Ramdrake and T34CH don't have a problem with re-using any material from 2006, but have problems with some of the specific material we've been discussing this about.


 * In the interest of trying to satisfy as many people as possible, I think it's worth discussing some of Ramdrake's and T34CH's issues with the material in question. For example, Ramdrake said that the section on the meaning of race is original research, and that the section on brain size and reaction time makes the variation in average brain size among races seem more certain than it is.  If he can suggest some specific ways these sections could be modified in order to fix the issues he has with them in their current state, that would useful.  However, even if satisfying Ramdrake and T34CH in this respect proves to be impossible, so that they are unable to approve of this proposal, this will still be a seven to three consensus.  While compromise is always a good idea, in this case it isn't strictly necessary.


 * Incidentally, as long as we're discussing this, there's one other piece of past material I'd like to re-use that I'm hoping won't be controversial: the collection of links to peer-reviewed papers on race and intelligence that was at the bottom of the article until T34CH removed it.  They can be found here in the October 17th version of the article, last edited by Ramdrake.  There was never a consensus to remove these links, so this edit probably should have been reverted right away, but T34CH made so many changes in rapid succession that nobody brought up this particular one before now.  While this section may have too many external links, the way to deal with this is not by getting rid of the ones to peer-reviewed papers while keeping the ones that are to popular articles.  If anything, I would say that providing readers with links to overviews of the research in this area written by scientists is more important than providing them with accounts of scientists' opinions that were written by journalists. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:38, 11 November 2009 (UTC)


 * A) Consensus is wp:NOTAVOTE
 * B) This thread is really long. Start a new section briefly detailing the first section of text you'd like to add so we can address it directly.
 * C) Those External Links did not conform to wp:ELYES. wp:ELNO #1 reads "Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a Featured article."  T34CH (talk) 21:59, 11 November 2009 (UTC)


 * The reason this is a consensus isn’t just because a majority of editors support this course of action. It’s also because most of our arguments for why the material from 2006 should be used haven’t been addressed, as well as because people who have arguments against specific aspects of my proposal are being given the opportunity to explain how some of this material could be improved.  The fact that consensus is more than just a vote doesn’t matter here, because this discussion fits the other criteria for a consensus also.


 * If there are specific modifications to this material that you or Ramdrake want to suggest, you’re welcome to do so, but demanding that I re-propose every individual change I want to make isn’t reasonable, for several reasons. First, since consensus already exists for the changes I’ve proposed, there’s no need to rehash this discussion for each of them individually.  Second, for reasons that I pointed out earlier, improving the article one bit at a time hasn’t been possible lately, so following your suggestion would amount of the the same thing as agreeing not to make any changes at all.  And third, when you made your large series of changes to this article in October, you discussed the specifics of them in advance far less than the degree to which I’ve discussed mine thus far.  If you think I need to discuss my proposed changes in advance even more than this, that’s quite hypocritical.


 * Your reason for removing most of the external links doesn’t make sense, since most of them definitely did contain material that this article wouldn’t include even if it were a featured article. However, it isn’t actually necessary to discuss this before reverting this change you made, because there was never a consensus for you make this change in the first place.  This is the way WP:BRD works:  you can make a change like this, I’m within my rights to revert it, and then it’s up to you to obtain a consensus for this change on the talk page before reinstating it.  You can try to justify the removal of these links to the rest of us after I’ve made my proposed changes, but until you obtain a consensus to remove them, the original consensus to include them still applies.


 * You’re giving me the impression that you aren’t really interested in cooperating with anyone here, but that you’re just trying to come up with ways stop anyone from undoing any of the changes you made last month. If that’s what your attitude is, you should keep in mind that while consensus needs to involve considering the viewpoints of editors who disagree with the majority, it doesn’t need to involve catering to an editor who’s simply trying to block progress on an article, and who isn’t interested in having a productive discussion. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:21, 11 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Indeed, your reasons for proposing came across for the most part as WP:ILIKEIT, which is an ineffectual argument. As we stand, I see no consensus one way or another, which defaults to status quo. Most of the links removed by T34CH (didn't have time to look at all of them) were either already linked to in the article, or did look like they ought to be. We can certainly go over them with a fine tooth com to see if anything is worth keeping in light of WP:ELYES, though. Please realize that we haven't yet started to discuss your proposed changes. I believe that T34CH would like you to select one of these changes for discussion first, and really so would I. Nothing prevents you from copy-and-pasting the previous reasons you came up with for that particular change if it's too much of a bother to re-present your arguments. However, without discussion, I believe you will find there is very little assent for your changes, and certainly no consensus by any means whatsoever.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:53, 11 November 2009 (UTC)


 * For the record, I'll adress your "reasons"


 * December of 2006 was before this article had a significant problem with its content being affected by POV-pushing. Although there appear to have been individual editors involved in it who wished to push a POV, there were enough other editors involved in it that the overall quality of the article didn’t suffer as a result.
 * I don't see that the article had a significant POV problem then. I see that at that point it shifted from a pro-hereditarian to a more neutral POV instead.--Ramdrake (talk) 00:03, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Possibly for that reason, this appears to have been the most stable version of the article that existed at any point in its history. Its overall structure was supported for at least six months by a consensus which was considerably larger than the number of editors who are currently involved in it.
 * It only looked stable because a small group of editors were defending the pro-hereditarian slant of the article with a WP:OWN philosophy, until one by one they left. In actuality, the consensus was against them, but the article had been in that shape for so long that it took time to get any change through.--Ramdrake (talk) 00:03, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The earlier version of the article includes most of the information that’s missing from its current version, and which need to be reincorporated into it.
 * Please briefly list the missing sections for discussion.--Ramdrake (talk) 00:03, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
 * As you can see, we have very different takes on the same situation. Please don't assume that everybody ought to agree with you.--Ramdrake (talk) 00:03, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Ramdrake, we’ve been through all of this multiple times before. You say that presenting the hereditarian and environmental views on close to equal footing is unbalanced, and that in order to be weighted properly the article needs to present the hereditarian view as pseudoscience, because this is the viewpoint of the majority of experts in all relevant fields; when I or Varoon Arya mentions that the Snyderman and Rothman Study shows this viewpoint is the majority viewpoint in one (although not all) of the relevant fields, you bring up your concerns about sampling bias etc. in that study; and when he or I points out that your criticisms of this study are original research, and that what goes in the article needs to only be based on what’s been reported in reliable sources, you generally defend this viewpoint as being a valid personal opinion. You can have your personal opinion about this study, of course, but the problem is when you claim that a version of the article is unbalanced because it doesn’t conform to your personal opinion, as you’re doing in this case. The structure of the article needs to be based on what’s been reported in reliable sources, and although reliable sources offer certain other criticisms of this study, none of them claim that it isn’t an accurate representation of the views of IQ experts.

Sometimes you’ve come close to acknowledging this, such as in your comment to Varoon Arya that I quoted at the NPOV noticeboard. But other times you just continue making the same argument that’s been refuted multiple times before, while not even acknowledging its earlier refutation. If you want to talk about consensus being something other than a vote, this is something you ought to consider: not only are you in the minority here, but an argument like this doesn’t count for anything if it’s been so clearly demonstrated to be unfounded.

Other users have expressed concern in this thread that regardless of what anyone does or says, you’re going to refuse to accept any compromises or acknowledge that a consensus exists. I’m beginning to worry about this also, but I hope you’ll prove me wrong about it.

I mentioned earlier that I’m willing to discuss what you don’t like about my proposal, and hopefully reach a compromise where you’ll no longer have a problem with it. You’ve said that you don’t disapprove of re-using any material from 2006, but that you think the section on the meaning of race is original research, and that the section on brain size and reaction time is unbalanced in favor of the viewpoint that there’s a difference in average brain sizes between races. Can you be more specific on what the problems are with these sections, and how they could be changed so as to improve them? If you want to discuss my proposed changes, that’s the most reasonable way forward at this point, since I won’t know how to fix these problems with them unless you can describe them in more detail. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:46, 12 November 2009 (UTC)


 * As mentioned earlier, the results of the Snyderman & Rothman survey don't override the position statement of the APA, which is representative of 200k+ members, including most of the experts polled in the S&R survey. Why you would attach more weight to the S&R survey than to the APA statement is beyond me. But myself, I don't acknowledge this as representativbe in any way, shape or form that the hereditarian position enjoys any kind of majority status. And even if it did among a small group, it is still very much a small minority position among biologists, neurologists, geneticists, anthropologists and philosopohers of science. So, why is it that do you persist in your drive to represent the hereditarian position as any kind of majority instead of the very small but very vocal and attention-grabbing minority that it is?--Ramdrake (talk) 00:57, 12 November 2009 (UTC)


 * “Why you would attach more weight to the S&R survey than to the APA statement is beyond me.”


 * Because the APA report wasn’t written by the entire 200K-member APA. It was written by a task force of 11 people, and although these 11 individuals were intended to represent the APA, one can’t assume that every individual in the APA holds this opinion.  This is the disadvantage of the APA report compared to the S&R study and the “Mainstream Science” statement, which describe the viewpoints of 661 and 52 individual people.  (The main advantage of the APA report is that it’s more detailed than the other two.)


 * Keep in mind that I’m not trying to ignore the APA statement entirely, or portray the hereditarian view as a majority overall. The term that Rushton uses for it in his 2007 NPR interview is a “substantial minority”, and that's what seems to be most consistent with all of the available sources about scientists’ viewpoints on this. You already discussed this with Varoon Arya, and reached what looked like a reasonable conclusion about it, so it shouldn’t be necessary for you to discuss it again with me.


 * Let me ask you again: are you going to tell me what specific things you’ll want changed about the material from 2006 before it can be re-used?  If you’re going to keep saying that some of this material is unacceptable, but also refusing to say how it could be changed to improve it, it’s going to look as though you’re not actually interested in trying to reach a compromise about this. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:18, 12 November 2009 (UTC)


 * As far as I can tell, most of the material you want to reintroduce from the Dec 2006 version belongs in other article: the section about head/brain size should go into Scientific Racism, the section about race is mostly covered already at Race (classification of human beings), I find the intro fine as it is (the intro from Dec 2006 required the reader to accept the biological reality of "races" as an a priori), the significance of group IQ differences is in fact a list of predictive outcomes of IQ scoring in White Western society. In the context of this article, it's merely an exercize in scientific racism yet again. Need I go on?--Ramdrake (talk) 01:26, 12 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I wasn’t actually intending to re-use the intro from 2006; I just wanted to get rid of some of the POV stuff that T34CH added. But let’s look at some of what else you’re suggesting:


 * You think that the part about brain size should go into the scientific racism article. Putting it into that article would involve making readers’ minds up for them about two things:  that any research into this topic is bad science, and that anyone who researches it is a racist.  Obviously this is your opinion, but you must be aware that it isn’t the only opinion that exists about this, and that a Wikipedia article shouldn’t be structured under the assumption that a substantial minority viewpoint is both false and racist.


 * I really hope you’re able to see how what you’re suggesting here would be a blatant violation of NPOV policy. If you can’t, there’s no point in even trying to discuss any of your other suggestions.  While I’d like to come to a compromise with you about this, it’s not going to be possible if you insist that Wikipedia articles be structured under the assumption that your preferred viewpoint is the only valid one.


 * Do you understand this, or am I wasting my time trying to explain it? --Captain Occam (talk) 01:42, 12 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Let's keep to the head size/brain size issue for a moment. You just need to quickly look and you'll find strong reviews like this one, which nicely indicate that the mainstream view is that the brain size differential which Rushton claims is in fact totally unfounded and an indication of scientific racism indeed. I can find several other papers which will agree with Lieberman (yes one of them is from The Skeptic: . Need I go on??? --Ramdrake (talk) 03:17, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

"I just wanted to get rid of some of the POV stuff that T34CH added." Where? When? It's never been pointed out by anyone. This is just total paranoia coupled with an unwillingness to actually read what I write. There were some phrases that people had trouble with, but those have been changed several times by several editors. If your main plank in this thread is a non-existent issue, then it is time to archive this thread as non-productive and disruptive. Point to material that you want to add in a new section so we can discuss it. T34CH (talk) 03:50, 12 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Totally agree with T34CH on this: I just re-read the intro, and I can find nothing wrong with it.--Ramdrake (talk) 03:52, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Oppose There are too many problems on this page at the moment. When editors spend their time elsewhere discussing the possibility of dismissing the opinions of eminent experts like Nicholas Mackintosh, FRS, the problem could be even worse than WP:OR. To me, that looks like a way of manipulating what can found in WP:RS. As Slr, Ramdrake, T34CH have said, there is no point in returning to a more contentious earlier version. Mathsci (talk) 09:59, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I would appreciate it if Captain Occam could explain this edit . appears not have edited any Race articles prior to Captain Occam's edit and seems to be a sockpuppet account. Why did Captain Occam contact this user out of the blue and why has he now suddenly appeared as a supporter of Captain Occam? This doesn't look good. Mathsci (talk) 10:16, 12 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Mathsci, you’ve brought up the sockpuppetry accusation on my userpage, and I responded to it there. You can discuss it with me there if you like, but let’s keep the discussion here to actual content.


 * Ramdrake: nobody is claiming that the brain size issue isn’t contentious, and that there are many experts who disagree with Rushton about this.  So I’m certainly not claiming the article ought to portray this viewpoint as necessarily correct.  But you’re still missing my point.  I could also link you to articles by scientists who agree with Rushton about this, and who call Rushton’s detractors similarly insulting names, and it wouldn’t prove any more than you’ve proven by linking to those.  The fact of the matter is that both viewpoints exist, both viewpoints have been published in peer-reviewed literature, and WP:NPOV demands that we include them both in proportion to their prevalence in the source material.  That means we need to represent Rushton’s claim about brain size as a minority viewpoint, but also that we can’t label his viewpoint as definitely false and racist the way you’re suggesting.


 * Let me ask you again: do you understand this?  If you don’t understand something as basic as the way NPOV policy demands that we portray a significant-minority view, you’re going to make it impossible for anyone to reason with you about this. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:46, 12 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Why do you keep insisting on giving equal value to Rushton's ideas as to those of the mainstream? It's not just a difference of opinion: several papers have pointed out how Rushton manipulated his samples to get his results (talking about the head size issue here). If I can cite you papers to that effect all day and you still won't accept that one is mainstream and the other a small minority opinion, I guess the only option left is to either call an RfC ro go to mediation. Please note here that I'm discussing the brain size issue, not the hereditarian issue. The brain size issue has been demonstrated to be based on faulty data.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:19, 12 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I’m not insisting that it be presented on equal grounds with the majority view, and I don’t think the 2006 version does this either. Here’s the relevant part of this version of the article:


 * Many studies report that IQ has a moderate correlation with various measures of brain size and performance on elementary tests of response time. For example, a 2005 meta-analysis found that brain size correlates with IQ by a factor of approximately .40 among adults. The correlation was also found in some studies to hold true within families (where environmental factors can be considered to be similar), but in one study of 36 sibling pairs essentially zero correlation between brain size and IQ was found when comparing within families. Some studies have found racial differences in brain size.


 * Others interpret these studies as having found no racially-based difference, arguing instead the the variation should be described in terms of geography. Perhaps the largest single study, by which analyzed more than 20,00 skulls from around the world, found that brain size varied with latitude of biogeographic ancestry. Lieberman (2001) explains "...the relationship between latitude and cranial size is an example of Bergmann’s principle that crania are more spherical in cold climates because mass increases relative to surface area to conserve core temperatures...Beals, Smith, and Dodd emphasize that this relationship is independent of "race."". The biogeographical variation in brain size is widely described as an adaptation to climate.


 * Cranial vault size and shape have changed greatly during the last 150 years in the US. These changes must occur by early childhood because of the early development of the vault. The explanation for these changes may be related to the Flynn effect.


 * This looks to me like it’s weighted properly. The bolded portion is all of the space that this version of the article gives to Rushton’s view, to which it devotes only a single sentence.  The article then devotes an entire paragraph to the mainstream view that brain size varies with geography, not “race”.  This seems consistent with the proportions of experts who hold these views, and the extent to which Rushton’s view is a minority.


 * Rather than claiming I want to give equal weight to Rushton’s view in comparison to the majority view (which I’m not), can you please explain specifically what’s wrong with giving Rushton’s view a single sentence, followed by a paragraph explaining what the mainstream view is? --Captain Occam (talk) 21:42, 12 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually, this particular phrasing and sentence order conveys the sense the mainstream hypothesis is that racial differences in brain size exist, and that brain size is related to intelligence. Re-read it yourself.--Ramdrake (talk) 22:52, 12 November 2009 (UTC)


 * You acknowledged in your first comment here that brain size is moderately correlated with intelligence, and that the problem with Rushton’s viewpoint is that the data doesn’t actually show brain size to vary with race. So by your own standards, describing a relationship between brain size and intelligence shouldn’t be a problem.  Your problem apparently is with the single sentence describing Rushton’s conclusion.


 * I’ve read this section of text several times, and have explained why I think one sentence about Rushton’s view followed by a paragraph about the opposing view is an accurate representation of the proportions of scientists holding these views. Can you explain why you think one sentence about one viewpoint, followed by a paragraph about the opposing view, is portraying the viewpoint described in the single sentence as “mainsteam”?  This nebulous accusation of lack of balance that you’re making isn’t meaningful or productive; if you have a problem with this, you need to be specific about what it is, and what (within the allowance of NPOV policy) needs to be changed in order to fix it. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:21, 12 November 2009 (UTC)


 * First of all, an even low-to-moderate correlation between brain size is disputed among experts. Second, Rushton's claim is presented first, giving it the emphasis, while the real mainstream hypothesis (that brain size varies accoding to climate, see Beals) is presented basically as an "alternative explanation" (others say). Also, the brain size issue is less than central to the race and intelligence debate (it's only really important in Rushton's life theory). For all these reasons, I would leave this section out of the article. Like I said, it is far more germane to the article on Scientific racism.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:33, 12 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Although the brain size issue doesn’t deserve a large amount of space in this article, the fact that it’s part of this debate means that it deserves at least a mention. This part of the article also mentions that the correlation between brain size and intelligence is disputed; that’s the point of the Schoenemann et al. paper.  However, I think it would be an acceptable compromise to present Rushton’s view after the mainstream view rather than before it.  Here’s how I could change this:


 * Many studies report that IQ has a moderate correlation with various measures of brain size and performance on elementary tests of response time. For example, a 2005 meta-analysis found that brain size correlates with IQ by a factor of approximately .40 among adults. The correlation was also found in some studies to hold true within families (where environmental factors can be considered to be similar), but in one study of 36 sibling pairs essentially zero correlation between brain size and IQ was found when comparing within families.


 * It is generally acknowledged that brain size varies with biogeogaphric ancestry. This is widely described as an adaptation to climate. Perhaps the largest single study, by  which analyzed more than 20,00 skulls from around the world, found that brain size varied with latitude of biogeographic ancestry. Lieberman (2001) explains "...the relationship between latitude and cranial size is an example of Bergmann’s principle that crania are more spherical in cold climates because mass increases relative to surface area to conserve core temperatures...Beals, Smith, and Dodd emphasize that this relationship is independent of "race."". However, some researchers describe these results in “racial” terms.


 * Do you consider this an improvement? --Captain Occam (talk) 23:56, 12 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Again, I do NOT think this is the right place for this piece. I think it belongs at Scientific Racism. If you disagree, we can go to mediation. That's about it.--Ramdrake (talk) 00:45, 13 November 2009 (UTC)


 * You aren’t being reasonable here, and I think you probably know that you aren’t. I’ve taken your concerns into consideration with the concessions I made in my last post, but you’re refusing to accept this compromise, while also refusing to explain why not.  You aren’t making any new arguments for what’s wrong with my compromise other than I_just_don't_like_it, and you also aren’t attempting to address my own arguments for why this is an important enough topic of debate that it deserves some mention in this article.  What you’re basically saying here is that you will not accept any compromise, regardless of what concessions anyone makes and regardless of what arguments exist for or against what you’re demanding.


 * As has been pointed out previously, consensus is more than just a vote; the quality of the arguments matter also. If this is the way you want to leave things, then the outcome of this discussion is pretty clear.  How much noise you make beyond this point doesn’t really matter as long as you refuse to make any arguments for your position that haven’t already been addressed, refuse to address anyone else’s arguments, and refuse to accept any compromise.


 * The outcome here shouldn’t be unfamiliar to you, considering you’ve been in this same situation in the past, except that in the past the roles were reversed. When Jagz and Legalleft were editing this article, Jagz at least was never willing to accept any compromises either, and eventually you decided that one or two editors making a lot of noise wasn’t enough to prevent the article being changed, as long as they didn’t have any substantive arguments about this and compromising with them was impossible.  Jagz’ response to this situation, which you sharply criticized, was to keep demanding RFCs as long as he wasn’t getting his way.  You’ve already been to the NPOV noticeboard about this issue once, and weren’t happy with the answer you got there; are you now intending to follow his example of forum shopping until you get an answer you like?


 * I can’t stop you from doing that if you want to, but otherwise I suppose this discussion is finished. The only thing that really matters is what you’ve demonstrated in your last response—that you will not accept any compromise about this, regardless of what arguments exist against your demands or what concessions are made for them—and you’ve already demonstrated the proper response to this situation from how you dealt with it in Jagz’ case. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:51, 13 November 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, let's get to mediation then. No more compromise until then. I just don't agree that this article should reprise the detail of Rushton's theory as you seem to be aiming for. I will accept some compromises: I already have. I just won't accept this one, as it is clearly pushing Rushton's agenda.--Ramdrake (talk) 01:58, 13 November 2009 (UTC)


 * If you’re going to request mediation about this, it probably ought to include everything that’s been discussed in this thread, rather than just the brain size issue. The central question ought to be whether the article is unbalanced, and if so, whether re-using some of the material from 2006 is an acceptable solution.


 * I don’t think mediation is totally necessary here, but if you’re convinced it’s the best solution, I’ll cooperate with it if you file a request. However, I hope this time around you’ll actually accept the suggestions you receive, rather than wanting to keep forum shopping until you get an answer you like, as happened when you weren’t happy with the response you got at the NPOV noticeboard. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:27, 13 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Can you tell us what suggestions you think Ramdrake is ignoring? All I saw at NPOVN was your meat puppet and you.  T34CH (talk) 02:40, 13 November 2009 (UTC)


 * What’s the point in trying to discuss this with you now? You’ve demonstrated even less willingness to compromise than Ramdrake has.  (Even though he’s not willing to make any compromises about my suggestions in this thread, at least he’s made compromises about other aspects of this article in the past, unlike your own history with it.)


 * Ramdrake is apparently going to request mediation now, so trying to get you to listen to anything at this point is even more futile than it normally is. Let’s just wait to see what the mediator says, and hopefully you’ll be willing to listen to them, unlike how you’ve been towards me, Varoon Arya, DistributiveJustice, David.Kane, and everyone else who you disagree with. --Captain Occam (talk) 03:08, 13 November 2009 (UTC)


 * The point is you're either misremembering events of the past few days or trying to be manipulative. You have a bad habit of misrepresenting those around you (including those you feel are on your side).  For example, in this very exchange, as soon as I asked for clarification or corroboration, you just backed away from the statement.  These are the issues that mediation will focus on.  It comes off as if you are just trying to sound righteous, or that you actually believe these statements despite a lack of data to support it.  In either case, it bodes ill for your ability to edit this article in an encyclopedic manner; it implies you are either pushing a POV or can't be trusted to properly evaluate the sources.  T34CH (talk) 03:24, 13 November 2009 (UTC)


 * T34CH: I don't think that this is a fair summary of Captain Occam's behavior. As best I can tell, he has bent over backward to address the comments/concerns from Ramdrake. That back-and-forth has demonstrated, at least to me, that Ramdrake's fundamental contention is not with the presentation of Lynn's published research but with any inclusion of it whatsoever in this article. Ramdrake believes (corrections welcome) that Lynn's published research does not belong in this article. Captain Occam (I and others) disagree. David.Kane (talk) 15:24, 13 November 2009 (UTC)


 * You asked for clarification at the same time that Ramdrake was asking for a bunch of other stuff, and I wasn't able to respond to everything at once. I'll explain them now, though, so the mediator can see what it is that I have a problem with.  Here's the first part:


 * "Important related questions include whether intelligence can be accurately described by a single number, and whether the nature of intelligence is the same across cultures, as well as the emerging consensus that "races" as they are commonly understood are a social rather than a biological category, and how a social category could influence a biological phenomenon."


 * This statement seems to be trying to make the point that races can't influence IQ, because races are social categories and IQ is a biological trait. A more neutral statement would read something like, "Important related questions include whether intelligence can be accurately described by a single number, and whether the nature of intelligence is the same across cultures, as well as whether the correlation between socially defined races and genetic clusters based on biogeographic ancestry is strong enough for a biological trait to vary between races."  Alternatively, the sentence could simply end after the word "cultures"; that might be a better idea.


 * The second problem I have is with this sentence: "While environmental differences could statistically account for differences in test scores, no specific environmental factor has been identified as a definitive cause, and no direct evidence exists for genetic factors." This is consistent with what the APA statement says, but the APA statement also says that the physical evidence fails to support any specific environmental explanation, so it's unbalanced to mention one but not the other.  The consensus which was established for this sentence last month was that it should read, "While these differences are of a size that could be accounted for by environmental factors, no specific environmental factors have been identified as definitive causes, and genetic factors cannot be ruled out."  There was never any consensus to change this sentence, so the consensus that existed about it last month still applies.  I probably should just change it back to the state that was established by consensus in October, but given this article's history, I figured it would be easier to improve it if I made several changes at once.


 * Because of your history with this article, I don't really expect you to be willing to compromise about either of these things, but we don't need to try and resolve this right now. If you disagree with the problems I've raised, we can just wait for the mediator to deal with them. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:00, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

(reset indent) Captain, you seem to be pushing the opinion that the APA report puts genetic explanations on a par with environmental ones, at least that's what I get from your rephrasing of the introduction. I'd like to point you to the relevant part of the APA report's conclusion: "The cause of that differential is not known; it is apparently not due to any simple form of bias in the content or administration of the tests themselves. The Flynn effect shows that environmental factors can produce differences of at least this magnitude, but that effect is mysterious in its own right. Several culturally-based explanations of the Black/White IQ differential have been proposed; some are plausible, but so far none has been conclusively supported. There is even less empirical support for a genetic interpretation. In short, no adequate explanation of the differential between the IQ means of Blacks and Whites is presently available."

I read in this that there are possible environmental causes for the achievement gap, but that so far none has been proven, whereas the case for genetic explanations has less support. The APA report doesn't say that the physical evidence fails to support any specific environmental explanation, just that no one specific explanation has been proven to date (some are plausible).

The same can be said about your insistence to link the folk taxonomy of races to human genetic variation. Scientific consensus finds that while it is possible to find genetic clusters within human genetic variation, these are not consistent with folk taxonomy, and folk taxonomy (read racial self-identification) is what these studies are based on. Trying to make the reader think that folk taxonomies are in fact supported by studies of human genetic variation is misleading. Therefore, the current phrasing is here again preferable.--Ramdrake (talk) 15:47, 13 November 2009 (UTC)


 * So far, there’s been no consensus to change this sentence from the phrasing that was determined by consensus in October. That on its own is reason enough why it should not have been changed from that state, and why it should be reverted to that state.  The only reason I haven’t reverted it already is because I suspected someone would immediately revert my edit if I change this sentence back to the version that was supported by consensus, even though doing so would go against Wikipedia policy.


 * Perhaps I’m wrong in what I expect from you and T34CH, but in any case the answer is pretty open-and-shut as to whether a sentence should be permanently modified from a state that supported by consensus less than a month ago, when there’s no consensus to change it. When a question such as this is answered directly by Wikipedia policy, I don’t think there’s much question what the mediator would decide if it becomes necessary for them to resolve this particular issue.


 * “Scientific consensus finds that while it is possible to find genetic clusters within human genetic variation, these are not consistent with folk taxonomy, and folk taxonomy (read racial self-identification) is what these studies are based on.”


 * You keep saying this, and when I link you to studies that explicitly state that the two are strongly correlated (including the one which found a 99.86% correlation), you either ignore them or bring up personal problems with them that aren’t based on anything which has been reported in reliable sources. This is basically the same as your objections to the Snyderman and Rothman study—you can have personal objections to this data if you like, but your personal opinions can’t influence what goes in the article.


 * We already discussed this on the talk page for Race and genetics, so I’m not sure why you aren’t remembering this. Here is the main paper we discussed about this, which was linked to by Alun.  According to that paper, the idea which is rejected by scientific consensus is that races form distinct platonic categories, and scientific consensus has also found that all genetic groups overlap with one another.  However, this paper also states that these genetic clusters still correlate with traditional concepts of race, which makes race useful in a biomedical setting.  You are accepting the first conclusion while ignoring the second, and then using the first conclusion as a basis to claim that scientific consensus rejects the second.


 * There’s a very simple way to see that the correlation between traditional “races” and genetic clusters is strong enough for the genetic differences between these clusters to manifest themselves between races, which is the fact that socially-defined races have varying reactions to certain drugs. A paper that talks about this is here, and Crestor is one example of a drug that has to be prescribed differently to different racial groups for this reason.  Reactions to drugs are determined by genetics, not by social categories.  So if the correlation between socially-defined races and genetic clusters is strong enough for races to have varying rates of reactions to drugs, the fact that races are “social” category is not an a priori reason to assume that they can’t also vary in another biological trait such as intelligence.


 * This fact is pointed out by a large number of opponents of the hereditarian view. I’m going to quote Nisbett (2009) about this:


 * Some laypeople I know—and some scientists as well—believe that it is a priori impossible for a genetic difference in intelligence to exist between the races. But such a conviction is entirely unfounded.  There are a hundred ways that a genetic difference in intelligence could have arisen—either in favor of whites or in favor of blacks.  The question is an empirical one, not answerable by a priori convictions about the essential equality of groups.


 * Your assertion that the correlation between socially-defined races and genetic clusters is not strong enough for a biological trait to vary between socially-defined races is contradicted both by the scientific consensus about this correlation, including other scientists (such as Nisbettt) who support your viewpoint about the IQ difference being purely environmental, as well as by the entire industry of race-based medicine. For this reason, for the article to claim what you’re claiming here is very misleading.  Now that we’ve got a mediator involved in this article, I’m hoping it will no longer be impossible for anyone to make any progress with improving these aspects of it, so that I or someone else will be able to edit the article to make it more neutral in this respect. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:42, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
 * 1)I'm not aware that there was any consensus back in October for the wording that you propose. As a matter of fact, this would explain why that wording got changed within days.
 * 2)You keep coming up with the same two primary sources which claim a strong correlation between self-identified race and genetic clusters. I have supplied you with about a half-dozen secondary sources which state that the mainstream position is that folk taxonomies aren't biologically supported by genetic studies. Find reputable, reliable secondary sources which say the contrary and we can discuss.--Ramdrake (talk) 23:51, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
 * As an afterthought, I will quote from the abstract of the very paper we discussed with Alun:

"Clustering of individuals is correlated with geographic origin of ancestry. These clusters are also correlated with some traditional concepts of race, but the correlations are imperfect because genetic variation thends to be distributed in a continuous, overlapping fashion among populations. Therefore, ancestry, or even race, may in some cases prove useful in the biomedical setting, but direct assessment of disease-related genetic variation will ultimately yield more accurate and beneficial information."
 * You seem to be intent on ignoring scientific journal reviews which contradict your POV, on selectively quoting references so that they seem to support your POV, and to put on equal footing respected scientists and widely-decried ones. This is not the way to build a proper science-related Wikipedia article.--Ramdrake (talk) 00:03, 14 November 2009 (UTC)


 * 1: The discussion about the wording of this part of the lead was resolved here.  The main discussion was between me, Aprock, and Aerain, but several other users approved of this change during the week after we had made it.


 * 2: First of all, peer-reviewed research is considered a secondary source; a primary source would be the data itself. But in any case, let’s just look at the material you quoted, because it says the exact same thing that I’ve been trying to say.  The correlation exists, the correlation is imperfect, but it’s nonetheless strong enough for “race” to be useful in a biomedical setting.  Every other paper you’ve linked to said something similar to this.


 * You seem to not even be trying to address my point here. The reason why race is useful in a biomedical setting is because socially-defined races have genetic differences between them, and these genetic differences can have biological effects.  Therefore, the fact that race is a "social category" does not rule out the possibility of biological traits varying between races.  As Nisbett says, whether this is true of any particular trait is an entirely empirical matter.  You seem to be ignoring Nisbett’s point about this, as well as mine.


 * As long as you continue refusing to address this point, the fact that you personally approve of the lead section in its current state doesn’t count for anything, because your argument for wanting to keep it this way is unsupported. --Captain Occam (talk) 00:34, 14 November 2009 (UTC)


 * A "consensus" of two and a half editors (Aerain didn't seem to agree much), when about ten editors have been commenting on this article since is hardly a consensus. Primary sources are the papers which claim something, or the data they contain. Secondary sources are review papers which look at several primary sources to try to determine consensus on a given point. Race is somewhat useful in a biomedical setting, but article we've been cited says it's imperfect. It's certainly not strong enough to link self-assigned race with human genetic variation, despite your one study which claims the contrary. I can't do anything if you keep misinterpreting the gist of what you're reading.--Ramdrake (talk) 00:54, 14 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Look, there’s only one thing which matters here, which you still aren’t addressing. If genetic differences between races are substantial enough to cause variation in how races react to drugs, then it clearly is enough to have biological effects.  In its current state, the intro implies that it cannot have this effect.  I’ve given you several chances to respond to this point, and you haven’t attempted to do so; this is enough to show that you don’t have a counter-argument about this.  I’m going to leave the part cited to the APA paper the way it is for now, but it’s clear from this discussion that the statement about “and how a social category could influence a biological phenomenon” is misleading.


 * This statement also isn’t cited to anything; unsourced statements ought to be able to be removed from an article without requiring this degree of discussion. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:04, 14 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Come again???
 * "If genetic differences between races are substantial enough to cause variation in how races react to drugs, then it clearly is enough to have biological effects. In its current state, the intro implies that it cannot have this effect." - first of all, extrapolating reactions to drugs to intelligence is SYN, so if that's the reason you're arguing this issue you should stop now and stay on the sidelines.  Secondly, the lead currently reads,
 * "No consensus exists regarding the meaning and/or relevance of these differences, and numerous interpretations have been proposed to clarify them. A particularly controversial facet of this debate is the relative degree to which the development of intelligence is affected by genetic factors on the one hand and environmental factors on the other...  no set populations of humans have been found to have significant genetic differences that would affect the average group intelligence... While environmental differences could statistically account for differences in test scores, no specific environmental factor has been identified as a definitive cause, and no direct evidence exists for genetic factors."


 * Seems to me you're reading implications into this which don't exist. This is simple restating of the consensus sources.  If you can't live with what the sources say, then, again, head to the sidelines please.


 * The statement about a social category is reflective of a large area of discussion in the field that race is a social rather than biological construct. It has been discussed at length on this talk page and in the article.  To pretend otherwise is odd on your part.  T34CH (talk) 01:19, 14 November 2009 (UTC)


 * This particular statement, about how it's uncertain whether race can influence biological traits, was never discussed on this talk page. It also isn't cited to anything.  Unsourced statements such as these aren't allowed in articles; this isn't open to dispute. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:35, 14 November 2009 (UTC)