Talk:Spearman's hypothesis

Relevance of Controversy section?
Is the information given in the Controversy section really relevant to this article? - dcljr 01:31, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This looks like a great candidate for merger with some other article.
This article is interesting, but rather duplicative of some other articles on the same subject. It would be best, I think, to merge this content with some existing article, perhaps General intelligence factor. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 16:38, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Intelligence Citations Bibliography for Articles Related to IQ Testing
You may find it helpful while reading or editing articles to look at a bibliography of Intelligence Citations, posted for the use of all Wikipedians who have occasion to edit articles on human intelligence and related issues. I happen to have circulating access to a huge academic research library at a university with an active research program in these issues (and to another library that is one of the ten largest public library systems in the United States) and have been researching these issues since 1989. You are welcome to use these citations for your own research. You can help other Wikipedians by suggesting new sources through comments on that page. It will be extremely helpful for articles on human intelligence to edit them according to the Wikipedia standards for reliable sources for medicine-related articles, as it is important to get these issues as well verified as possible. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 16:38, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Wording
In the section "Under Criticism," I changed the wording from "considered to be an important justification for the genetic explanation" to "considered to be an important piece of evidence for the genetic explanation." Justified means makes acceptable or right. The methods of correlated vectors was not meant to "justify" the hereditarian hypothesis, but to provide evidence for it. I'm not sure what justification is supposed to imply here. If it's supposed to imply "make a plausible hypothesis," as Flynn has noted, the Hereditarian hypothesis would stand if Spearman's hypothesis was disproved. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.65.235.88 (talk) 23:36, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

What the hypothesis actually is
There seems to be some confusion in this article about what the hypothesis actually is. The lead section talks about Spearman's two-factor theory which has little to do with the hypothesis. The hypothesis is, in short, that the black-white difference in IQ is either entirely (strong hypothesis) or mainly (weak hypothesis) due to differences in g between blacks and whites. Jensen came up with the term Spearman's hypothesis based on Spearman's brief remark in The Abilities of Man (1927) that the magnitude of b-w differences in different American tests seemed to be correlated with the g-loadings of the tests. Jensen invented the method of correlated vectors to test the hypothesis.

I think this topic warrants an article of its own, because various researchers have made rather elaborate arguments for and against the hypothesis.--Victor Chmara (talk) 17:27, 5 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi, Victor, you wrote, "I think this topic warrants an article of its own, because various researchers have made rather elaborate arguments for and against the hypothesis." That indeed would be the way to show that a separate stand-alone article is warranted on this topic. I'll start digging into the sources I have at hand (I still have a lot to log in on the main source list and see what they have to say on this issue. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 00:54, 7 November 2010 (UTC)


 * There seems to be a deeper confusion about what Spearman's hypothesis is. Jensen (1998), page 271, characterized it as the hypothesis that (1) "the relative size of the W-B mean difference across a group of diverse tests is a positive function of each tests g-loading" and then went on to describe it as (2) the hypothesis that the gap is 'either entirely (strong hypothesis) or mainly (weak hypothesis) due to differences in ''g.' That is, Jensen seemed to equated 1 with 2.  Dolan et al (2001) have since clarified that (1) is distinct from (2).  They called (1) Spearman's correlation and (2) Spearman's hypothesis and then argue that a repeated findings of Spearman’s correlation is necessary but not sufficient to establish Spearman's hypothesis (i.e. a differences in g).  This distinction is related to their critique of the Method of correlated vectors (MCV), which can demonstrate (1) but, according to them, not (2) due to the MCV's lack of specificity (i.e. the MCV's inability to distinguish between Spearman's correlations caused by g and not caused by g.)


 * Now this confusion is important to clarify because both "Spearman's correlation" and "Spearman's hypothesis" are used, independently, to argue against an environmental basis for the B-W difference.

For example, Murray (2005) notes:


 * ''As long ago as 1927, Charles Spearman, the pioneer psychometrician who discovered g, proposed a hypothesis to explain the pattern: the size of the black-white difference would be "most marked in just those [subtests] which are known to be saturated with g."[58] In other words, Spearman conjectured that the black-white difference would be greatest on tests that were the purest measures of intelligence, as opposed to tests of knowledge or memory.


 * A concrete example illustrates how Spearman's hypothesis works. Two items in the Wechsler and Stanford-Binet IQ tests are known as "forward digit span" and "backward digit span." In the forward version, the subject repeats a random sequence of one-digit numbers given by the examiner, starting with two digits and adding another with each iteration. The subject's score is the number of digits that he can repeat without error on two consecutive trials. Digits-backward works exactly the same way except that the digits must be repeated in the opposite order.


 * Digits-backward is much more g-loaded than digits-forward. Try it yourself and you will see why. Digits-forward is a straightforward matter of short-term memory. Digits-backward makes your brain work much harder.[59]


 * The black-white difference in digits-backward is about twice as large as the difference in digits-forward.[60] It is a clean example of an effect that resists cultural explanation.''


 * It took me approximately 0.2 seconds to realize that the degree to which a culture is comfortable with abstractions - for which manipulating random numbers as digits unattached to any concrete meaning or reality obviously qualifies - would have a greater advantage on the backwards test than on the forwards test. As I work in introducing literacy to unschooled populations, this is the exact sort of task that would be difficult to even explain to someone who did not work with numbers abstractly on a regular basis. Claiming that it resists cultural explanation sounds naive.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.163.217.99 (talk) 13:14, 5 June 2019 (UTC)


 * And also gives the following footnote:


 * [64] Jensen's evidence has been accompanied by a debate over his method of correlated vectors for testing Spearman's hypothesis. P.H. Schönemann has argued, most extensively in Schönemann (1997), that Jensen's evidence was no more than a statistical artifact, a claim refuted by Dolan and Lubke (2001). But other ways in which the method of correlated vectors might yield spurious results are still being debated; e.g., Dolan (2000), Lubke, Dolan, and Kelderman (2001), Dolan, Roorda, and Wicherts (2004), Ashton and Lee (in press). These arguments are being carried on at an arcane methodological level. I am making a limited claim about what Jensen has established beyond dispute: when you take a battery of mental tests, subject them to a factor analysis, and correlate the loadings on the first factor with the size of the black-white difference, the correlation will average about .6. The actual method of correlated vectors is more complicated than this, and is described in Jensen (1998): 372-74.


 * Here, Murray is clearly talking about what Dolan et al call "Spearman's correlation."  And his claim, clearly, can not be objected to on the basis of Dolan et al's critique of MCV. None of this, of course, is understandable unless the distinction between (1) and (2) is clear.  This confusion is also important to clarify because it makes sense of the larger debate about group differences in g, about the utility of MCV for establishing them, and about the relationship between MCV, Spearman's correlation, and Spearman's hypothesis.  For example, with regards to MCV, te Nijenhuis et al. (2007) argue:


 * “The fact that our meta-analytical value of r=−1.06 is virtually identical to the theoretically expected correlation between g and d of −1.00 holds some promise that a psychometric meta-analysis of studies using MCV is a powerful way of reducing some of the limitations of MCV…Additional meta-analyses of studies employing MCV are necessary to establish the validity of the combination of MCV and psychometric meta-analysis. Most likely, many would agree that a high positive meta-analytical correlation between measures of g and measures of another construct implies that g plays a major role, and that a meta-analytical correlation of −1.00 implies that g plays no role. However, it is not clear what value of the meta-analytical correlation to expect from MCV when g plays only a modest role.” (Score gains on g-loaded tests: No g, 2007)"


 * They argue that meta-analytic findings of Spearman's correlation using MCV can evidence Spearman's hypothesis -- or at least g differences to some degree or other. To understand their point, it helps to get the whole (1), (2) distinction.....


 * Anyways, I not sure if the Spearman's correlation/hypothesis distinction will help the readers, but keeping it in mind might help the writers better grasp the nuances of the SH/MCV debate.--Hippofrank (talk) 22:52, 8 October 2011 (UTC)Hippofrank

2013 Revision
I made extensive revisions to the original article. I consider this to be a preliminarily edit. If anyone has objections to the revision please note the objections and we can discuss the issue. One problem that I will note is that I was forced to impose some order on this topic. The primary and secondary sources present a confused conceptualization of what Spearman's hypothesis actually is. At one time, it's simply the hypothesis that the Black-White differences in mental ability correlates with g-loadings (Jensen, 1985; Jensen, 2002). At another time, it's the hypothesis that group differences are substantially due to general intelligence differences (Jensen, 1998). These two conceptualizations are poorly distinguished. And this situation makes discussion of this issue difficult.--Zebrapersonfrank (talk) 19:43, 26 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for commenting on the talk page. I have a lot of the sources at hand, and I'll take a look at the new overall look of the article. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 02:27, 30 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Interesting. I'll look in reliable secondary sources (rather than first reports in journals) for more about this. Thanks for the recent substantive edits, which I've just touched up with some copy edits, most rather minor. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 21:37, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Flynn on g-loadings
"For example, Flynn argues that the most g-loaded and heritable tests are those that have seen the highest increases due to the Flynn effect. "

This is wrong, Flynn has said: "The magnitude of white/ black IQ differences on Wechsler subtests at any given time is correlated with the g loadings of the subtests; the magnitude of IQ gains over time on subtests is not usually so correlated; the causes of the two phenomena are not the same"

Source: http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/fe/LinkedDocuments/flynn2013.pdf (see under section 4. Jan te Nijenhuis and Henk van der Flier) 109.78.58.68 (talk) 02:15, 10 December 2019 (UTC)someguy

Examples of Spearman's hypothesis should be included in this article
'''The article is about Spearman's hypothesis. Therefore, there should be examples of studies about Spearman's hypothesis.'''

Here is my edit which was reverted. A large number of users have previously added examples of Spearman's hypothesis, but this was reverted here by User:Generalrelative and User:NightHeron. This large (largest ever for this article) deletion and re-writing of the article improved certain aspects of it, but the removal of examples of Spearman's hypothesis (among other removals) was unwarranted and does not align with editor consensus. Remember that it is best to WP:PRESERVE.

The following show that it is clear established WP:consensus from editors that examples of the article's topic should be included:


 * -User:Victor Chmara included the original 1927 observation of Spearman's hypothesis.
 * -User:Miradre included a source on Japanese inbreeding effects predicting group differences.
 * -User:Boppet included the statement of Jensen's opinion based on 25 samples.
 * -66.49.147.29 included a source which discussed Serbian, South African, and US examples of Spearman's hypothesis.
 * -User:Zebrapersonfrank included a source talking about different examples of Spearman's hypothesis.
 * - User:Cassmus included a source studying Kazakh, Korean, Tatar, Uzbek, and Russian children from Kazakhstan, a different source on Native Americans, and a source on Advanced Placement exam scores in the US, all of which illustrated Spearman's hypothesis.
 * -User:Deleet included a source detailing two meta-analyses on Jews in the US and Israel and American non-Jewish white people, and included a study on Saudi young people and other young people from Denmark, Cyprus, Croatia, Bosnia, South Africa, Estonia, Ukraine, Ireland, Russia and Chile, and a study on twins in addition to 11 other samples from around the world, all of which were illustrations of Spearman's hypothesis.
 * -Other users contributed examples about "related hypotheses," but I don't wish focus on that. Additionally, some users which added sources which only tangentially mention the Spearman effect, or discuss the technical aspects of it, are not listed above.
 * -Of course, I also included a variety of peer-reviewed sources (including some of the above) on Spearman's hypothesis; for example, a study illustrating Spearman's hypothesis in apes.

All of these above sources/the text preceding them were deleted.

Throughout this period of 12 years (From Victor's edit to Generalrelative's deletion), 55 unique users made 162 edits to the page without deleting the above illustrations of Spearman's hypothesis. Consensus is assumed when there's no evidence of disagreement, per WP:SILENCE.

On 19 May 2022‎, User:Generalrelative informed User:NightHeron to look at this article, then made extremely large deletions. After User:Generalrelative's edits that day, the article shrunk 8716 characters. Three days later, User:NightHeron deleted 3032 characters. This was over half of the article; it now sits at only 9447 characters. This is a clear violation of WP:FIXTHEPROBLEM; WP:EPTALK as well as WP:CAUTIOUS should also be considered here.

After I made edits, @NightHeron reverted all of them, citing WP:ONUS but perhaps overlooking WP:IMPLICITCONSENSUS. mentioned an issue with the quality of my sources, which wasn't helpful to me, as I had added twenty-two sources (mostly examples) to the article. I researched my sources and deleted a lower-quality source, then reinstated my other edits, adding: "Please don't blanket revert without mentioning specific items that can be improved. I've double-checked this version for low-quality sources. If you have specific problems with a source, delete that source and corresponding statement instead of all of my edits." My sources came from 13 separate locations, almost all of which are peer-reviewed journals. Instead of letting me know which sources were problematic, @NightHeron deleted my edits for a second time.

In light of the communication between @Generalrelative and @NightHeron, remember that promoting a cause by bringing a like-minded editor into the dispute, even in good faith, does not align with Wikipedia policy.

Note: It is not my intention to advocate for the inclusion of all of the above sources. It is my intention to unequivocally illustrate that there is a consensus among previous editors that examples of Spearman's hypothesis should be included. This is the norm on Wikipedia. Convergent evolution has examples of convergent evolution. Debt-trap diplomacy has examples of debt-trap diplomacy. Spearman's hypothesis should have examples of Spearman's hypothesis.

Instead of mass-deleting, the following solutions from WP:PRESERVE should be attempted:


 * Rephrasing or copy-editing to improve grammar or more accurately represent the sources


 * Formatting or sourcing on the spot


 * Tagging it as necessary


 * Correcting inaccuracies, while keeping the rest of the content intact


 * Adding another point of view to the existing points of view to make the article more balanced


 * Requesting a citation by adding the tag, or adding any other inline cleanup tags as appropriate


 * Adding appropriate cleanup tags to content you cannot fix yourself.

In short, if you have a problem with my edit, just undo or correct the parts you have an issue with. It isn't constructive to blanket-revert all of my edits. In accordance with WP:STATUSQUO, the page will continue to include examples of Spearman's hypothesis at present.

TL;DR: User:Generalrelative and User:NightHeron deleted massive amounts of long-standing text, including examples of Spearman's hypothesis. This was originally unknown to me when I began editing (mostly to add examples). My substantial update to the page, encompassing a diverse array of edits, was completely reverted twice by User:NightHeron without a discussion on the talk page. BooleanQuackery (talk) 03:14, 28 July 2022 (UTC)


 * , although I agree with NightHeron's initial objection that this article should not cite Mankind Quarterly, which is considered a low-quality source, your current rewrite is an improvement. I agree that NightHeron should make whatever changes he thinks need to be made to the current version, rather than continuing to remove half of the entire article. --AndewNguyen (talk) 10:11, 28 July 2022 (UTC)


 * I did not "remove half of the entire article". I restored the article to the stable version that was there until a few hours before, when BooleanQuackery added a huge amount of material that changed the nature of the article in violation of earlier consensus of editors. NightHeron (talk) 13:07, 28 July 2022 (UTC)


 * I also completely agree that this article should not cite Mankind Quarterly. Doing that was an oversight., I wouldn't like to get bogged down in semantics, but it is possible to both remove half of an article and also restore an article to a previous version. BooleanQuackery (talk) 17:05, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

That is not the way consensus works on Wikipedia. You do not establish a new consensus by searching through the early history of an article to find edits you like that were later removed in order to bring the article into compliance with Wikipedia policies, such as WP:RS, WP:PROFRINGE, and WP:UNDUE.

The claims of hereditary differences in intelligence between racial groups were discussed in an RfC in 2020 at WP:FTN (see ) and on the Race and intelligence talk-page (see ). Both RfCs on race and intelligence had extensive participation by many editors -- over 50 in 2020 and about 35 in 2021. The first one reached a consensus (sustained on appeal) that such claims of inherent intelligence differences between races is a fringe POV. This means that such claims should be treated on Wikipedia in compliance with WP:PROFRINGE and not given undue attention. A few disgruntled editors were unhappy with this outcome. But the second RfC ended in a WP:SNOWCLOSE overwhelmingly reaffirming the consensus that racial hereditarianism is a fringe POV. After the RfC in 2020, articles related to racial hereditarianism were edited in accordance with the consensus of editors on the subject. NightHeron (talk) 13:07, 28 July 2022 (UTC)


 * They edits I listed are not edits I like. I dislike some of them; see my "note." An WP:IMPLICITCONSENSUS is indeed established by the edits of previous users. It is reasonable to show the long-standing edits of those users if such a consensus is called into question to confirm its veracity.


 * I personally have no stake in the hereditarianism debate. None of the edits I added were about IQ differences or anything like that. Two of the sources you removed that I added were in non-human primates, and some of them implicitly contradict what you're critiquing: for example, the source where Spearman's hypothesis is still present in different regions of Japan, a highly homogenous society. Spearman's hypothesis implies that tests which "get at" g are better able to show contrast between test-takers. It does not mean that there are "inherent intelligence differences between races." It does (in my opinion) imply that IQ tests, AP tests, etc. don't perfectly measure true general intelligence, and also that g was selected for in our primate ancestors (i.e., exhibited stronger selection pressures than narrower abilities). BooleanQuackery (talk) 17:42, 28 July 2022 (UTC)


 * The way things have been lately is that even sources about the Flynn effect, or about dysgenic trends in intelligence, are getting removed because of their vague similarity to hereditarian views about race and intelligence. I'm assuming you've seen the recent article in Quillette that discusses several examples of this pattern. This trend is something we should push back against, or otherwise in a few years Wikipedia won't be able to say anymore that intelligence is heritable at all, so I'll restore your changes. --AndewNguyen (talk) 20:16, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I haven't heard of that Quillette article. To me, this article doesn't relate to those controversial topics. It's like saying an article on phone usage patterns shouldn't include any examples of phone usage (like phone usage in different areas of Japan, or what phones apes experimentally prefer to use) because East Asians are more likely to use Huawei and Indians are more likely to not use iPhones, so it is somehow now intricately tied to race. BooleanQuackery (talk) 22:43, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Just popping in to voice support for NightHeron here. The removed content was WP:PROFRINGE and therefore WP:UNDUE. AndewNguyen, I see that you've become active again after more than a year in order to plug the Quillette piece you mention above at ArbCom, presumably knowing full well that we consider that publication to be unreliable. Looks like a very, very weak argument to me. Generalrelative (talk) 21:31, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Generalrelative, are you saying that all of the edits removed by NightHeron today are WP:PROFRINGE and therefore WP:UNDUE? I want to make sure I understand your position. BooleanQuackery (talk) 22:43, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
 * "Content" was removed twice by you and NightHeron in late May, then again this month. Which content removal are you referring to? BooleanQuackery (talk) 17:07, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

and, if you have no objections, I will change the page to include examples. If you have an objection, do you object to any of the following? Please say the number(s) you object to (if any), and why you object. If you object to something not listed above, I would like to hear that as well. BooleanQuackery (talk) 19:46, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
 * 1) Citing a paper if the first author is Dutch psychologist Jan Te Nijenhuis
 * 2) Citing a paper if Jan Te Nijenhuis is on the paper at all
 * 3) Citing a paper if it is published in the peer-reviewed journal Intelligence by Elsevier


 * I've already objected to giving WP:UNDUE attention to fringe authors or to publications from the official journal of ISIR. You don't have a consensus to add those sources. You cannot assume consensus just because editors who've participated in extensive earlier discussions on these matters have no desire to relitigate this yet again and so respond to your badgering with silence. NightHeron (talk) 19:59, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Seven of the citations from the version you reverted to are from Nijenhuis or the journal Intelligence. These citations all criticize or find against Spearman's hypothesis. However, you only deleted the citations from Nijenhuis or the journal Intelligence that found support for Spearman's hypothesis. If Intelligence and Nijenhuis were undue and/or fringe, then why include them in your edit? This makes it seem to me that content and citations was removed based on if they support Spearman's hypothesis, instead of removing them based on if they are from peer-reviewed journals or authors you object to. BooleanQuackery (talk) 20:54, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

There is additional discussion about the content of this page which can be found here. BooleanQuackery (talk) 02:21, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Jan te Nijenhuis is not a reliable source for anything, he publishes pseudoscience in the discredited Mankind Quarterly . I submitted his article for deletion BTW, he's not notable. Psychologist Guy (talk) 17:28, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Accuracy template
Why is there a "factual accuracy is disputed" template at the top of the article? Should reliably disputed statements be tagged within the article instead? Llll5032 (talk) 20:27, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
 * There were three tags, for factual accuracy, neutrality, and undue weight, all tagged by the editor who started the discussion immediately above. I removed two of the tags, leaving the factual accuracy tag because it seemed relevant to the above discussion, which amounts to a dispute over whether to include examples of Spearman's hypothesis. ~Anachronist (talk) 20:42, 29 July 2022 (UTC)