Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence (2nd nomination)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Because of the extent that this AfD has been infested by sockpuppets, I'm only counting opinions by established editors. Among them, I'm counting 10 keep and 22 delete opinions. As to the arguments presented, the "keep" side thinks that the topic is notable and quality problems can be remedied by editing. The "delete" side does not dispute the topic's notability, but thinks that a rewrite from scratch is needed.

This is not an easy call, but on balance, I think that the "delete" arguments enjoy rough consensus, both numerically and in terms of their quality. They go to some length detailing the quality problems of this article. In response to this, many (though by far not all) "keep" opinions merely reply "but it's notable", which is beside the point given that this is not in dispute. The "keep" side would instead have needed to show that the alleged quality problems either don't exist or can be relatively easily fixed by editing; and most of them did not attempt to make this argument.

In order to enforce the present consensus (which allows a more competent recreation), I'm limiting recreation to extended confirmed users.  Sandstein  11:12, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence
AfDs for this article:


 * – ( View AfD View log )

This article has been through the ringer as you can see from previous AfDs. Is it possible that an article should exist on this subject? Well, the topic is batted around like a football and has been for some time. Most recently, a New York Times columnist has been called out (or called in) for reinvigorating this subject:. This is why the subject is notable. Will you find this in the present article? No. More on why that is later, but suffice to say the article is completely skewed to a claim that there is a controversy over nature versus nurture here which is a much bandied-about focusing that misses the real thing going on: eugenics and racism dominating these discussions. Now, AfD is not WP:CLEANUP, but there are rare cases where WP:TNT is needed. This is one.

What should an article on this subject entail? It should entail mostly a focus on the intelligence of Ashkenazi Jewish people and all WP:PROMINENT discussions of such. I've pointed to what these are above, but our article is some sort of pseudo-academic jaunt through fringe literature as promulgated by the IDW-sorts and the evo-psychs. Meanwhile, nary a hint is here that the true context of this is antisemitism. The article is here to wave a flag: such discussions of race and intelligence cannot possibly be race realist in the WP:NONAZI sense because look at who benefits at this article? *wink*, *wink*

But antisemitism is antisemitism whether it is dressed up as "positive" comments or not So here we are flubbing about with an article that is currently being babysat by an extremely suspicious account that arrived on the scene somewhat recently and fails the sniff test by my measure. I do not make this charge lightly. This is someone who is out to skew Wikipedia towards some rather political ends. You just need to look at their contributions to see this.

So it's time to start all over. We can write an article on this subject, but it should be draftified first. It should be worked on by good-faith contributors. And this thing as it exists needs to be removed from article-space pronto. jps (talk) 05:59, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Judaism-related deletion discussions. jps (talk) 05:59, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Behavioural science-related deletion discussions. jps (talk) 05:59, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Biology-related deletion discussions. jps (talk) 05:59, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Psychology-related deletion discussions. jps (talk) 05:59, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. jps (talk) 05:59, 11 October 2020 (UTC)


 * I'm gonna do a 180 and say support. This way, we can build the article up from scratch with reliable sources; its current state of back-to-back low-intensity edit warring provides little utility. (By the way, to paraphrase Tywin Lannister, anyone who must say "I do not make X charge lightly" usually makes X charge lightly. Might wanna work a little on your optics there. Also, WP:ADHOMINEM.) Iroh (talk) 06:32, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * My next step is to ask for a topic ban for you from WP:AE. But first things first. jps (talk) 06:36, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Haha, that's cute. Anyway, maybe we should name the new article Ashkenazi Jewish successes, seeing as a lot of the content is about Ashkenazi accomplishments, related to but not measuring intelligence directly. Seriously though, talking about topic banning people is not constructive. I don't want to topic ban you. Iroh (talk) 06:47, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * And I have to say, I don't understand why you're bringing up WP:NONAZI - you don't know the Nazis actively suppressed research that showed Ashkenazim were more intelligent on average than ethnic Germans? Hitler would've hated this article! Iroh (talk) 07:17, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:SYNTH. The page creator appears to have taken a premise and cobbled together "facts" to support it. Some "key" points are dubious or unsourced. Not to mention that the whole topic smacks of racism. Yoninah (talk) 10:47, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * The page has had 679 editors and so naturally suffers from the weaknesses of our wiki process: "too many cooks spoil the broth"; "a camel is a horse designed by a committee";&c. "


 * Keep The subject is notable. The fact alone that everybody "knows" that Ashkenazi Jews are intelligent, is enough reason to have an article about it. The high number of sources in such a small article also points to this. If the article in its present state is not good enough, then any editor can turn it into a stub with just a few lines, and wait for it to be rewritten in a better way, but deletion is not how to go about it. Debresser (talk) 11:13, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep The extensive number of previous nominations indicates that a further nomination will not be productive – see WP:DELAFD which states that "It can be disruptive to repeatedly nominate a page in the hope of getting a different outcome." The topic is clearly notable.  For example, see Smart Jews: The Construction of the Image of Jewish Superior Intelligence which was written by a distinguished professor and published by a university press.  The rest is then a matter of ordinary editing and so our editing policy applies, especially the bits about imperfection and the need to preserve the content. Andrew🐉(talk) 12:03, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete precisely per Yoninah. Pace Andrew, notability is not the primary policy concern here. Surely the topic is notable. Rather, the policy concerns are WP:NPOV, WP:SYNTH, and WP:FRINGE. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 15:42, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Topic is notable, people disliking something is not reason for deletion. Its neither a fringe nor a pov issue in any way. It just offends some people clearly.★Trekker (talk) 16:05, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

To all the keep voters: The problem here is that a couple of editors consistently on the one hand remove essential content covered by Ferguson, acting as a secondary source for Cochran et al., and on the other hand remove "non-primary source needed" tags to primary-source-only content by Ferguson. (These two were by far the article's most cited sources.) In other words, they wish to eat their cake and have it, too. When I bring this up on the article talk page, they refuse to even address it (apart from one of them admitting that they hadn't even read the Ferguson paper and for some reason was under the false impression that I hadn't, either.) That is the main reason I belive it may after all be best to delete this article and build a new one up from scratch. Iroh (talk) 16:46, 11 October 2020 (UTC) It's time to toss this article in the bin. &#8211; MJL &thinsp;‐Talk‐☖ 18:53, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per and, who have said pretty much what I was going to. Sometimes, fixing an article would require jacking up the title and running a new page under it. I am doubtful that any methods short of deletion have a shot at being effective (stubbification will just invite revert wars, etc.). The nomination implicitly makes a good case that the article should be retitled as well as rebuilt, so that nothing would be preserved. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 17:01, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment: I'm not crazy about the idea of using AfD as a way to settle content disputes. Anybody can rewrite the page any time they want: just open the editor, blank the existing content, and start typing. Unfortunately, the same editors will still be involved, so it won't actually solve the problem that you're trying to solve. If the problem is that an individual needs to be topic-banned, then go and do that. I'm not voting keep, because I may be missing something important, but currently I see a difficult situation that this process is not designed to improve. — Toughpigs (talk) 17:12, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , I take it that the purpose of the nom (although  is free to correct me here) is not to settle content disputes. It's not that there's a particular dispute to settle. Rather, it's that the page history is irretrievably tainted with WP:FRINGE, WP:SYNTH, and POV-laden content that will inevitably be reverted even if someone restarts the page from scratch without deletion. That's the WP:TNT argument, at any rate—not that there is a specific content dispute, but rather that the content as a whole is unredeemable. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 17:23, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, the problem is that two editors assume bad faith and refuse to cooperate with me. Perhaps more editors would get involved in contributing to--not just commenting on--an entirely new article. Other editors have agreed with me but are not (as) active in editing this article. It is also noteworthy that the content these two editors keep reverting has constituted the bulk of the article for years. Iroh (talk) 17:30, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete I was unsure, but the pro-Delete reasoning here convinced me. The article is a hodgepodge of everything loosely connected to the subject, some of it fringe. --Hob Gadling (talk) 18:22, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete. Then createprotect it (and Ashkenazi intelligence) so only an extended confirmed user can remake the page. This is per the reasonings laid out by . No editor should be expected to reformat such degrading WP:POV content in order to make this page at least passingly acceptable. This is one of those few and rare cases that starting from scratch (WP:TNT) would be a lot easier than working with existing material. I struggle to find even a single sentence worth maintaining in its current form. It's all vague pseudoscience talking about average IQs as if they are the end-all-be-all of intelligence. It also focuses way too much on Ashkenazim who live in the United States despite half of the Ashkenazi Jewish population living elsewhere.
 * Keep there seems to be no dispute that the topic is notable. If editors are being disruptive to editing (and there does need to be some editing, particularly of speculation in the  "Proposed explanations" section), WP:AE is that way. power~enwiki ( π,  ν ) 19:04, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment. This may be a bit of wikilawyering, but I feel it ought to be said that WP:N is a guideline, whereas WP:NPOV and WP:SYNTH/WP:OR are policies. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 19:25, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete/WP:TNT - A lot of reasons for this. For one, it was mainly a coatrack for promoting a single very WP:FRINGE theory by Henry Harpending (a eugenicist with ties to white supremacist groups) and Gregory Cochran (who's otherwise known for proposing that homosexuality is caused by an unknown virus). We also have appearances by Richard Lynn, Charles Murray (political scientist), and J. Philippe Rushton which should ring a lot of alarm bells. My attempts at cleaning this up prompted some of the recent activity. The topic may or may not be notable, but the article isn't doing the topic any justice. If the article only exists to explain why a debunked study is not even wrong, then is should be rewritten to serve that goal. Any explanation of this larger topic would also have to start fresh, and would have to be based on high quality sources, similar to restrictions placed on race and intelligence. Grayfell (talk) 20:12, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep - This topic is definitely notable. If the artucle had issues, a concerted effort should be made to fix those issues rather than delete the article outright. Ibn Daud (talk) 02:50, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:TNT, having no article would be better than having this crap. Devonian Wombat (talk) 09:46, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete: per unclear notability, as well as WP:TNT. The article is mostly WP:SYNTH, tying together tangentially related bits of information to, apparently, promote a fringe theory. --K.e.coffman (talk) 17:02, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep, as before. The topic has not magically become "un-notable".  Hold as many RfCs and noticeboardings as necessary to clean it up and remove problem parties from the topic area (which is already under discretionary sanctions.  Have the allegedly problematic parties received  templates on their talk pages within the last 12 months?  The fact that it's a controversial topic is irrelevant; it's a real-world controversy, not an internal editorial one.  As I've noted in related discussions many times, a failure by WP to properly cover topics relating to racialist claims about nebulous ideas like "intelligence" effectively cedes the entire topic to far-right supremacist kook websites.  We have an ethical responsibility to cover these topics (properly).  Readers are certainly turning to the encyclopedia for answers about them.  The article being imperfect is irrelevant; see WP:SURMOUNTABLE.  The fact that patrolling these articles for PoV pushing, bogus sourcing, and other problems is a challenge is also irrelevant; that's true of all controversial topics.  We have processes for this.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:49, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
 * As I tried to make clear, the argument I am making is not that this topic is "unnotable" (though others may have legitimate arguments to that effect, I'll leave it to them to defend). The argument is that the way this topic is treated is so inveterately problematic and has been so inveterately problematic for essentially fifteen years, that we need something to break this juggernot. Yes, the parties have received DS alerts. We absolutely have an ethical responsibility to cover these things properly. This is why the existence of this article, visible to Google Juice, is such a problem right now. It is not about the article being "imperfect". It's about the article being so miserably awful that it needs to be completely removed. I understand that this is not normally how things proceed at this website, but this is a particularly egregious situation and we need some better solutions than what have been tried before. Thus the proposal to draftify, come up with an article that we can be proud to show to the internet, and then, hopefully, lowering the temperature enough so that we have something that works is what I'm talking about. Speaking of processes, WP:TNT is drastic, but it is a WP process that works. I have seen it work. jps (talk) 11:49, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * The IP that apparently prompted your participation in this discussion is topic-banned from race and intelligence, which you have already agreed is still in effect. Even without all this backstory, this would be WP:CANVASSING. The IP was topic banned for causing excessive and legalistic drama on Wikipedia in support of a specific form of scientific racism. The IP's comments on your talk page have poisoned the well for your participation here, which is why you should stop encouraging them to discuss this. Regardless of your intentions, participating in this discussion based on the IP's comments disrupts the project and makes consensus harder. Grayfell (talk) 20:37, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Forgive my ignorance/poor memory of history: Is this IP topic banned from all discussion of RI across the entire wiki? If no, we might want to request that as his ongoing activity is very problematic. jps (talk) 12:06, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * First the IP was blocked, and then the editor was banned here, without a specific time-frame. Based on responses to my recent comment at ANI it appears there is consensus that it was an indefinite topic ban. The IP has attempted to derail the discussion with conspiracy theory nonsense and aspersions, which is partly why they were banned/blocked in the first place. Grayfell (talk) 00:41, 14 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep. Just because a theory is pseudo-scientific doesn't mean it shouldn't be discussed. There's a Wikipedia article about the Nazi ideology, does it mean that it's true? Obviously not, but those views exist, they have a name, and therefore, the article. Maxim.il89 (talk) 20:30, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. Clearly a notable topic. This is more or less a redux of the AFD we had at Race and intelligence earlier this year; c.f. Articles for deletion/Race and intelligence (4th nomination). We have a cycle repeating itself here. A number of Wikipedia editors are ideologically opposed to the (almost certainly true) notion that there are differences in the mean and distribution in cognitive abilities (i.e. "intelligence") between various ethnic and racial groups. The first step in this cycle is to bury any evidence that's been collected to support this notion and brand anyone that's been doing such collection and reporting a fringe neo-Nazi. When step one encounters opposition, an AFD is launched. This charade needs to end. Jweiss11 (talk) 20:56, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
 * the "almost certainly true" needs a . Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:45, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It only requires logic. The chance of it being false is vanishingly small, like the chance that members of every ethnic/racial group have made the same number of edits on Wikipedia per capita. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:55, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * This is classic IDW whinging (which I see, from your social media accounts, that you firmly adhere to). The position is so specious as to be laughable and borderline disconfirming for contributing to Wikipedia in these areas per WP:CIR. To illustrate, it would be equally jejune and racist to declare that it is "almost certainly true" that there are differences in the mean and distribution of humor between various ethnic and racial groups. Since there is no well-ordered and validated method to quantify humor or intelligence, any claims about distributions of these characteristics are either ignorantly or intentionally ideological. jps (talk) 13:59, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Blank slant denialism / mythology probably ought to be CIR for this top area. I suspect there probably are meaningful differences in capacity for humor between various ethnic and racial groups, but we surely don't have the tools for measuring humor like we do for general intelligence (verbal, mathematical, and analytical reasoning). What's interesting to note is that your quip about "IDW whinging" and references to my social media accounts would probably be considered a personal attack by the regular admins around here if the political polarity of the volley was reversed leftward instead of rightward to the liberal center. Jweiss11 (talk) 19:28, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
 * We don't have tools for measuring intelligence because there is no identified agreement as to its definition let alone what metric is validated. I stand by my assessment of your competence in assessing such matters. jps (talk) 03:06, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
 * If you want to engage this sort of absurd denialism, I encourage you do take it your own blog, where you should be free to write about it endlessly. But your ideological effort here is degrading Wikipedia. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:21, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

The only persons who are driven by ideology here are those insisting that the WP:MAINSTREAM assessment is wrong and Sam Harris's podcast is so right that we ought to make him US President. jps (talk) 03:24, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete/WP:TNT per 's arguments above, and also all the arguments for Delete by all the other users. warshy (¥¥) 21:19, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:FRINGE and WP:SYNTH. NightHeron (talk) 11:17, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per several policies listed above, but the biggest thing is that it is pretty much just a pop-science-synth-fest. What is notable should be elsewhere, what is verifiable should be elsewhere. The point made above by JWeiss11 is relevant to this discussion however; we do have a larger article Race and Intelligence that survived an AfD (four so far) but the summary of the judgement seems to have fundamentally missed the point. The deletion aspect focused on the inappropriateness of the format, but the summary focused on the fact "content" is not a policy decision so long as its verifiable and notable. In fact the rejection of the AfD makes sense on that article in terms of dealing with the broader context of the subject of "Race of Intelligence" which is in and of itself encapsulated in about a half dozen other topics. In contrast the subject of Ashkenazi Jewish Intelligence is almost entirely framed from the perspective of speculative fringe theories wedged together to create a massive case of SYNTH. Even if retained, the article should be cut back drastically to the topic, and not speculation (or the article needs to reframe itself entirely). Koncorde (talk) 16:31, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete This discussion isn't about whether the topic is notable, it is about whether the article should be nuked and recreated, I agree with JPS that the article as is, is inadequate. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:45, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete/TNT As others have pointed out, this needs to be rewritten from scratch. –dlthewave ☎ 02:56, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Notable. And this is the 8th new try to garner a delete vote. As the article seem to have had 6 more deletion nomination under its earlier name "Ashkenazi Intelligence". Rewritting isn't the issue. As this all comes from multiple dedicated Wikipedians trying to fight to have their own version of the article. Deletion is just trying to remove any older consensus to get a new version that some prefer. Jazi Zilber (talk) 14:30, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * this AFD nomination is not based on notability. It is based on WP:SYNTH, WP:FRINGE, and WP:NPOV. Yoninah (talk) 15:19, 14 October 2020 (UTC)


 * I know it's pedantic for me to point out, but this is actually the 7th deletion vote. is a redirect to Articles for deletion/Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence. &#8211;  MJL &thinsp;‐Talk‐☖ 06:57, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * KeepLeft-wing people want to delete the article because these informations especially genetic causation of high ashkenazi intelligence goes against their egalitarian ideology. 195.244.166.33 (talk) 15:12, 14 October 2020 (UTC) Sockpuppet vote
 * Keep This discussion is non-sense. Only communists would love to delete it. GreenTeaExtracts (talk) 15:14, 14 October 2020 (UTC) — GreenTeaExtracts (talk • contribs) is blocked for having used sockpuppets in this debate.
 * Keep No reasons to delete — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dopamineagonist (talk • contribs) 15:15, 14 October 2020 (UTC)   — GreenTeaExtracts (talk • contribs) is blocked for having used sockpuppets in this debate.
 * Keep Activism to censor taboo subject Realityistoblame (talk) 15:18, 14 October 2020 (UTC) — GreenTeaExtracts (talk • contribs) is blocked for having used sockpuppets in this debate.


 * Keep IQ is an important subject Vickerus (talk) 15:31, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Excuse me. Important for who/what? It is a social measure that is really non-scientific, in my view, and I wouldn't even consider utilizing it for any serious social purposes, if I had any say at all in the policies of any serious, non-commercial organization. Thank you, warshy (¥¥) 19:59, 14 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Non-scientific? There are thousands of studies on the effect of IQ in endless settings. How is that not scientific?
 * Important in that it is strongly correlated with multiple life outcomes (earning, marriage, happiness, everything).
 * The only non-scientific points are mostly the anti IQ ones AFAIK. Jazi Zilber (talk) 15:54, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * This discussion is entirely beside the point of whether this article should be kept or deleted. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 15:56, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * is correct. I just want to point out that this should be rewritten strictly as a socio-economic, cultural and historical article, as the last argument before it correctly underscores: "it is strongly correlated with multiple life outcomes (earning, marriage, happiness, everything)." There is absolutely nothing genetic or racial whatsoever in any of these elements, and any attempt to introduce these fringe, non-relevant, and pseudo-scientific ideas need to be completely erradicated. Thank you, warshy (¥¥) 19:17, 15 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete I agree with Grayfell, and also think that WP:FRINGE and WP:SYNTH applies. If we're going to have an article about this, it should follow the clear scientific consensus that race and intelligence are completely independent of each other, and that (pretty much without exception) arguments to the opposite are just racism wearing a pseudo-science mask. I'd also point out the last few Keep votes in rapid-fire succession look a bit suspicious and WP:SOCK-y to me. Plus they have completely ignored the above points about it not being a delete for notability, but rather for FRINGE, SYNTH and NPOV.  M r A urelius R   Talk! 16:33, 14 October 2020 (UTC)


 * I concur with this evaluation of that little clump of keep !votes. ("No, Mr. Green, communism was only a red herring.") XOR&#39;easter (talk) 17:29, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete, I’ve read all the arguments for keep here and found none of them moving. They don’t seem to overcome the very basic claims made by the opposing side. If it weren’t for the page's incredibly acrimonious history I would say a re-write could be possible but I doubt it would last more than five minutes before being edited outside the lines again. Horse Eye&#39;s Back (talk) 16:53, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete. This article as it stands is poorly written and still uses white supremacists as sources. Just an unsalvageable mess of bad faith edits and original synthesis to push a POV using poor sourcing, and a magnet for racist trolls.Citing (talk) 17:31, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. This AFD is using a disingenuous strategy. Shortly before nominating the article for deletion, the nominator and two of the other "delete" voters tag-teamed to remove about 7 KB of long-established content from the article, including around a quarter of the article's sources.       Now, the same people are arguing that the article must be deleted because it is too poorly written or poorly sourced, and can't be salvaged. What I'm seeing is a clear strategy of deliberately reducing the quality of an article, and then using its resulting condition as an argument to delete it. Severisth (talk) 22:21, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Those diffs are deletions, not additions. It stands to reason that if content was removed and the article remains a case of WP:SYNTH, the issue lies not with the content that was changed, but with the content that remains the same. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 22:49, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * AleatoryPonderings says it well, but suffice to say that I could have also nominated this article in the state it was prior to my edits. I think the article is marginally better than the state it was prior to my work, but it was largely through working on the article that I came to the conclusion that I did. Even given what I tried to accomplish, it was still hopeless. Please assume good faith here. jps (talk) 01:44, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete. Article is a soaboxy synthesis of often highly questionable sources. It's an old article, so we need to go back and see if this has crept in over time, but a sample of older revisions indicates to me that the problem is almost certainly unfixable: I can't find a prior version that I would consider well-sourced and neutral. I'd be happy to see one if someone has one they can highlight. Guy (help! - typo?) 07:34, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete pretty much per JzG. The topic likely is worth an article, but this article isn't it and it's not salvagable. --Ealdgyth (talk) 13:58, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete — Per rationale by . Celestina007 (talk) 19:27, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep The article deals with an important subject, and includes relevant information that is appropriately sourced. Any objections to the content of the article should be dealt with via editing, rather than deletion of the whole article. Mr Butterbur (talk) 11:25, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * This is not helpful, because it fails to acknowledged the reason the article was nominated. "Importance" is decided by sources, and must be presented in context. The nomination explains that the this information has not been appropriately sourced. Your declaration to the contrary is unpersuasive. For many years, attempts to deal with these serious problems by editing have been non-productive. This is why WP:TNT is being discussed. Grayfell (talk) 08:27, 17 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Obvious keep. This is, what, the 8th AfD for this article? (Not the 2nd—check the box in the top right of the AfD page.) If it really had no salvageable prior state, one of the previous attempts to nuke it would have been successful, and the topic certainly has not become less notable. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 21:37, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
 * What is your rationale for keep? That it is notable? That point is not being disputed at all. The AFD is based on sourcing – specifically WP:NPOV, WP:SYNTH, and WP:FRINGE. Yoninah (talk) 22:32, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
 * As I've pointed out already above, this is the seventh nomination (not the 8th). &#8211; MJL &thinsp;‐Talk‐☖ 04:38, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Obviously, if this is just the 7th repeated try to do the same thing, after all kinds of fights etc and deleting all parts of the article....
 * Is anyone here thinking this is a random "just let's try a 7th time to delete this article?" seriously people Jazi Zilber (talk) 17:07, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Vague WP:ASPERSIONs such as this are unhelpful. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 17:20, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't know if it helps admins and people more involved in WP administrative matters, which I have sometimes difficulty in understanding, but I wasn't even aware of the existence of such an article before voting to DELETE it above. I still think it should be rewritten from scratch, without any genetic and/or racial implications whatsoever. Again, I completely disavow any attempts to understand history and society based on the latest pseudo-scientific attempts to establish genetic theories as a "science" that can contribute anything serious or reliable to studies in the humanities. warshy (¥¥) 18:35, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Genetics isn't pseudo-science. It's the science of how the structures of every lifeform on our planet get built, including the human brain. It would be a tragedy for Wikipedia to adopt this sort of ideologically motivated censoriousness and endrose a blank-slate mythos. Jweiss11 (talk) 19:24, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
 * This is a straw man. Of course genetics writ large isn't pseudoscience. The relevant question is whether the purported connections described in this article between race, ethnicity, and genetics, on the one hand, and intelligence on the other, are established by generally accepted scientific theory—or whether, instead, they represent WP:FRINGE viewpoints or original research pushing a particular point of view out of line with scientific consensus. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 19:30, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Some nascent theories, which have not been sufficiently developed, tested, and agreed upon by a considerable number of scientists, and the possible implications of which for social and historic studies is not developed to any serious level, cannot be called "the science of how the structures of every lifeform on our planet get built." There are still years of research before anything even remotely resembling that could possibly, or not, get developed. But even then, how such a "science" would determine social behavior and history would also be no more than untested and unstudied theories. On the other hand, the humanities have been engaging in the serious study of society and history for the past 300 years or so, and these are the studies that Wikipedia can report on, as long as these reports are extracted from reliable sources. warshy (¥¥) 21:17, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Brigade Piron (talk) 17:47, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete, per AleatoryPonderings. I agree with the nom than an article could be justified in theory, but this article is not it.
 * Keep. Notable subject. See WP:Tendentious editing. Loksmythe (talk) 20:32, 18 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep. This is clearly notable, attempts to delete it are coming from personal dislike for the subject, not lack of notability. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.44.5.219 (talk) 22:23, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
 * and 96.44.5.219 why are you commenting on notability when the nominator has clearly stated that notability is not the issue? Please read the nominator's rationale before commenting. Thank you, Yoninah (talk) 23:39, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
 * The premise of the nomination is distorted. From his intro to this nomination, jps suggests that what is actually notable here is the rejection of the notion of Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence, that is it a racist canard and what this article should be is something like Racist myths about Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence; hence let's TNT it and rebuild it the right way. What I think, and what I suspect most or all of the keep voters here believe as well, is that crux of what is notable here is the overwhelming evidence that Ashkenazi Jews actually do have an unusually high mean intelligence—it shows up in IQ scores (as well as other standardized tests for analytical reasoning like the SAT) and it shows up in their overrepresentation in circles of elite intellectual achievement like the Nobel Prize—and that this unusually high mean intelligence is driven in part by genetics. jps's argument here is analogous to the one made at the most recent AfD for Race and intelligence, where many of the delete voters suggested that Race and intelligence should be subsumed entirely by History of the race and intelligence controversy. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:17, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
 * jps suggests that what is actually notable here is the rejection of the notion of Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence Incorrect. Perhaps try not speaking for others. jps (talk) 03:03, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
 * My summary is a reasonable interpretation of your "This is why the subject is notable..." following links to opinion pieces about how scandalous the subject is. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:11, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It is not even close to a reasonable summary. And the fact that you think it is while it is not is just further evidence of how fucking problematic you are on these pages. jps (talk) 03:24, 19 October 2020 (UTC)


 * I think that whoever decides this can just ignore the off-topic "this is a notable subject" Keep votes, so we don't have to point out every time that the poster is missing the point. --Hob Gadling (talk) 09:43, 19 October 2020 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.