Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence (3rd nomination)

Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence
AfDs for this article:


 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

All the problems from Articles for deletion/Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence (2nd nomination) remain. These sources are fringe and mostly unreliable even for basic factual claims, WP:SYNTH is rife, and the conclusions of fringe sources are being misrepresented as mainstream. Grayfell (talk) 19:05, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Judaism-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 20:58, 13 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Is there a way to compare this to the previously deleted articles? I'm curious to see what has changed to allow this article to continue to be reintroduced. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 00:18, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I vote Merge into IQ and race
 * Also, this article reads like multiple POV-forks in each section. Portions of it seem racist to imply that Jewish people are significantly smarter than anybody else, while others talk about the backlash to a single study. The genetics portion implying intelligence is also racist.
 * I think I would change my vote if there was more information about this put in besides that one study. Some thoughts:
 * Various sociologists in the 80s/90s suggested that the unique background/talmudic studies of some Jewish peoples makes them effective scholars. There were some sociologists who suggested that, as well as Malcolm Gladwell. Not sure exactly if thats true, there is likely a fair bit of back and forth on that as well as a possibly controversial opinion too.
 * It could be possible to include information about Model Minority myth in this article.
 * Agree large portions of article are WP:SYNTH including the humblebrag about the representation of Jewish people in various roles.
 * Bluethricecreamman (talk) 00:28, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * In case there is any confusion, I changed my vote to Delete discussing with folks below Bluethricecreamman (talk) 22:40, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Threw some more sourcing at it. Honestly, still think it should be merged into another appropriate article tho. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 01:06, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * It's better, but I don't think that's enough. Citing Lynn as though his garbage studies mean anything, even with qualifications, is still a WP:PROFRINGE issue. As I said back in 2020, if the article only exists to explain why a debunked study is not even wrong, then is should be rewritten to serve that goal. Grayfell (talk) 01:28, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * yeah, agreed.
 * Sidenote, why specifically ashkenazi jewish intelligence, instead of broader jewish intelligence? This article's subject is so strange to me. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 02:16, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * (a) Sephardim are not, apparently, reported to score as high; (b) seems sensible insofar as "Jewish intelligence" probably makes people think of the Mosad instead, IDK. Biohistorian15 (talk) 07:09, 14 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Delete or merge . Adding enough context to satisfy the requirements of WP:FRINGE would make the article a WP:REDUNDANTFORK of Race and intelligence, but with a shallower pool of sources. The few bits that are specific to Ashkenazi people or Jewish people – Cochran's ideas, Talmud study, the role perceptions of intelligence might play in overall views toward Jewish people – are too scattered to make "Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence" a coherent topic for an encyclopedia article. Jruderman (talk) 04:51, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Based on discussions below, I'm not seeing much content here worth summarizing into other articles, nor compelling reasons to include any mention of Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence in most of the related articles. Maybe it's worth a mention in History of the race and intelligence controversy, but even then it would be better to draw from Henry Harpending's section or Bret Stephens's section rather than from this article. As a result, I am shifting my stance to simply "delete". Jruderman (talk) 08:06, 21 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Keep There is a vast body of literature that discusses the special role of jewry as a (proto-)object of racism; there also is a large body of research (Cochrane, Glad...) concerning purported (self-)selection trends in historical Jewish populations; there is also a vast body of literature concerning their psychometrics. Biohistorian15 (talk) 07:01, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Furthermore, massive removals of text on the same day this AFD was opened suggest either possible tag teaming or, at least, a problematic attitude on the part of Bluethricecreamman and Grayfell. (I will archive this page privately to document such practices in any case). Biohistorian15 (talk) 07:04, 14 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Delete or merge. I agree with Jruderman here. So much more context is needed for this page to meet the requirements of fringe. Given how frequently this page comes up, I think we should consider salting the page or creating a redirect and locking edits for non-admin. Mason (talk) 14:33, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * One question: how would it work if, for example, I myself eventually had an article that met a reasonable person's requirements for NPOV, notability etc. (Say in Draft space); now, don't tell me, the Wikigods all need to agree before it'd be reinstated? Biohistorian15 (talk) 14:52, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * just ask an admin to move a draft into article space. if you believe all the admins are biased wikigods i suppose thats your problem then Bluethricecreamman (talk) 19:24, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * ive done the process before, in general if you reasonably solve the critiques in the article, admins are happily amenable Bluethricecreamman (talk) 19:24, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks. I guess I could have been less sassy. Biohistorian15 (talk) 09:36, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Relisting comment: Relisting this discussion. If you look at Articles for deletion/Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence (2nd nomination), you'll see that this article has been nominated no less than 8 times under different page titles for deletion consideration and was always Kept until this last AFD. With such a track record of being Kept, I want there to be a very clear consensus on what should happen this time so that we are not back here for a 9th or 10th AFD discussion. It would help if participants reviewed past AFD discussions. I also question whether a Merge to Race and Intelligence is appropriate if this idea has been rejected on that article Talk page and, my own question, whether it is appropriate to consider one branch of Judaism to be a "race". Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 21:52, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Delete and do not merge without positive consensus at Talk:Race and intelligence. Similar content has been discussed numerous times on that article's talk page and I don't believe that there has ever been consensus for inclusion. Also note that the Race and intelligence article is under a special sourcing restriction imposed by ArbCom, so including non-academic sources, even in the interest of WP:FRIND, would be disallowed. If I'm not mistaken, all the fringe-independent sources in the article currently up for deletion here are non-academic. And in the absence of acceptable fringe-independent sources, the WP:FRINGE guideline is clear that we must remain silent. Generalrelative (talk) 05:19, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * ah.. didn't see that. agree entirely, seems its been debated to exhaustion on that page.
 * possibly appropriate talk sections:
 * Talk:Race_and_intelligence/Archive_103
 * Talk:Race_and_intelligence/Archive_102
 * Bluethricecreamman (talk) 14:27, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Delete A poor article with mostly very weak and shite sourcing (Charles Murray, Richard Lynn) and newspapers. Newspapers can be good sources for biographies but not for an article like this. It's not worth merging. Psychologist Guy (talk) 22:43, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Comment its hard to tell what the merits of the previous arguments were, as the deleted page from the past few nominations is unseen. Is there anyway to show more page history or something?
 * It also seems much of the commentary as the years pass on has been on the debunking of many of these studies from pop-culture tidbits of "wow science can explain race difference in a post-racial society" to "wow, can't believe we tried to believe we were post racial when we were publishing WP:FRINGE articles about how genetics prove the stereotypes about different racial groups" Bluethricecreamman (talk) 21:58, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
 * tally results from previous AfDs.
 * 1) no consensus, basically equal deletes and keeps
 * 2) keep, the article is poorly written but has significant notability
 * 3) speedy close, the nominator gave no reason, so closer is probably right
 * 4) speedy close, nominator gave reason, closer just angry that nominator tries again?
 * 5) Cannot find this? the numbering system gets weird, and an admin attempted to delete and salt this page to supposedly prevent further nominations? []
 * 6) Speedy keep, closed after 2 days? also weird, this is somehow both 6th nom of Ashkenazi intelligence and 1st nom of Ashkenazi Jewish Intelligence. notably, user who closed is blocked for 3 months from WP:ARBIPA topics due to editwarring, so I think the speedy keep might have been biased.
 * 7) [] Delete, tons of sock puppet activity to Keep.
 * all this means to say is this article obviously brings up significant tensions, and the AfDs for this page haven't always followed what seems like a clear protocol. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 22:11, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Yeah, perhaps it would've been more definitive to use a clean slate for this instead of what I did for this nomination, but our time on Earth is limited, and rehashing this discussion didn't seem worthwhile. If anyone is coming here who doesn't know the history of this general topic on Wikipedia, maybe start with Talk:Race and intelligence/FAQ. The gist is that Wikipedia holds these articles to a high standard for a variety of reasons, based many years of history and tedious discussion. Sources need to be high-quality, and context needs to be provided, and right now this article fails to do that. Grayfell (talk) 00:50, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for digging. Here's what I see in the six previous discussions:
 * Two discussions were from 2007. Many comments focused on notability. I don't know how strong Wikipedia's RS and NPOV rules were back then. Their combined interpretation at WP:FRINGE was just reaching guideline-level consensus at the time.
 * The next three don't really count: they were speedy'd because the nominators didn't do their job of connecting their rationales to Wikipedia policies.
 * The last, in 2020, was closed as TNT only. It did not come to a conclusion about whether another article at the title could be acceptable.
 * There are many good comments in the previous discussions, but their closing results have limited bearing on the delete reasons we are discussing today. Jruderman (talk) 01:15, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Q: Would it help to invite more editors to this discussion? I believe it would be considered nonpartisan to post at the Fringe Theories noticeboard, on Talk:Race and intelligence because we're continuing discussions from there, or on talk pages of not-yet-explicitly-ruled-out smerge targets: Gregory Cochran, Ashkenazi Jews, History of the race and intelligence controversy. Or on the talk pages of participants in the previous AfDs (perhaps just those who are extended-confirmed and still active). Jruderman (talk) 01:39, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
 * You can if you want.
 * I would strongly oppose merging to Cochran's article for multiple reasons, so if anyone wants to actually propose that we can discuss in more detail. Any other article would still have to summarize reliable, independent sources. Right now the article is mostly journalistic opinions, and some of these are fringe sources, as well. This seems undue for a topic as broad as Ashkenazi Jews. With better sources it would be easier to evaluate where to merge. With any merge, the goal isn't "how do we preserve this content" it's "how do we proportionately and neutrally summarize this topic?" Grayfell (talk) 02:42, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The existing section at Gregory Cochran could use some contextualization or rebuttal, but looking at Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence again, I don't see anything worth moving to the Cochran article. Jruderman (talk) 03:41, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Same with the slightly-better section at Henry Harpending regarding the same paper. Jruderman (talk) 03:46, 21 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Well, this thoughtful discussion is what I was hoping for rather than a quick close. Liz Read! Talk! 06:52, 21 July 2024 (UTC)