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


 * 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   keep. Stifle (talk) 15:49, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Ashkenazi intelligence
AfDs for this article: 
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Article is poorly written, and does not have much scientific supporting evidence. Seems to be supporting racial superiority rather than reporting actual scientific data. There are really only three sections, none of which support the claim that Ashkenazi Jews are more intelligent than other ethnicities. ScienceApe (talk) 02:43, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep- I agree the article is poorly written. However some of the sources are reliable. Wapondaponda (talk) 02:47, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Much of the article is unsourced, with "citation needed" tags added throughout many of the claims made. The sources provided do not support the claim that Ashkenazi Jews are more intelligent than other ethnicities. ScienceApe (talk) 02:49, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Luckily, the article is entitled Ashkenazi intelligence, not Ashkenazi superior intelligence, and so isn't inherently constrained by its title to contradict what some sources say. Do you have an issue with this article that cannot be solved by editing it, in the normal way, to render it more neutral?  All that you appear to have is a neutrality dispute, for which the correct tag is NPOV not afd1.  Uncle G (talk) 03:05, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * The title of the article is not reflective of what the article is about. The article deals with making claims that Ashkenazi Jews have superior intelligence over other ethnicities. The first line reads, "Ashkenazi intelligence refers to a controversial theory asserting the higher general intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews, the Jews of Central and Eastern European origin who are the descendants of Jews who settled in the Rhineland beginning around the year 800." So yes, the article is about Ashkenazi superior intelligence. That's why it's supposed to be notable. If article deals with just intelligence variance of Ashkenazi Jews, then I don't see what's notable about the article. There's intelligence variance in any ethnicity. We could therefore make an article about the intelligence variance of any and all ethnicities. Notability of this article is under the allegation that Ashkenazi Jews are smarter than other ethnicities. There is no neutrality dispute, there is an issue with the lack of scientific citations for the claims made. The article was reviewed a year ago, and no improvements have been made since then. The claim the article is trying to make, that Ashkenazi Jews are more intelligent than other ethnicities, is not backed by scientific evidence. There are citations of those who make the claim, but none which empirically verify it. Therefore, there is very limited research on this subject, and at most, some of this article could be included in articles on Race and Intelligence or Ashkenazi Jews, but it does not merit an article on its own. ScienceApe (talk) 06:55, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge to Ashkenazi Jews. The article is inherently POV with many of the claims unsourced. Any relevant, verifiable material can be merged. McWomble (talk) 02:53, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. As Uncle G says, just because it suffers from some POV issues doesn't mean it has to be deleted. The references listed in the article demonstrate that this is a notable theory. —BradV  06:07, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * There are no POV issues. If the claims can be verified with empirical research, then there is an established notability to the claim. However this research is absent. We only have citations on claims made, but no reliable scientific sources to substantiate them. ScienceApe (talk) 06:55, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. A widely discussed topic, quite anecdotical for most part; all the more, anything academically published on the issue worth keeping track. Twri (talk) 06:18, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * There's not enough empirical data to warrant its own article. ScienceApe (talk) 06:55, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. A heavily-cited (50 citations and counting, according to Google Scholar) paper published on peer-reviewed journal, dozens of more papers arguing back and forth, and NY Times coverage. To argue that such topic is not worth an article on Wikipedia is a serious stretch. EIFY (talk) 08:18, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Again, there are no scientific papers which support the claims that the article alleges. There are only citations of debates, which are not scientific journals. ScienceApe (talk) 08:31, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment. Examining the article carefully, the "Psychometric findings" and "Other theories" sections are almost entirely unsourced and without merit. The few citations they do have are merely opinions made by non-scientific authorities. One of the references cited is quoted as saying, "Why should one particular tribe at the time of Moses, living in the same environment as other nomadic and agricultural peoples of the Middle East, have already evolved elevated intelligence when the others did not? At this point, I take sanctuary in my remaining hypothesis, uniquely parsimonious and happily irrefutable. The Jews are God’s chosen people." https://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/jewish-genius-10855?page=all Citations from sources such as this are inappropriate for the claims being made. There simply is not enough scientific data for an article such as this. ScienceApe (talk) 08:44, 30 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Strong Delete "Science" articles like this are one of the reasons Wikipedia is a laughingstock in the academic community.  It would seem that many arguing to keep this nonsense have not taken the time to actually read the cited sources.  There is no acceptable sourcing here just mainstream media doing their usual stellar job of covering scientific topics and some academic journals reporting on the debate engendered by this theory but NO actual peer-reviewed papers or studies. This is the same kind of garbage that J. Philippe Rushton was trying to push a dozen years ago.  If some decent sources can be found then maybe merge with Race and intelligence but without better sources this crap needs to be excised from the encyclopedia. L0b0t (talk) 14:27, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * There IS a cited, peer-reviewed paper, the first citation. In fact, that's the paper starting the whole debate. There are also papers supporting the authors' conclusions, published afterward (e.g. INTELLIGENCE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN EUROPEAN AND ORIENTAL JEWS IN ISRAEL). Arguing that the article should be deleted based on false claim is without merit. EIFY (talk) 19:58, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Those are not peer reviewed scientific papers. This article is a scientific subject, making extraordinary claims. Therefore it needs extraordinary scientific evidence to support those claims. Debates, opinions, and social theories are not appropriate for the claims being made. The existing theories and hypothesizes made on the article are entirely unsourced and unfounded. The article had well over a year to improve its quality by citing new scientific research, however no improvements were made because there is no research in the scientific community over this subject. ScienceApe (talk) 21:09, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep - L0b0t misses the point entirely. This article is about the theory and who proposed it & why; it does not pretend to justify the theory nor to masquerade as a scientific journal article. It is about the subject, silly or otherwise. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia - it is not Google Scholar. Best, A Sniper (talk) 20:21, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * If the only peer-reviewed study is the one the article is based upon and, according to the article itself, that study has methodological flaws that call its conclusions into question then there doesn't seem to be enough material here for a discrete article. A mention in Race and intelligence perhaps but not an article of its own.  As it stands we have an article about a concept, a concept that exists solely as a hypothesis of one flawed experiment.  A hypothesis that, according to the article itself, has many other causal explanations.  I just don't see anything here to warrant anything beyond a mention in another article on a broader topic. L0b0t (talk) 20:43, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * This is not a good enough reason to keep the article, because then according to your rational, the article is about the paper. Therefore the paper counts as a first party source, and is not appropriate as a 3rd party citation. There have been numerous claims of racial superiority for a multitude of different ethnicities and races. Published claims which also have no basis in scientific fact. A paper that claims Ashkenazi Jews have higher average intelligence than other ethnicities, needs 3rd party peer reviewed scientific journals to analyze that claim. No scientific journals have analyzed this claim, so therefore the article fails to establish notability. ScienceApe (talk) 21:09, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep - after having done thought, I believe the subject matter is unquestionably encyclopedic. As to whether the sources are good enough to keep the article, I believe the answer is yes (with apologies to L0b0t) - several mainstream media articles and academic work are enough to write a coherent article. And, after reading most delete arguments on previous AFD's, most seem to be more offended by the subject matter than anything (i.e., WP:IDONTLIKEIT). Magog the Ogre (talk) 22:28, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * There are insufficient scientific citations. There is only one paper written on the subject, and that was the basis for the article. However it counts as a 1st part source, and is not verified by 3rd party scientific sources. The subject matter is not the problem, it's the supporting evidence for the claim is non-existent. ScienceApe (talk) 23:17, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. This is an idea that's gotten quite a bit of attention in the press; notability doesn't depend only on scientific papers. Squidfryerchef (talk) 05:35, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Strong Delete. The article is not only provocative and based on bad science/weak arguments (IQ score can't be seriously seen as adequately evidence)but it's also the foolish article I ever faced in Wikipedia. Not to mention that it's unavoidably biased for better or for worse. --Gilisa (talk) 11:57, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. Sufficient sources to establish notability. In response to Gilisa, it's not our place to judge whether anything is bad science, weak arguments, etc. We're not posting essays here; that would violate WP:NOR. The fact we don't like a particular subject is irrelevant. If there are issues with how this article is written, etc. this isn't the forum for that discussion. 23skidoo (talk) 16:16, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Strong Delete. The sources are poor and of questionable authority. Most of them are just editorials. There are no scientific sources. The article is a scientific article. Asserting an ethnicity has greater average intelligence requires scientific sources, of which there are none. Furthermore, the claims on the article are entirely unsourced. The only section that is cited is the original paper that was written that asserted greater Ashkenazi intelligence. According to, Reliable sources, third party sources must be used. The original paper counts as a first party source because that's what the article is about. That specific paper as was stated by A Sniper. Two entire sections of the article must be removed because of the poor citations and abundance of original research. That leaves only a paragraph about the original paper. That's not sufficient for an article. Malamockq (talk) 18:29, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Couldn't agree more. I guess that's also count as reply to 23skidoo.


 * Keep Notable hypothesis. We ar not called on to decide whether or not it is correct. There is more than the one paper available. Editorial comment of scientific papers is not science, but about science, and is acceptable content as showing the attitude towards the work. DGG (talk) 20:38, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Strong keep. Most of the delete arguments here are totally missing the point: it doesn't matter that it's bad science, because enough people have commented on the idea that the theory has risen to the level you could almost call it famous.   A lack of scientific sources is irrelevant to an article about the history of an idea.  The article does not assert that one ethnicity has greater average intelligence than another, it merely reports that others have made this assertion, and on the controversy that the assertion has caused.  The details surrounding the assertion being made are the subject of the article, not the assertion itself. JulesH (talk) 21:06, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The article actually does not go into any depth on the history of the idea at all. It really does try to use statistics to reinforce the claim that Ashkenazi Jews have greater intelligence than other races. There are three main sections of the article. "Psychometric findings" details the statistics, most of the claims are unsourced. "Cochran et al" talks about the paper that was put forth that started all of this, the paper is a first party source since this is the actual basis of the article. "Other theories" then tries to explain why Ashkenazi Jews are allegedly more intelligent than other races. This entire section is almost completely unsourced, and original research. None of the sections go into the history of the idea. There is no mention of the controversy it caused. I agree, the details surrounding the assertion made, are the subject, in other words, the paper itself "Cochran et al". It is the only section that is properly cited, however as you said, the article is about that paper, so the citation is the paper itself. A first party source. There are no credible third party sources, there are only opinions from non-credible authorities who agree that Ashkenazi Jews are more intelligent. I don't see how that is any different from someone proclaiming that Asians or Africans are the most intelligent race, and then non-notable identities write editorials agreeing with that sentiment. Malamockq (talk) 21:49, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep Any simple Google search or Google Book search speaks for the subject's notability, including academic articles and mainstream media articles on the topic. Whether the science itself is bad or if this particular article is not well written is irrelevant to this AfD.  If the title is causing consternation, it could always be moved to something along the lines of Ashkenazi Jews and Intelligence, which follows the pattern of Race and Intelligence. Joshdboz (talk) 00:08, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The way I see it, there is just not enough material here to justify an article. Once you strip out the chaff there is just a bit about the original study and that would fit nicely as a sentence or two in Race and intelligence. L0b0t (talk) 00:30, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree. At least two sections must be removed because they are entirely original research. That leaves only one paragraph. That's hardly enough to justify its own article. We can merge the relevant information to Race and Intelligence. Malamockq (talk) 01:58, 2 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep It's not wikipedia's (or any encyclopedia's) place to make a scientific judgement, but merely to report on what work has been published. Horselover Frost (talk) 05:16, 3 December 2008 (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.