Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Human biodiversity


 * 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. As persuasively explained by the later commentators, the "human biodiversity" referred to in the article appears to be a fringe neologism, or as DGG calls it, "an attempt to capture a common term for a fringe POV". This closure does not preclude an appropriate redirect, or an article about a different and better-sourced concept of "human biodiversity".  Sandstein  07:38, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Human biodiversity

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The main source of this article is blogs, no independent or scholarly research, no cite books from mainstream publishers. This is purely an internet theory. Not known outside blogosphere. Especially for a "scientific" theory. --Gary123 (talk) 13:39, 18 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I dunno, that criticism seems a bit off. The blogs of which you speak are written by people with Wikipedia entries of their own.

That is not correct those are external links. The definition comes from halfsigma blog. Even for a pseudoscientific theory, lack of notability is shown that its main source has to come from a blog. --Gary123 (talk) 14:42, 19 September 2009 (UTC)


 * No books from mainstream publishers? The Bell Curve is probably the most famous social science book of the 90s.  52 researchers in the field endorsed the book in a letter printed in the Wall Street Journal. http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/taboos/wsj_main.html

HBD may claim that book supports their movement, but neither the author, the book, or the wikipedia article refers to bell curve as part of the HBD movement or use the term HBD. We already have articles on race and intelligence etc, as well as the book used as the main source of this article. The question here is does the HBD movement deserve its own article. I would say no, since it is unknown outside the internet and thus has not even risen to the level of controversy. We have several articles on similar racialist science, the question here is purely over notability. --Gary123 (talk) 20:37, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

There are several articles on that. This article is on a specific political movement, that has not even drawn controversy outside the internet. So it does not even qualify has pseudoscience worthy of notability. --Gary123 (talk) 14:45, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment a rename and rewrite seems to be in order .... something on gender differences, racial susceptibility to disease, etc should exist. 76.66.196.139 (talk) 05:23, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep Maybe rename to "Human Biodiversity Theories". Every single one of us is an example of human biodiversity, but that is not the topic of the article. It's about policy issues that might be considered racist by some. The fact that this is an unpleasant topic to most of us is not a reason to delete the article.Borock (talk) 13:49, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Even if everything you say above is true that is still not a reason to keep an article about this particular theory. Being right is not enough - every crackpot tells us they are right. You need to produce some mainstream coverage of CBD to show us it isn't just another crackpot theory. Either that or get someone famous to condemn or endorse it and get it on the news then we will cover it.filceolaire (talk) 19:56, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

The majority of this article simply covers the article Race and Intelligence, from a HBD POV. And the rest of the article is simply a summary of Race, Evolution and Behavior, which already has an article. So all factual issues, and points of controversy are covered in other articles. The question is is the HBD movement notable enough to merit an article covering all these issues from a HBD POV? --Gary123 (talk) 20:43, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The article needs a new name, it is really about neoracism not human biological diversity.Borock (talk) 02:29, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

 Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   06:42, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.


 * Speedy keep: nominator knows nothing about the subject. Alfie Kohn has been writing about HBD theories since the late 1980s, although he has using the term "biodiversity" since 96/97. Ottre 09:15, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
 * My mistake. Kohn is actually a critic of "biological determinism", which I don't think is quite the same thing as HBD. Ottre 10:43, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: gscholar gave 500+ hits, are any of these relevant? The arguments advanced in this discussion tend to be more related to moralizing and I was going to "vote" for delete but the existence of gscholar hits suggests the topic is notable and likely encydlopedic. This sounds as if it will be difficult to edit however as it has already attracted POV arguments. Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 12:13, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

The article as it stands now is entirely about human biodiversity as a political movement, which complicates search results and other uses of the term human biodiversity. --Gary123 (talk) 20:14, 26 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Redirect to Human genetic variation. The article is it stands is an unsalvageable seemingly haphazard and in any case unbalanced selection of just a few from among many authors who have discussed biological differences within and among human groups, namely a selection confined to authors with a political agenda who have argued one way or another that social differences between groups of people can be explained by hereditary traits. The definition of the term in the article, instead of just referring to human biological variation without such political load, is a neologism that is largely confined to blogs; I have not been able to find instances of mainstream authors (including Alfie Kohn) using the term in this loaded sense. For the neutral mainstream use, see for example: Jonathan Marks (1995). Human Biodiversity: Genes, Race, and History. Aldine Transaction. ISBN 978-02-0202033-4. --Lambiam 22:14, 27 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment : I finally read the article and not sure what to think.Personally, I am still bothered by the way Watson was treated as it is scientifically important to defend conjecture which doesn't happen to be popular, and nature-versus-nurture is still a scientifically open question. I guess if the term is notable for this context and there is anything on "nature-versus-nurture" you could merge some of the stuff into that. A dab page may help if you can find two distinct notable concepts. Apparently the article cites David Duke who is presumably notable for fringe political activities rather than genetics of neurotransmitter-relevant metabolism and scientific skepticism. If the term is really this ambiguous, it probably should have its own page just for the sake of clarification and disambiguation. Again, the gscholar hits suggest the term is used in scientific works to some extent but parhaps it means something different to David Duke. I guess the dab pages tend to be rather terse lists but you could have a dab page with more text. For example, I added some text to a dab page for resonance where the term has scientific and colloquial meanings, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonance_(disambiguation) .  I guess you could do the same thing here.  Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 12:40, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. The term as used in this article is a fringe neologism that originated on blogs and appears to be largely limited to them. No reliable source uses the term, and most of the article appears to be a WP:COATRACK for racist gibberish. *** Crotalus *** 14:41, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * If you look at what I wrote above in my recommendation to redirect, you'll see that a reliable source does use the term – not with the neologistic fringe meaning but with the mainstream meaning of human genetic variation; hence my recommendation to redirect. Google scholar does turn up many more examples of the use of the term with that meaning. --Lambiam 06:33, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
 * A redirect would be fine with me. The important thing is that this title should not be an article reflecting the fringe, non-notable theories propounded on blogs by Steve Sailer and Half Sigma. *** Crotalus *** 13:07, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
 * POV: If you start looking at the gscholar hits, I think the dichotomy becomes less clear. For example, consider this article on HGP concerned with racism in polymorphism data, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.117.2992&rep=rep1&type=pdf . It is likely that as-written the article has a POV but it also seems that science and politics talk about the same activities. Indeed, politics has been intertwined with genetic testing and cataloging for a long time. If you want to start moralizing, as many already have, to make it "offensive" or incorrect to suggest a link between genes and behaviour potentially does a disservice to various disease sufferers for which links have been suggested- Down's syndrome, schizophrenia, mood disorders, etc. Calling the article racist may in fact be literally accurate as it may turn out that some genes segregate or correlate with certain other traits and it is likely some have taken the suggestive results to be more conclusive than is warranted. However, the topic in one form or another does seem notable and "racism" has been associated with the scientific efforts as well as the David Duke and other fringe sites. Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 18:14, 28 September 2009 (UTC)


 * This article basically just covers all the issues discussed in this article Human genetic variation Race and genetics from a scientific racist POV. There are already several articles on the controversy of race and genetics. There is nothing wrong with having controversial views on wikipedia. But I'm not convinced that HBD has even risen to the level of controversy. It is mostly limited to the Halfsigma blog.  --Gary123 (talk) 18:33, 28 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete Non-notable. Had something really turned up, we'd expect it to be extensively covered and criticized in secondary sources. It looks to be some sort of neo-racism. Ngchen (talk) 18:31, 28 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete this article, and write a proper one on the topic. The basic premise of the article is POV and In my opinion, false:  "Human biodiversity (often abbreviated to HBD) is the belief that observed behavioral and cognitive differences between social classes, the two sexes, and the major human races can to a great extent be attributed to human genotypic variation. "  Human diversity is indeed the subject of the study of human biological variation, but includes both variation from genetic and environmental causes, and studies this in order to see what it is and what effect it may have, including on human social behavior, but certainly not to any preordained conclusion. An attempt to capture a common term for a fringe POV.  One of the refs given  , has a candid explanation of why they user the term in the june 2 entry: it sounds less racist.  If a specific term can be found for the school of opinion that this is the major factor, then possibly a NPOV article can be written on it. Another contributor to that blog mentions in a comment to that posting that the principal book by that title Human biodiversity: genes, race, and history by Jonathan Marks, is by a noted opponent of the theory proposed to be called by that name, a sufficient indication that even the supporters of this view recognize their use as a deliberately misleading neologism. Nerd, above, has the right view of how to do this. In the meantime, redirect to Human genetic variation, protected if necessary.    DGG ( talk ) 20:17, 28 September 2009 (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.