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== Racial admixture studies, etc ==

The "Racial admixture studies" section is incoherent. I suggest something akin to:

''Studies on mixed race individuals and on the relation between admixture and IQ have produced ambiguous results . Some studies on mixed race individuals seem to contradict a genetic hypothesis (i.e. Eyferth, 1969) others seem to support it (i.e. Rowe, 2002) and still others have produced results which could be interpreted in support for either a genetic or an environmental hypothesis (Willerman, et al, 1974) . With regards to studies on admixture and IQ, a number of studies have shown a relation between IQ and physical indexes of admixture, but the correlations found tend to be low and the associations found could be accounted for by social factors . Some studies have show a relation between IQ and genealogical indexes of admixture (i.e. Tanzer 1939, 1941), but other studies have failed to find such an association (Witty and Jenkins, 1936) . Other studies have failed to find a relation between IQ and admixture indexed by blood groups, but to what extent these studies provide evidence against a genetic hypothesis is not clear .

Likewise, adoption studies have produced mixed results...''

This cuts down on the he said she said. Perhaps, after, include a section and "frequently discussed
studies" in which a select few studies can be described in more depth. (A relatively objective way to determine which studies warrant more in depth discussion is to look at the number of citations each has had. The more discussed studies are: Scarr et al., 1977 -- blood groups -- (2)Witty and Jenkins, 1936 -- genealogy -- Eyferth, 1961 -- hybrid study -- Moore, 1986 -- adoption --- Willerman, et al, 1974 -- hybrid study -- Tizard, 1974 -- "controlled rearing" --, Weinberg et al., 1992 -- adoption study. Obviously most of these studies support am environmental hypothesis -- which is to be expected since environmentalist do most of the discussing.

As I noted the following studies have been cited in defense of a genetic hypothesis:

Fernandez, 2001 (Brazil) Pick, 1929 (SA) Claassen, 1990 (SA) Owen, 1992 (SA) Weinberg et al., 1992 (US) Codwell, 1947 (US) Lynn, 2002 (US) Rowe, 2002 (US) Feguson, 1919 (US) Peterson and Lanier, 1929 (US) Peterson and Lanier, 1929 (US) Young, 1929 (US) Grinder et al, 1964 (Caribbean) Davenport, 1928 (Caribbean) Klineberg, 1928 (US) Peterson and Lanier, 1929 (US) Bruce, 1940 (US) Bean, 1906 (US) Pearl, 1934 (US) Shockley, 1973? (US) Green, 1972 (Caribbean) Ned and Gruenfeld, 1976 (Caribbean) Tanser, 1939 (Canada) Tanser, 1941 (Canada) Eyferth, 1961 (Germany -- yes, cited by lynn in support of a genetic hypothesis) Moore, 1986 (US -- yes, the traditional adoption component showed a nonsignificant .27 SD difference and has been cited by Murray in support of a genetic hypothesis) Willerman, Naylor, and Myrianthopoulos, 1974 (US -- cited by Rushton in support of a genetic hypothesis) Herskovits, 1926 (US -- cited by Shuey in support of a genetic hypothesis) Klineberg, 1928 (US -- cited by Shuey in support of a genetic hypothesis)

And following studies have been cited in defense of an environmental hypothesis

Scarr et al., 1977 (US) Loehlin et al., 1973 (US) Witty and Jenkins, 1936 (US) Tizard, 1974 (UK) Eyferth, 1961 (Germany), Moore, 1986 (US) Willerman, et al, 1974 (US) (Nisbett -- due to the large difference between biracials raised by Black and White mothers) Herskovits, 1926 (US) (Nisbett -- due to the low correlations found) Klineberg, 1928 (US) (Nisbett -- due to the low correlations found)

In my opinion only the 7 studies mentioned above -- if any -- warrant in dept discussion, as they have each been cited more than half a dozen times. Does anyone else have an opinion on such a revision? I think we can all agree that the section as it currently reads is awful. --] (]) 19:32, 8 October 2011 (UTC)Hippofrank
:I think that rather than attempting to give a detailed account of the studies it is a better approach to select one or two reputable secondary sources that treat the topic of admixture and intelligence and see how they weigh the material and then emulate that weighting. ]·] 00:51, 9 October 2011 (UTC)


I just want to add a point. And I swear to be assuming good faith and neutral point of view. If someone did it here, he or she probably do not understand almost nothing about our race relations, and as such can not be specialist in the matter of race and miscegenation in Latin America (where it is widely common). In Brazil, almost everybody is triracial with ~80% of European descent. I'm pale, I had natural straight blonde hair (nowadays straight to mildly curly, medium brown), amber eyes and freckles and I'm son of 2 multiracials, and grandson of a Black Man, darker than the usual in Brazil. My grandfather came from an area of historical slavery, and he had sufficient European descent to make me and in a certain point my mother White. This is nothing unusual here. Conclusions about intelligence based in ] are plain bullshit. IQ average in educated upper and middle middle class Brazilian black persons in ], ], ], ] or ] will certainly be really much higher (105+) than among White and Japanese-Brazilian people in little towns or the countryside making part of lower or lower middle class depending on the poor public education, receiving most of their information via TV and other more unsophisticated media, receiving huge sexist and heterosexist stimulus, making part of degrading youth subcultures (a problem greater when talking about poor peripheries) and developing perverse world views and attitudes (less than 87). As, I imagine, would happen in all over the world with similar conditions.

And it is just pointless for our black people because they proved to be mostly "Caucasian" in genetics since children of slaves were mostly doomed to infant mortality or more slavery except from a curtain period in country's history. Most of the survivors which perpetuated Black African ancestry among us were mulattoes since the White Man cared about his kids. Mulattoes who appeared "blacker" or "whiter" tended to procreate among themselves due to "cor" Brazilian racial prejudice. Everybody miscegenated so they received more European ancestry. Generations with consolidated African phenotypes led to 80% European descent black people as their descendants, and generations of light mulattoes who had kids with "criollo" and/or European Brazilians led to people with Caucasian phenotypes. But at genetic level, everybody, branco, pardo or negro, is somewhat of the same race, that simple. It is useless except if the IQ average data is collected from indigenous villages, ]s, European settlement-based towns and people more easily identifiable in urban developments with "pure" (or almost) Portuguese, East Asian and Middle Eastern descent and then compare with the average Brazilians with perceived Amerindian, African, Triracial, Latin European, non-Latin European, East Asian and Middle Eastern descent, but it hardly happen. Not doing so is fomenting certain social relations and attitudes with pseudo-science.

I do not want to add "biased" or "unsourced" information, but what I stated here are known facts said by other Misplaced Pages articles itself. As I read before in this discussion, people explain Black/White intelligence by North American racial relations and the scientists are mostly focused in "Western", North American specifically, relations and meanings of race. Well, these standards exclude mentioning about multiethnic societies, with highly miscegenated people, which also follow racialized subdivisions and as such the arguments about Race and Intelligence by the foreign concepts become a more uneasy idea since people in the same top/bottom of the society, independent of the genes (but having a "racial minority" phenotype and as such identified as non-white, or the inverse, by its surrounding society are a good way to show how these factors can be socially constructed), will show the same effects of these researches. Finally, what I want to say is that people can not just use random IQ average tests in various societies around the world without methods and information about how race is constructed there. They can not pick up some "blacks", some "multiracials", some "third world whites" and say that it show how their world view about racial genetic differences and its depth in complex human individual variations as intelligence is correct as if it completely reflected their original society. Can someone say that it is science? ] (]) 21:56, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

:Cool story bro. <span style="font-size: smaller;" class="autosigned">— Preceding ] comment added by ] (]) 14:26, 17 October 2011 (UTC)</span><!-- Template:Unsigned IP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->

== race and genetics, rewrite ==

Maunus has claimed, along with others, that the "race and genetics" section gives undue weight to a genetic position. To "correct" for this, he and others have tossed in a number of irrelevant and redundant statements. As a result, the section is, in my humble opinion, incoherent. I suggest that we all collaborate on a rewrite of this section to make it more coherent and to give it the appropriate weight it deserves (perhaps 1/2 of what it has). To avoid a revert war, we can create two discussion topics below, a "rewrite of the race and genetics section" and a "discussion about a rewrite of the race and genetics section" topic, and hammer out a rewrite there. This section can be condensed and simplified quite a bit --] (]) 20:15, 8 October 2011 (UTC)Hippofrank (or previously, Chuck)
:Hi Hippofrank, I am glad to see that you've decided to register. I basically agree that my solution was unelegant, and that writing a balanced section from scratch would be better. I currently I don't have the time to dig into that old material again. If you write up a section and post it here on the talk page for comments and suggestions for improvements I think that might be a good way to go about it. ]·] 00:49, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

== Blacks have lowest IQ? ==

{{hat|No suggestions to improve article; see ] and ]. ] (]) 01:25, 30 October 2011 (UTC)}}
This study indicates that Sub-saharan African black people have the lowest IQ of all the worlds races. Is this true? ] ] 18:14, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
:The short answer is no. The long answer is hopefully to be found in the article.]·] 18:20, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
:This is a talk page for discussions on improving the article, not for answering questions on the subject. I suggest you read the article for yourself, and then decide whether you think the study you link to (by Rushton and Jensen, two highly-controversial figures) is meaningful. Of course, you'll have also to decide whether you think that 'race' is anything more than a social construct, and whether 'IQ' is actually an objective measure of intelligence. If you want simple yes-or-no answers, this topic isn't a good place to find them. (And yes, the answer is 'no' if the question has any meaning in the first place, which is highly doubtful) ] (]) 18:23, 24 October 2011 (UTC)


Hmm. Race is a social construct. Odd considering the basic biological principles of natural selection and geographic isolation.
Suggest you read http://en.wikipedia.org/Allopatric_speciation to get a basic idea. ] (]) 21:16, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

:Suggest you read it yourself. "Allopatric speciation may occur when a species is subdivided into two genetically isolated populations". This clearly hasn't happened for Homo sapiens. Last time I looked into the matter, we seemed to be putting a great deal of effort into curing genetic isolation in the ]. Yes, there is a great deal of genetic diversity, but the divisions we apply to such diversity ('races') are arbitrary social constructs - self-evidently, since nobody can agree on how many there are, and who belongs in which. ] (]) 21:53, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

::Yes, it is undisputed that blacks have the lowest IQ. (on average) Sorry about the obfuscator bots. <span style="font-size: smaller;" class="autosigned">— Preceding ] comment added by ] (]) 06:34, 28 October 2011 (UTC)</span><!-- Template:Unsigned IP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->

:::It is disputed, on the grounds that neither 'blacks' nor 'IQ' have any real meaning. Sorry about the misrepresentation. ] (]) 18:30, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

"Blacks" means people with sub saharan african ancestry, verified by a high degree of interobserver correlation, "IQ" means the result of a test thought to indicate overall mental ability, and supported by mainstream psychology. There can be no question that these terms have meaning. Any attempt to suggest otherwise suggests a kind of Orwellian detachment from reality. <span style="font-size: smaller;" class="autosigned">— Preceding ] comment added by ] (]) 11:12, 29 October 2011 (UTC)</span><!-- Template:Unsigned IP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->


::::The consensus is that there are group differences in intelligence. The controversy is whether genetics has something to do with these differences. <span style="font-size: smaller;" class="autosigned">— Preceding ] comment added by ] (]) 18:32, 7 December 2011 (UTC)</span><!-- Template:Unsigned IP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->

{{hab}}

== Last &para; of lede ==

Made more general, comprehensive, able to have easily sourceable support added. The first alternative should have genetic, heritable factors combined with cultural/epigenetic ones, but leaving that for the editors supplying such support. ] (]) 17:28, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

== An error ==
It is said that "Murray in a 2006 study agree with Dickens and Flynn that there has been a narrowing of the gap", (Ref.: "Evidence from the Children of the 1979 Cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 2006)
The opposite, Muray reversed that statement:
"Data for three Peabody achievement tests and for the Peabody picture vocabulary test administered to children of women in the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth show that the black-white difference did not diminish for this sample of children born from the mid 1970s through the mid 1990s. This finding persists after entering covariates for the child's age and family background variables. It is robust across alternative samples and specifications of the model. The analysis supplements other evidence that shows no narrowing of the black-white difference in academic achievement tests since the late 1980s and is inconsistent with recent evidence that narrowing occurred in IQ standardizations during the same period. A hypothesis for reconciling this inconsistency is proposed."
You should edit this modification. <span style="font-size: smaller;" class="autosigned">— Preceding ] comment added by ] (]) 04:30, 22 November 2011 (UTC)</span><!-- Template:Unsigned IP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->

== U.S. bias? ==

In the first section, only U.S. data is spoken of—the American Anthropological Association, the American Psychological Association, experiments performed in the United States, et cetera. Perhaps there might be data available which isn't limited to the U.S. <small><span class="autosigned">— Preceding ] comment added by ] (] • ]) 23:57, 4 December 2011 (UTC)</span></small><!-- Template:Unsigned --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->
:I recall making a similar comment myself many months ago. I have now decided that the reality is that this is primarily a US topic, because of that country's historical separation of races. Few other advanced countries with the ability to do so would have had the motivation to study this subject with such intensity. ] (]) 00:12, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

== Tags and problems with the article ==

The recent removal of the tags brings to fore the issue of the stagnant state of this article. While some sporadic work has been done on this article, the nature and quality of the change has generally been hampered by both burnout from previous editors, a lack of new editors with interest and perspective, and habitual interruption by editors interested in promoting their favored POV. In truth, what may be the best approach would be to dump most of the article, and simply summarize one of the many current secondary overview sources on the matter, instead of presenting a comprehensive rehash of the historic debate, complete with extensive arguments from those arguing against the mainstream. I've replaced the tags, and invite other editors to work towards such a goal, though I expect significant work will again be met with stiff resistance from those who chaffe at the idea that IQ has not been shown to be a racial trait. ] (]) 17:47, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
:I'll add that if anyone feels like addressing specific section tags through edits, or removing specific section tags because they've been resolved, as opposed to stale, I fully support that sort of bold editing. Likewise improving then removing is also welcome. I'll try to make some time later in the week to do some research on specific sources and sections to help in this regard myself. ] (]) 18:13, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
:you're absolutely right about anticipated resistance. the only way forward is to bring the matter of undue weight given to fringe theories to the ].--<small><span style="border:1px solid blue;padding:1px;background:blue;">]</span></small> 23:24, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

{{hat|collapsing per ] and ]. ] (]) 17:42, 13 December 2011 (UTC)}}


If you mean me as someone you can expect "stiff resistance" from, I won't oppose edits that improve the article's neutrality. For example was fine, though I don't agree with the justification in the edit summary. ] is a journal published by the APA so it satisfies ]. But the paragraph removed still violated NPOV because it's unbalanced to include Jensen and Rushton's arguments without including the counter-argument from someone like Nisbett. So you won't see me going against edits like that.

The article certainly could still use improvement, but we need to not go about the changes haphazardly. In the past it's sometimes happened that editors were rushing forward with large changes while not participating in the discussion about those changes on the talk page. Working towards consensus is very difficult when people aren't willing to discuss their edits.] (]) 01:08, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

...And now we have an example already of someone trying to make a highly visible change without discussion. Hipocrite has moved the link to ] up to before the beginning of the lead, suggesting that this "see also" link is more centrally important than the link to ], ], or ]. It's unreasonable to say that the scientific racism article is more important to this article than any of those others. To single out the scientific racism article as deserving this special place, you'd need to demonstrate that it deserves it more than any of the other sub-articles in the R&I topic area which could also be linked there. I don't think it does, so I'm reverting this change until consensus can be established.] (]) 05:28, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

:''sigh'' ] (]) 05:31, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
::What do you want me to do? Some edits aren't helpful and that's why we need discussion. When Miradre was involved, you and Maunus did an excellent job stopping him from messing up the article in a hereditarian direction. But sometimes edits are unbalanced in the opposite direction too.] (]) 06:11, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
:::Make constructive edits that improve the article instead of acting as a gatekeeper, requiring your consent before changes get made. ] (]) 08:34, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Aprock, what is the "mainstream" here? Mainstream among whom? Not based on your own opinion, but reliable sources. FYI, IQ has been shown to be a racial trait beyond any reasonable doubt. The debate is about causes.--] (]) 12:15, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
:::: That is not an accurate representation of mainstream scholarship, which notes that IQ is weakly correlated with race, but then notes that race may not even exist, and then that the correlation may just be autocorrelation. ] (]) 12:23, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
::::: Could you cite this "mainstream scholarship"? Races obviously exist as socially recognized categories. Whether or not these races correspond to some predefined taxonomic scheme is irrelevant.--] (]) 12:58, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
:::::: . ] (]) 13:40, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
::::::: If there is no such thing as race, then by definition there can be no racism, scientific or otherwise. You can't have a meaningful conversation about something that does not exist. Perhaps the article should be re-named "arbitrary social categories and intelligence"? ] (]) 14:42, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
:::::::: Read the linked statement to understand how race is a social construct. ] (]) 14:49, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
::::::::: So what? Atoms, genes, and gravity are also social constructs. That does not mean that they are useless in science. Races in America are social constructs based on genetic differences. There are racial differences in IQ, and there is no consensus on what causes them].--] (]) 15:57, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
:::::::::: No, Atoms, genes and gravity exist. Please don't use cherry-picked primary sources when the secondary sources disagree. ] (]) 15:59, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

:::::::::::Sorry, but you would have flunked your philosophy of science class. Atoms, genes, and gravity are human constructs, not things that exist in nature. They are theoretical entities constructed on the basis of observations, just like race. The definitions of each have varied widely across time. ] is incompatible with modern science.

:::::::::::My sources above are not cherry-picked. Two of them are consensus statements by intelligence researchers, one is a large meta-analysis of racial/ethnic differences in cognitive ability, one is a study showing that self-identified race corresponds to distinct genetic clusters, a routine finding in population genetics. You will not find a single reliable data-based source that claims that there are no racial differences in IQ. The cultural anthropologists that you draw on may disagree with me, but they have no expertise in psychological measurement and their pronouncements are not based on data. So, when we're talking about what's mainstream in race and intelligence, it matters whom you ask, e.g. intelligence researchers or cultural anthropologists.--] (]) 16:41, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

The idea that an editor who is not aware of the mainstream position is going to act as gatekeeper is nothing less than baffling. This is quickly rising to the level of disruption. ] (]) 15:40, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

: Going to act as a gatekeeper?? What the hell are you talking about? Tell me, using reliable sources, what the mainstream view is. The ''Mainstream Science'' statement and the APA report, for example, say that the cause of the black-white gap is unknown. Is that the mainstream view?--] (]) 16:07, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

:: No, it doesn't. The statement says "Given what we know about the capacity of normal humans to achieve and function within any culture, we conclude that present-day inequalities between so-called "racial" groups are not consequences of their biological inheritance but products of historical and contemporary social, economic, educational, and political circumstances." You know, the conclusion, where they state their conclusions. ] (]) 16:16, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

::: I'm not talking about the AAA statement. Please read more carefully.--] (]) 16:43, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

At this point I'm going to bow out of the discussions and restate the invitations that I made above. To any editor who is concerned about the article, especially those who are going to actively examine each and every edit, please be bold and make the changes you think are needed. ] (]) 16:26, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

: Why is it that whenever someone claims that the environmental determinist story is the mainstream position, and I ask them for sources for that view, none are ever forthcoming?--] (]) 16:48, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

::Perhaps because these references were given to you a dozen times and you still keep denying they exist. Your interpretation of the APA report'/ concludion, for example, while they do state that we still don't know all the causes of the IQ gap, do state that the existing evidence for a hereditarian cause is currently weaker, less than that for environmental causes. --] (]) 21:05, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
{{hab}}

== Use of xxxers as reliable sources ==

It is not appropriate to use xxxers such as Murry, Ruston and Jensen as uncontroversially reliable sources. Specifically, includes text sourced only to xxxers, with no caveat that they are a tiny minority. This must not continue - individuals editing who are followers of xxxers should not be reverting the fringe beliefs of their leaders into this article. ] (]) 17:50, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
:I will point out that this exact issue is clearly delineated in the Arbitration findings of fact 1.1.iii: ''(iii) incessant over-emphasis on certain controversial sources.'' . Disruptive editing over this issue is certainly subject to discretionary sanctions. This of course applies to all editors large and small. These researchers are widely recognized as controversial, and the weight given to them in the article is currently undue. Constructive suggestions on how to source content to superior sources, or otherwise address the weight given to them, would be greatly helpful. ] (]) 17:57, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

:: Victor keeps telling me to discuss on the talk page - but he's not discussing, just reverting. What am I to do? ] (]) 18:42, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

::: When faced with the sort of disruption that Victor is engaging in I think the next obvious step is to note why you think the changes you made were warranted on the talk page. I personally haven't looked at any of the changes yet, but if you're making changes in an effort to address 1.1.iii, then I think you're more likely to find general support on the talk page than gatekeeping. ] (]) 18:47, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

:::: I believe I am. I would appreciate further review of my edits. Thanks. ] (]) 18:52, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Hipocrite, if you going to make a major change to the article, propose it on the talk page first, giving your reasons.--] (]) 18:59, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

: No. Review ]. Please address the issue, which is the massive overweight given to Jensen and Rushton, and what can be done to lessen it. You must acknowledge they are a minority of researchers, correct? ] (]) 19:00, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

:: Jensen and Rushton are major participants in the scientific debate. Jensen is by far the most famous and influential scientist to have researched the topic. Much of the anti-hereditarian research has been conducted explicitly to address the views of Jensen, Rushton, Murray, and other hereditarians. James Flynn, for example, has cited Jensen as a major inspiration in his career. Much of Nisbett's research directly addresses Jensen and Rushton's. The views of Jensen, Rushton et al. should be discussed in the article to the extent that they are present in reliable sources.--] (]) 19:12, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

::: We do not merely count articles - instead, we weigh in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint. Jensen, Rushton, Murray et al's '''viewpoints''' are not prominent - they are discarded as fringe by the vast majority of research - of this you are aware. They, themselves are prominent, mostly for being discarded as scientific racists. They cannot continue to take up the majority of the article. ] (]) 20:06, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

== The APA ==

The APA statement includes "There is not much direct evidence on this point, but what little there is fails to support the genetic hypothesis." Victor has removed this from the article multiple times. I don't think it's appropriate to remove this from the article and would like to understand why he is removing it. Why are you removing it? ] (]) 18:57, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

: The APA report concludes that the cause(s) of the gap are presently unknown. You misrepresented the report by writing that the APA agrees with Nisbett that genetic contributions are nil. Moreover, could you quote Flynn to the effect that genes don't contribute to the gap at all ("nil")?--] (]) 19:03, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

:: My most recent revision does not include Flynn as saying anything - only you did that, and then promptly questioned yourself. ] (]) 19:06, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

:: I directly quoted the APA. How does my direct quote misrepresent them? I conclude that I don't know what I'll be having for lunch, but I will DEFINITELY not be having steak. Will I be having steak for lunch? You'd argue we don't know. ] (]) 19:07, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

::: The article currently reads "Scientists, supported by the American Anthropological Association argue that the genetic contribution to the gaps (not to individual IQ) is nil", citing Flynn (a whole book, no page number) as one of the sources. Again, what does Flynn actually say?

::: Yes, a direct quote misrepresents a source if it is taken out of context. It is a misrepresentation to say that the APA report agrees with Nisbett. It clearly doesn't.--] (]) 19:17, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

:::: Article does not currently say that. I didn't include the citation to Flynn - it predates me. I'll certainly figure out who added it and ask them. ] (]) 19:19, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Victor has again provided specific attribution to Nisbett. This is not appropriate, as he is additionally supported by the AAA statement. Please carefully review ]. ] (]) 19:46, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

: The hypothesis that genes contribute to racial IQ gaps is not "fringe science". It is treated as a credible theory in reliable mainstream sources -- in, for example, Earl Hunt's "Human Intelligence", a textbook published this year by the noted fringe publisher Cambridge University Press. A large survey of behavioral scientists in the 1980s indicated that hereditarianism was the mainstream view among scientists, while the strong environmentalist view was supported by relatively few people. You cannot say that Nisbett's specific views are the same as those of unnamed other scientists.--] (]) 21:00, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

:: This has nothing to do with this section. Please try to keep up, or at least stop reverting. We are discussing your constant reversion of "Scientists" to "Richard Nisbett," even though Richard Nisbett is agreed with by the major professional organization the American Anthropological Association, making specific attribution there inappropriate. ] (]) 21:05, 13 December 2011 (UTC)


== Piffer (2015) ==
::: I am not reverting. I am correcting errors based on discussion. You claimed that ] is relevant here, while it clearly isn't. Nisbett and the AAA statement are different entities. When you cite Nisbett and the AAA statement, you mention them, not any ]. Now, labels such as hereditarian and environmentalist are potentially useful here, but they should be used evenhandedly.--] (]) 21:17, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
Piffer (2015) found differing frequencies of cognition and IQ-enhancing genes in different racial populations:


https://gwern.net/doc/iq/2015-piffer.pdf
I assume given that I found a series of other individuals commenting that there is no genetic basis for race that you're comfortable with the sentence as it currently stands? ] (]) 13:51, 14 December 2011 (UTC)


] (]) 23:39, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
== Protected ==


:See ] for some well-sourced commentary on the merits of that particular publication. ] (]) 23:53, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
This page has been fully protected three days per the result of ]. The long-term edit warring on this page may possibly need to be addressed by more stringent measures, like a permanent ] restriction. ] (]) 04:54, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
::The criticism appears to be sourced to a journalistic piece in a progressive political magazine and another in a pop-sci magazine. 'Well-sourced commentary' such as this doesn't weigh heavily when it comes to a highly-regarded, peer-reviewed scientific journal. ] (]) 01:42, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
:::'Highly regarded' went out the window when they had white supremacists on the editorial board. ] (]) 01:51, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
::::Even the two critical sources stated describe it as 'one of the most respected in its field' and 'a more respected psychology journal'.
::::If any experts in the field of intelligence research have made a case against the journal's reputation, then its reliability could be questioned. As it is we have mixed criticism from two journalists of a well regarded peer-reviewed publication. ] (]) 02:11, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
:::::Nah. We can discard a source without needing to meet your personal standard, which doesn't have any relation to Misplaced Pages's policies so far as I can tell. It is worth mentioning, though, that the ] (noted experts on racism) that spends multiple paragraphs on this specific paper and how it shouldn't be used as a source. A sample quote: {{Tq|Piffer’s credentials, affiliations and the scientific merit of the paper itself are suspect}} - ] (]) 02:54, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
::::::Based on which Wiki policy are you discarding it as a source? It's used several times in articles related to intelligence research.
::::::Not than an advocacy organization's opinion really is of note when it comes to population genetics, I do note that these several SPLC paragraphs go into no more detail than to state that scientific merit of the paper itself are suspect (no reasons for this assessment or counterarguments given, at all), to question the author's credibility and to state that there are no reliable sources to dispute it. Which adds up to nothing in particular from an organisation with absolutely no standing in scientific matters. ] (]) 03:38, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
:::::::If this Piffer article is used several times, please point those usages out specifically because those definitely need to be removed. ] (]) 04:10, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
::::::::As per my original comment and your response to it, I'm referring to the journal ''Intelligence''. Which seems to have somehow achieved the status of a 'pick-and-choose' source.
::::::::The argument against mention of the Piffer paper, whether it's flawed research or not, requires something more than commentary from a civil rights organisation. ] (]) 04:30, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::Contrary to what you might imagine, we rely on editor judgement for evaluating source reliability all the time, and Piffer is definitely a fringe source per our guideline. This would be ascertainable even without explicit debunking in a scholarly source. Some pseudo-scholars are too insignificant to draw that kind of attention. That said, that explains in no uncertain terms what is so profoundly unscientific about Piffer's methodology. No matter how you squirm, you will get nowhere with this line of argumentation. ] (]) 06:38, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
::::::::::A preprint is not a fine peer-reviewed anything.
::::::::::Our guideline places Piffer as a fringe source based on his conclusions, or is it his associations?
::::::::::I'm aware that a past RFC prematurely declared the suggestion that genetics plays a role in population group IQ differences to be 'fringe' rather than merely minority. As RFCs aren't binding and consensus can change at any time, hopefully this will be rectified at some point. Though a consensus against it is emerging, the idea hasn't been conclusively refuted and research is ongoing. ] (]) 08:10, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
::::::::::The author of that paper is Kevin Bird. Kevin Bird also said: "The past isn't an indication of how the future behaves...I do science because I find it intellectually engaging, to be completely honest...I do it with not as much interest in attaining or discovering truth." He then said that he is "not interested in discovering truth". It is completely impossible to take a person like that seriously. And that paper's not peer reviewed. ] (]) 05:38, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
::::::::::: has now been published by '']'', the flagship journal of the ]. It is no longer a preprint. As to your gotcha quote about "truth"... ] (]) 05:57, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
::::::::::::Thanks for the updated cite. But an Indiana Jones meme? What am I supposed to take away from that? ] (]) 06:24, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::::::That your attempt to smear Bird is thoroughly unconvincing. Also see ]. ] (]) 12:20, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
::::::The SPLC aren't experts on genetics, and they don't cite any scientific publications in their article to critique Piffer. The closest they come is citing a non-peer-reviewed book review of a book Piffer didn't write. ] (]) 05:40, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
::::::The SPLC may be experts on racism, but is there any evidence that they're experts on science? ] (]) 23:21, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
:::::::Correctly identifying racist pseudoscience is part of their expertise, yes. It's not like they're commenting on an article about astronomy. ] (]) 23:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
::::::::Pseudoscience is that which does not employ the scientific method. Neither the SPLC nor Bird have made such an extreme claim about the Piffer paper. Bird may have the expertise to critique the methodology employed, but anything of the sort is well beyond the SPLC's realm of expertise. ] (]) 14:42, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
:Please also read ] concerning the journal co-founded by Davide Piffer. ] (]) 23:57, 13 May 2024 (UTC)


== Notification about ] ==
== Regression toward the mean section ==


I posted already on ], but would like more eyes on the discussion to provide more perspectives.
The Regression toward the mean section is massively overweighted towards the minority views of Rushton and Jensen. Rushton is not a reliable source with respect to genetics, generally - he is discarded as fringe by multiple reliable sources. Jensen alone is merely a pariah of the field. There is no reason to have merely one sentence by Nisbett that cherry picks what he actually says surrounded by multiple comments by Jensen and Rushton. Unless someone can rewrite this section to be appropriately weighted, I suggest we remove it in it's entirety. ] (]) 13:57, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
:I agree about the undue nature of the section. The topic and conclusions are really only promulgated by Rushton and Jensen, and there is no evidence that the field as a whole considers the topic in any way relevant. This specific topic rates quite low in the realm of things that should be covered, and yet receives coverage in this and other articles, like ]. Nisbett's summary of the topic is even more evidence that it doesn't merit coverage here. Previous versions of this content have been an utter mess of synthesis and original research, in no small part because there is little academic work of note on the topic. In truth, the section is just another indirect statistical argument for the hereditarian viewpoint. I fully support removing it from this article and ] as undue unless robust independent secondary sources can be found which weight the topic as prominently. ] (]) 17:18, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
::I'll also add that the previous RfC on the topic , is also pretty clear that the content doesn't merit inclusion, though some of the content might make sense in the ] article. ] (]) 17:20, 14 December 2011 (UTC)


Also I tried editing the article, to give it more substance, but this is not my area of expertise. Please feel free to clean it up anyway you want. ] (]) 05:20, 31 July 2024 (UTC)
:Way too much of the article takes this back and forth approach, tit for tat, argument by argument, usually constructed something like this: "the hereditarians say X. Nisbett says X-not." Of course that approach lends too much weight to the views-the framework of the article is too much ''built'' around their views while everything else is reduced to a rebuttal. (Note how many footnotes point to Nisbett's ''appendix!'' It's a full 300 page book on the topic, so why is it just where he rebuts the ''Bell Curve'' in the appendix that he's given the most attention here-16 footnotes?)


== Test scores ==
:This claim, btw, it's not just coming Jensen/Rushton, but Eysenck and Murray/Herrnstein - along with many other hereditarians - they also make this argument. By the same token, it's not just Nisbett challenging it, but many others accuse of them committing the regression to the mean fallacy, that the statistic simply predicts outcomes and does not identify any particular causation. Jensen's more consistently a reliable source for these views, while a lot of Rushton's more "out-there" work is way out at the fringes of the fringe. But Jensen is not the mainstream position in the race/intelligence issue. He's the most dominant figure in one area, a subset of the larger issue, this "the racial gap in IQ is caused by genetics" part. Since it is one of (dozen?-need to look it up) items of evidence he cites in ''supporting'' the hereditarian hypothesis, that might be a better way to handle it. One section should here should be devoted to describing the hereditarian hypothesis and the evidence cited for it. It looms too large now.


The Test Scores section has a paragraph discussing disparities in academic achievement and math test scores in the UK, but surely those are a less reliable measurement of intelligence than general mental ability (GMA) tests, such as those discussed here?<ref>https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/1359432X.2024.2377780?needAccess=true</ref> Is there any objection to replacing this paragraph with the results from this meta-analysis of GMA tests? ] (]) 04:03, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
:How I see the topic handled in sources overall is that they identify there is an IQ gap, that to varying degrees this troubles policy makers of one kind or another, and social and educational policy makers have for some time worked to close it. Now and then researchers have advanced various theories about what causes the gap, and the hereditarian hypothesis is just '''one''' of them. The environmental hypothesis isn't really '''one'''. Instead there are many hypotheses - such as nutrition, unequal access to education, socio-economic disparity, race prejudice, family environment etc - lots of hypotheses involving a whole host of different causes that can be categorized as environmental. And they get a lot more attention, with policy makers anyway. So maybe if the over-all outline were firmed up better here, then the undue weight problem might be resolved. ] (]) 18:00, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
:There is no reason to remove the current text or the sources used, but feel free to suggest additional text sourced to for discussion here to reach consensus. How to define ''intelligence'' and what's a less or more reliable way to measure it are controversial. Many believe that ''intelligence'' includes many disparate capacities and that there cannot be a numerical value that measures general intelligence.
:Note that the reliability of your source is very questionable, since all three authors are closely associated with either '']'' (see also ]) or '']''. ] (]) 06:39, 3 August 2024 (UTC)


{{reflist-talk}}
::Yes, the whole back and forth aspect is largely contrived by those who would establish the genetic causes as having parity with environmental causes. In fact, the broad organization of the article isn't so much of a tit-for-tat as, present all the arguments and research of hereditarian researchers, and present little to none of the broader community of science. Most of the mainstream work is done in the context of ], but none of that work is presented here. This is in no small part due to proponents of hereditarian researchers framing not just the structure of the article, but of the topic in general. Discussing IQ in a vacuum is essentially playing up specific achievement differences and ignoring others. You even see this more starkly on ] where it's not really IQ that is discussed, but ''verbal'' IQ. ] (]) 18:12, 14 December 2011 (UTC)


== Anyone around who can check recent edits for Richard Lynn? ==
:I think the most basic issue with the article is how it's divided up into hereditarian vs. environmental arguments. As Professor Marginalia said, the environmental hypothesis is really many different hypotheses. Not all hereditarians agree with one another either - for example Murray and Herrnstein take a different perspective about some things than Jensen and Rushton. And there are people like Earl Hunt who disagree with some parts of both positions.


Thanks. ] ] 13:00, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
:I think by dividing most of the article into "potential environmental causes" vs. "genetic arguments" we're oversimplifying the issue. In addition it seems like an original research problem. For example who gets to decide that racial admixture studies are a "genetic argument"? Studies such as Witty and Jenkins are often discussed as evidence that ancestry doesn't affect IQ, so this is as much an environmental argument as a genetic one. I suggest combining the "potential environmental causes" and "genetic arguments" sections into one section with a neutral title such as "debate overview". We can work on improving neutrality of individual topics as well.] (]) 21:21, 14 December 2011 (UTC)


== Genome-wide association study recent changes ==
::"Who gets to say?" Ok, we don't write the article to describe study after study done in primary research, so your question shouldn't apply anyway. The article should be based on secondary sources, and the broader the better. As in textbooks, so long as they're fairly current. The hypothesis that the IQ gap is determined mostly by genetics is tested with racial admixture studies. The "who decided" this, the "who decided" which hypothesis a study pertains to, will usually be given in the study itself. But more importantly, we look at what the secondary sources "decided". And your example is a strange one to me. What else ''but'' a genetic connection would an "racial admixture study" seek to assess in this context? Scientists don't conduct "racial admixture studies" to ask questions like whether test prep or vitamin supplements improve IQ scores. ] (]) 22:37, 14 December 2011 (UTC)


Editors who follow this page will probably take an interest in recent edits over at ]. ] (]) 21:46, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
:::The "racial admixture studies" section is mostly based on a chapter by John C. Loehlin in the ''Handbook of Intelligence'', a secondary source. Loehlin says the results of the Witty and Jenkins study do not appear to be genetic, because the study shows that high-IQ black people don't have an above-average degree of european ancestry. So this is a racial admixture study that argues for an environmental cause of the IQ gap and not a genetic one. But Loehlin says there are other racial admixture studies that suggest a genetic difference, and that none of the studies are conclusive. His eventual conclusion is just that more research is needed before the question can be answered for sure. This is a reason why it's a bad idea to label this as either a "genetic argument" or an "environmental argument". Loehlin says there are racial admixture studies that argue for both conclusions, and he doesn't take a strong stand in either direction about which is correct.] (]) 23:16, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

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Section sizes
Section size for Race and intelligence (31 sections)
Section name Byte
count
Section
total
(Top) 2,627 2,627
History of the controversy 3,119 11,838
Early IQ testing 3,763 3,763
The Pioneer Fund and The Bell Curve 4,956 4,956
Conceptual issues 25 12,777
Intelligence and IQ 3,402 3,402
Race 9,350 9,350
Group differences 2,017 11,749
Test scores 6,620 6,620
Flynn effect and the closing gap 3,112 3,112
Environmental factors 26 28,726
Health and nutrition 8,895 8,895
Education 4,630 4,630
Socioeconomic environment 3,656 3,656
Test bias 2,671 2,671
Stereotype threat and minority status 8,848 8,848
Research into possible genetic factors 4,981 27,192
Genetics of race and intelligence 4,001 4,001
Heritability within and between groups 4,588 4,588
Spearman's hypothesis 3,826 3,826
Adoption studies 4,255 4,255
Racial admixture studies 2,450 2,450
Mental chronometry 1,939 1,939
Brain size 937 937
Archaeological data 215 215
Policy relevance and ethics 2,717 2,717
See also 142 142
References 18 50,123
Notes 28 28
Citations 31 31
Bibliography 50,046 50,046
Total 147,891 147,891

? view · edit Frequently asked questions Is there really a scientific consensus that there is no evidence for a genetic link between race and intelligence? Yes, and for a number of reasons. Primarily: Isn't it true that different races have different average IQ test scores? On average and in certain contexts, yes, though these differences have fluctuated and in many cases steadily decreased over time. Crucially, the existence of such average differences today does not mean what racialists have asserted that it means (i.e. that races can be ranked according to their genetic predisposition for intelligence). Most IQ test data comes from North America and Europe, where non-White individuals represent ethnic minorities and often carry systemic burdens which are known to affect test performance. Studies which purport to compare the IQ averages of various nations are considered methodologically dubious and extremely unreliable. Further, important discoveries in the past several decades, such as the Flynn effect and the steady narrowing of the gap between low-scoring and high-scoring groups, as well as the ways in which disparities such as access to prenatal care and early childhood education affect IQ, have led to an understanding that environmental factors are sufficient to account for observed between-group differences. And isn't IQ a measure of intelligence? Not exactly. IQ tests are designed to measure intelligence, but it is widely acknowledged that they measure only a very limited range of an individual's cognitive capacity. They do not measure mental adaptability or creativity, for example. You can read more about the limitations of IQ measurements here. These caveats need to be kept in mind when extrapolating from IQ measurements to statements about intelligence. But even if we were to take IQ to be a measure of intelligence, there would still be no good reason to assert a genetic link between race and intelligence (for all the reasons stated elsewhere in this FAQ). Isn't there research showing that there are genetic differences between races? Yes and no. A geneticist could analyze a DNA sample and then in many cases make an accurate statement about that person's race, but no single gene or group of genes has ever been found that defines a person's race. Such variations make up a minute fraction of the total genome, less even than the amount of genetic material that varies from one individual to the next. It's also important to keep in mind that racial classifications are socially constructed, in the sense that how a person is classified racially depends on perceptions, racial definitions, and customs in their society and can often change when they travel to a different country or when social conventions change over time (see here for more details). So how can different races look different, without having different genes? They do have some different genes, but the genes that vary between any two given races will not necessarily vary between two other races. Race is defined phenotypically, not genotypically, which means it's defined by observable traits. When a geneticist looks at the genetic differences between two races, there are differences in the genes that regulate those traits, and that's it. So comparing Africans to Europeans will show differences in genes that regulate skin color, hair texture, nose and lip shape, and other observable traits. But the rest of the genetic code will be essentially the same. In fact, there is much less genetic material that regulates the traits used to define the races than there is that regulates traits that vary from person to person. In other words, if you compare the genomes of two individuals within the same race, the results will likely differ more from each other than a comparison of the average genomes of two races. If you've ever heard people saying that the races "are more alike than two random people" or words to that effect, this is what they were referring to. Why do people insist that race is "biologically meaningless"? Mostly because it is. As explained in the answer to the previous question, race isn't defined by genetics. Race is nothing but an arbitrary list of traits, because race is defined by observable features. The list isn't even consistent from one comparison to another. We distinguish between African and European people on the basis of skin color, but what about Middle Eastern, Asian, and Native American people? They all have more or less the same skin color. We distinguish African and Asian people from European people by the shape of some of their facial features, but what about Native American and Middle Eastern people? They have the same features as the European people, or close enough to engender confusion when skin color is not discernible. Australian Aborigines share numerous traits with African people and are frequently considered "Black" along with them, yet they are descended from an ancestral Asian population and have been a distinct cultural and ethnic group for fifty thousand years. These standards of division are arbitrary and capricious; the one drop rule shows that visible differences were not even respected at the time they were still in use. But IQ is at least somewhat heritable. Doesn't that mean that observed differences in IQ test performance between ancestral population groups must have a genetic component? This is a common misconception, sometimes termed the "hereditarian fallacy". In fact, the heritability of differences between individuals and families within a given population group tells us nothing about the heritability of differences between population groups. As geneticist and neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell explains:

We need to get away from thinking about intelligence as if it were a trait like milk yield in a herd of cattle, controlled by a small, persistent and dedicated bunch of genetic variants that can be selectively bred into animals from one generation to the next. It is quite the opposite – thousands of variants affect intelligence, they are constantly changing, and they affect other traits. It is not impossible for natural selection to produce populations with differences in intelligence, but these factors make it highly unlikely.

To end up with systematic genetic differences in intelligence between large, ancient populations, the selective forces driving those differences would need to have been enormous. What’s more, those forces would have to have acted across entire continents, with wildly different environments, and have been persistent over tens of thousands of years of tremendous cultural change. Such a scenario is not just speculative – I would argue it is inherently and deeply implausible.

The bottom line is this. While genetic variation may help to explain why one person is more intelligent than another, there are unlikely to be stable and systematic genetic differences that make one population more intelligent than the next.

What about all the psychometricians who claim there's a genetic link? The short answer is: they're not geneticists. The longer answer is that there remains a well-documented problem of scientific racism, which has infiltrated psychometry (see e.g. and ). Psychometry is a field where people who advocate scientific racism can push racist ideas without being constantly contradicted by the very work they're doing. And when their data did contradict their racist views, many prominent advocates of scientific racism simply falsified their work or came up with creative ways to explain away the problems. See such figures as Cyril Burt, J. Phillipe Rushton, Richard Lynn, and Hans Eysenck, who are best known in the scientific community today for the poor methodological quality of their work, their strong advocacy for a genetic link between race and intelligence, and in some cases getting away with blatant fraud for many years. Isn't it a conspiracy theory to claim that psychometricians do this? No. It is a well-documented fact that there is an organized group of psychometricians pushing for mainstream acceptance of racist, unscientific claims. See this, this and this, as well as our article on scientific racism for more information. Isn't this just political correctness? No, it's science. As a group of scholars including biological anthropologists Agustín Fuentes of Princeton and Jonathan M. Marks of the University of North Carolina explain: "while it is true that most researchers in the area of human genetics and human biological diversity no longer allocate significant resources and time to the race/IQ discussion, and that moral concerns may play an important role in these decisions, an equally fundamental reason why researchers do not engage with the thesis is that empirical evidence shows that the whole idea itself is unintelligible and wrong-headed". These authors compare proponents of a genetic link between race and IQ to creationists, vaccine skeptics, and climate change deniers. At the same time, researchers who choose to pursue this line of inquiry have in no way been hindered from doing so, as is made clear by this article: . It's just that all the evidence they find points to environmental rather than genetic causes for observed differences in average IQ-test performance between racial groups. What about the surveys which say that most "intelligence experts" believe in some degree of genetic linkage between race and IQ?
  • These surveys are almost invariably conducted by advocates of scientific racism, and respondents to these surveys are also almost exclusively members of groups that promote scientific racism. In short, they are not representative samples of mainstream scientific opinion.
  • These surveys tend to have very low participation rates, and often consist of fewer than 100 respondents.
  • Many of the surveys suffer from methodological flaws, such as using leading questions. This leads to an increase in responses from those who agree, and a decrease from those who disagree.
  • Generally speaking, the better the methodology of the survey, the lower agreement it shows with the claim of a genetic link between race and intelligence.
  • Even the most poorly structured surveys, conducted among members of groups that are dominated by advocates for scientific racism, show much doubt and difference of opinion among respondents.
  • The vast majority of respondents have absolutely no qualifications to speak on genetics.
Is there really no evidence at all for a genetic link between race and intelligence? No evidence for such a link has ever been presented in the scientific community. Much data has been claimed to be evidence by advocates of scientific racism, but each of these claims has been universally rejected by geneticists. Statistical arguments claiming to detect the signal of such a difference in polygenic scores have been refuted as fundamentally methodologically flawed (see e.g. ), and neither genetics nor neuroscience are anywhere near the point where a mechanistic explanation could even be meaningfully proposed (see e.g. ). This is why the question of a genetic link between race and intelligence is largely considered pseudoscience; it is assumed to exist primarily by advocates of scientific racism, and in these cases the belief is based on nothing but preconceived notions about race. What is the current state of the science on a link between intelligence and race? Please see the article itself for an outline of the scientific consensus. What is the basis for Misplaced Pages's consensus on how to treat the material? Misplaced Pages editors have considered this topic in detail and over an extended period. In short, mainstream science treats the claim that genetics explains the observable differences in IQ between races as a fringe theory, so we use our own guidelines on how to treat such material when editing our articles on the subject. Please refer to the following past discussions:

Piffer (2015)

Piffer (2015) found differing frequencies of cognition and IQ-enhancing genes in different racial populations:

https://gwern.net/doc/iq/2015-piffer.pdf

Wiki Crazyman (talk) 23:39, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

See Intelligence (journal) for some well-sourced commentary on the merits of that particular publication. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:53, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
The criticism appears to be sourced to a journalistic piece in a progressive political magazine and another in a pop-sci magazine. 'Well-sourced commentary' such as this doesn't weigh heavily when it comes to a highly-regarded, peer-reviewed scientific journal. Elisha'o'Mine (talk) 01:42, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
'Highly regarded' went out the window when they had white supremacists on the editorial board. MrOllie (talk) 01:51, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
Even the two critical sources stated describe it as 'one of the most respected in its field' and 'a more respected psychology journal'.
If any experts in the field of intelligence research have made a case against the journal's reputation, then its reliability could be questioned. As it is we have mixed criticism from two journalists of a well regarded peer-reviewed publication. Elisha'o'Mine (talk) 02:11, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
Nah. We can discard a source without needing to meet your personal standard, which doesn't have any relation to Misplaced Pages's policies so far as I can tell. It is worth mentioning, though, that the SPLC (noted experts on racism) published an article that spends multiple paragraphs on this specific paper and how it shouldn't be used as a source. A sample quote: Piffer’s credentials, affiliations and the scientific merit of the paper itself are suspect - MrOllie (talk) 02:54, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
Based on which Wiki policy are you discarding it as a source? It's used several times in articles related to intelligence research.
Not than an advocacy organization's opinion really is of note when it comes to population genetics, I do note that these several SPLC paragraphs go into no more detail than to state that scientific merit of the paper itself are suspect (no reasons for this assessment or counterarguments given, at all), to question the author's credibility and to state that there are no reliable sources to dispute it. Which adds up to nothing in particular from an organisation with absolutely no standing in scientific matters. Elisha'o'Mine (talk) 03:38, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
If this Piffer article is used several times, please point those usages out specifically because those definitely need to be removed. MrOllie (talk) 04:10, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
As per my original comment and your response to it, I'm referring to the journal Intelligence. Which seems to have somehow achieved the status of a 'pick-and-choose' source.
The argument against mention of the Piffer paper, whether it's flawed research or not, requires something more than commentary from a civil rights organisation. Elisha'o'Mine (talk) 04:30, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
Contrary to what you might imagine, we rely on editor judgement for evaluating source reliability all the time, and Piffer is definitely a fringe source per our guideline. This would be ascertainable even without explicit debunking in a scholarly source. Some pseudo-scholars are too insignificant to draw that kind of attention. That said, here is a fine peer-reviewed source that explains in no uncertain terms what is so profoundly unscientific about Piffer's methodology. No matter how you squirm, you will get nowhere with this line of argumentation. Generalrelative (talk) 06:38, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
A preprint is not a fine peer-reviewed anything.
Our guideline places Piffer as a fringe source based on his conclusions, or is it his associations?
I'm aware that a past RFC prematurely declared the suggestion that genetics plays a role in population group IQ differences to be 'fringe' rather than merely minority. As RFCs aren't binding and consensus can change at any time, hopefully this will be rectified at some point. Though a consensus against it is emerging, the idea hasn't been conclusively refuted and research is ongoing. Elisha'o'Mine (talk) 08:10, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
The author of that paper is Kevin Bird. Kevin Bird also said: "The past isn't an indication of how the future behaves...I do science because I find it intellectually engaging, to be completely honest...I do it with not as much interest in attaining or discovering truth." He then said that he is "not interested in discovering truth". It is completely impossible to take a person like that seriously. And that paper's not peer reviewed. Hi! (talk) 05:38, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
Bird et al. has now been published by American Psychologist, the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association. It is no longer a preprint. As to your gotcha quote about "truth"... Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall. Generalrelative (talk) 05:57, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the updated cite. But an Indiana Jones meme? What am I supposed to take away from that? Hi! (talk) 06:24, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
That your attempt to smear Bird is thoroughly unconvincing. Also see Misplaced Pages:Verifiability, not truth. MrOllie (talk) 12:20, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
The SPLC aren't experts on genetics, and they don't cite any scientific publications in their article to critique Piffer. The closest they come is citing a non-peer-reviewed book review of a book Piffer didn't write. Hi! (talk) 05:40, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
The SPLC may be experts on racism, but is there any evidence that they're experts on science? Wiki Crazyman (talk) 23:21, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
Correctly identifying racist pseudoscience is part of their expertise, yes. It's not like they're commenting on an article about astronomy. MrOllie (talk) 23:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
Pseudoscience is that which does not employ the scientific method. Neither the SPLC nor Bird have made such an extreme claim about the Piffer paper. Bird may have the expertise to critique the methodology employed, but anything of the sort is well beyond the SPLC's realm of expertise. Elisha'o'Mine (talk) 14:42, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
Please also read OpenPsych concerning the journal co-founded by Davide Piffer. NightHeron (talk) 23:57, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Notification about Misplaced Pages:Articles_for_deletion/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence_(3rd_nomination)

I posted already on WP:FTN, but would like more eyes on the discussion to provide more perspectives.

Also I tried editing the article, to give it more substance, but this is not my area of expertise. Please feel free to clean it up anyway you want. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 05:20, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Test scores

The Test Scores section has a paragraph discussing disparities in academic achievement and math test scores in the UK, but surely those are a less reliable measurement of intelligence than general mental ability (GMA) tests, such as those discussed here? Is there any objection to replacing this paragraph with the results from this meta-analysis of GMA tests? Stonkaments (talk) 04:03, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

There is no reason to remove the current text or the sources used, but feel free to suggest additional text sourced to for discussion here to reach consensus. How to define intelligence and what's a less or more reliable way to measure it are controversial. Many believe that intelligence includes many disparate capacities and that there cannot be a numerical value that measures general intelligence.
Note that the reliability of your source is very questionable, since all three authors are closely associated with either Mankind Quarterly (see also Jan te Nijenhuis) or OpenPsych. NightHeron (talk) 06:39, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

References

  1. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/1359432X.2024.2377780?needAccess=true

Anyone around who can check recent edits for Richard Lynn?

Thanks. Doug Weller talk 13:00, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Genome-wide association study recent changes

Editors who follow this page will probably take an interest in recent edits over at Genome-wide association study. MrOllie (talk) 21:46, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

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