Talk:Race and intelligence

This page was suggested for deletion in June 2005, and consensus was a clear keep. You can still read the discussion, though it is no longer live.

• Archived discussions: Archive 9 (inherent language bias) Archive 8 (mediation by Uncle Ed) Archive 7, Archive 6, Archive 5, Archive 4, Archive 3, Archive 2, and Archive 1.
• Please maintain professionalism in your posts, even on emotional topics like race and intelligence. Don't speculate on the motives of the other contributors to this article. If you want to volunteer at Wikipedia, follow the civility guidelines: See Wikipedia:avoid personal remarks

a note for Ultramarine

What was wrong with the bold part of this sentence? --Rikurzhen 16:42, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

Several published consensus statements agree that the large differences between the average IQ scores of Blacks and Whites cannot be attributed to biases in test construction, nor do they "simply reflect differences in socio-economic status" (Neisser et al., 1996).

This statement seems exclude any kind of influence of SES which is certainly debated today. Ultramarine 16:55, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think they merely mean to exclude simple influences of SES. Can we say that instead? By simple, I think they mean in a model w/o a race X SES interaction factor, it doesn't seem like SES; but that's not easy to summarize... which is why I was going for a quotation. --Rikurzhen 17:00, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

How about, nor can they be explained only by differences in SES. Ultramarine 17:07, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

done... just by simple differences --Rikurzhen 17:12, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

We need to be careful with this sentence: --Rikurzhen 16:42, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

The Black-White gap is smaller in the UK than in the U.S. [1]

I don't doubt that the data exists, merely that we can be certain of the interpretation presented on this blog. I suggest is --> may be unless we can find a published secondary source to make that interpretation certain. alternatively, we can do the some reports indicate that... form.

"Some reports indicate" is fine. Ultramarine 16:55, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hybrid vigor

I've started doing a little research on hybrid vigor and my first Google hit produced an interesting illustration of what hybridizing previously isolated lineages can do. People are not maize, but maize may be food for thought. I just thought I'd pass it along: http://maizeandgenetics.tamu.edu/hybridvigor.htm P0M 14:38, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Figures

What software was used to draw the figures? Dd2 11:18, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Excel. Powerpoint to color the top figure. Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator for touch-up. --Rikurzhen 14:43, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)

Deletions ex machina?

I have noticed 4 (?) cases of deletions, all since Wikipedia came back with new software or whatever it was they changed. That kind of thing has never happened before in the history of this discussion over the last 2-3 months. It seems always to be the po sting that follows newly inserted material that gets wiped. So I suggest that we just watch it for a while and not assume that anybody is maliciously or carelessly wiping stuff out.

It is possible that the page has grown to such lengths that some software is choking on the memory burden. P0M 29 June 2005 04:27 (UTC)

No, there is a bug in the new upgrade software. It has been discussed on the wikien-l@wikipedia.org email list. Check after each edit to see if something has been deleted that was unintended.--Silverback June 29, 2005 05:30 (UTC)

SB is right. rant removed as requested -- Uncle Ed (talk) June 29, 2005 15:25 (UTC)

No personal attacks. Yes, developers are people too. ;) -Willmcw June 29, 2005 16:39 (UTC)

Deletions ex machina indeed! -Willmcw June 29, 2005 21:12 (UTC)

Uhhh. What I meant was that the deletions may well have been coming "out of the machine" rather than being attributable to any specific person. (I was seeing postings starting with, "XYZ please do not delete my postings." If you see one such deletion it may well be that somebody did it by mistake somehow, but four or five in a row makes that possibility very unlikely, and it appeared very unlikely to me that there was any malicious intent involved. Two possibilities occurred to me, one, that "there is a bug in the new upgrade software," and the other was that since some computers in the past have had trouble with large blocks of text something odd might be happening with what an individual's computer sent back to Wikipedia as the result of doing an edit. P0M 29 June 2005 21:36 (UTC)

Unanswered questions on apparent racist method of presentation

Why did someone archive discussions that were active as of a few hours ago? The archiving is rather surprising considering some people kept repeating that I never provide citations but when I do they archive, damage the quality of the text or misdirect away in a myriad of different ways. Anyway, here are some unanswered questions and citations that prove there is no consensus to frame this issue exclusively in terms of race.

• The following article goes into some detail about my similar point that the issue is framed entirely in terms of race so everyone is constantly thinking about it exclusively in terms of race, which is exactly how a racist would want us to think. "The new 'race scientists' want us to view everything in terms of... 'race'" [2]

• The above URL is from a larger series of articles with tons of info "The current attack on black people using phony science" [3]

• "Intellectual tricks can always fool those receptive to racism" [4]
• "Bad Science makes for Bad Conclusions" [5]
• "How Media Let The Bell Curve's Pseudo-Science Define the Agenda on Race" [6] zen master T 29 June 2005 18:42 (UTC)

Zenmaster, I did the archiving. It was a pretty large task, but I am sorry if I missed something that was still "live". Thank you for bringing back your considerations; I will try to be more careful in the future.Arbor 29 June 2005 19:45 (UTC)

To actually answer your questions, thank you so much for providing this material. On the face of it, these things seem to be (as Rik put it) tertiary sources that discuss secondary sources (for example, The Bell Curve). Note that the latter work is not the cornerstone of our little article here, in fact very few citations use material from Hernstein and Murray. Instead, most of the material in the article is based on primary sources, i.e., studies that appeared in peer-reviewed journals. It would be apt if your counterpoints exhibited a similar degree of reliability. But I will be happy to go through all of them in detail, maybe there is an observation or two that we can put in the introductory section. (You can do that yourself, if you want.) Arbor 29 June 2005 19:45 (UTC)

Your point about "peer reviewed journals" ignores criticisms of the method of presentation and the media's complicity in errantly framing this issue. The first two URLs are from 2004 and cover the entire "race" vs "IQ" scheme so your point about it only being applicable against the bell curve or "secondary sources" is also invalid. The first thing this article needs is a title change, to IQ test controversy or something better. zen master T 29 June 2005 19:52 (UTC)

The sources ZM has provided are all media sources. I cannot find a single study among them. Moreover, the sources are rather shrill and suffer from their own factual deficits. As just one example, the page referenced by ZM's first bullet point, in criticizing a genetic argument, says,

"First of all, it is false that 'evolution has turned out Ashkenazi Jews with a genetic predisposition to Tay Sachs.'"

The author's argument is that Tay Sachs is deleterious, thus it couldn't have evolved. The author clearly hasn't the first clue about genetics. Heterozygosity for a particular gene confers malaria resistance, but homozygosity causes sickle-cell anemia; the gene persists because of its heterozygous benefit. The analogy to Tay Sachs is essentially perfect, as Tay Sachs also involves a homozygous-lethal allele whose heterozygous form has recently (and quite topically) been implicated in Ashkenazim IQ advantages (Cochran 2005).

The above simply underscores the importance of reliance on peer-reviewed science rather than credulous online media screeds. Kindly provide some peer-reviewed science comparable to the material already in the article. I'd be impressed even by some factual online media screeds, at this point. --DAD 29 June 2005 20:34 (UTC)

I created IQ test controversy a couple of days ago. Please expand it. -- Uncle Ed (talk) June 29, 2005 20:30 (UTC)

Mediator's role

Hey, is this mediation over? Everyone on speaking terms again? Can I comment on the article as an ordinary mortal? -- Uncle Ed (talk) June 29, 2005 20:33 (UTC)

From my vantage point, yeah, please! --DAD 29 June 2005 20:36 (UTC)

Okay, here goes nothing! -- Uncle Ed (talk) June 29, 2005 20:47 (UTC)

I do not consider you a mediator or neutral as far as this subject goes, nice try though. Did you just appoint yourself "mediator"? You guys are masters at deception and misdirecting away from the core of the issue. zen master T 30 June 2005 02:56 (UTC)

As explained previously, Uncle Ed is an administrator who's presence was requested by one of the users here because a user was making accusations and name-calling in a way that some users felt to be inappropriate.--Nectarflowed ^T 30 June 2005 05:26 (UTC)

Now that the name-calling has stopped, I have resumed ordinary participation in the crafting of this article - and related articles. In case you haven't noticed, I started: *IQ test controversy, and also

• Race and IQ

You should be flattered, Z! Both articles were inspired by something you said. -- Uncle Ed (talk) June 30, 2005 19:58 (UTC)

Problems with this topic

1. Terms are unclear / in dispute
   • "race" means skin color but also has cultural & historical connotations
   • "intelligence" has never been defined well
2. Some racial/ethnic groups score measurably lower on average than others on IQ tests and college entrance exams
   • Some people positively GLOAT over this
   • Some people want to pretend it's not happening
   • Some people say the tests are biased
   • There's a long running social and legal battle over remedies for this "problem", e.g., affirmative action

All of the above complicate the (purely scientific) task of objectively determining what the relationship has been, is, or could be - between "race" and "intelligence".

That's my two cents. -- Uncle Ed (talk) June 29, 2005 20:53 (UTC)

Re: "'race' means skin color..." Race is not as poorly defined as it's often made out to be, and does accurately refer to genetic groups (Tang 2005).[7]--Nectarflowed ^T 29 June 2005 21:37 (UTC)

Ed, I think you are right about the diagnosis. The question now, I think, is whether it is sufficient to simply hyperlink the words "race" and "intelligence" to other articles, expect general readers to inform themselves, expect them to carry a correct understanding back to this article, and so forth. If we were dealing with a less momentous topic we might take the attitude that it is the readers' fault when they fail to figure out what is really going on. But I believe that we have a social responsibility to frame the information somehow so that people do not jump to the conclusion that the present article title suggests, that one's race determines one's intelligence. The way that people ordinarily see things, unfortunately, makes them replace the word "some" with the word "all" without being consciously aware that they're doing it. "Some men are stronger than any woman" becomes "(All) men are stronger than women." The same kind of reasoning, especially at an emotional level, also applies to questions of [race] and [intelligence]. Do we try to deal with this kind of thing in the way we write the article, or not? P0M 29 June 2005 21:58 (UTC)

You claim that we have a "social responsibility", but is the point of an encyclopedia to provide information, or is it to shape a reader's mind and lead him or her to socially desirable thoughts and actions? I believe it is the former. Dd2 29 June 2005 22:16 (UTC)

So do I. The meaning of information is dependent on context. (And I don't "claim," I just "believe.") P0M 29 June 2005 22:48 (UTC)

I agree with the general claim (belief) that readers should not be misled. However, the "reader error" here has been taken to what I feel are unreasonable extremes. "Race and intelligence" does not mention any races, specify the nature or direction of the relationship, or make value judgments. The only statements that the title makes are that there is something called Race worthy of discussion, something called Intelligence, and some relationship between them. The day that Race or Intelligence (trait) adopts scare-quotes/qualifications, so should we. Until such a day, the title says no more or less than those two titles plus a conjunction. That conjunction is justified by the article's content on all sides of the issue. (That is, the views of pure debunkers like Gould fall neatly under "race and intelligence".)

There exists an enormous literature on race and intelligence, from scientific studies to popular treatments like Gould's work. Across almost all of those works, intelligence appears to be the most widely used term for measures of cognitive ability, and race appears to fill the same role for group ancestry. Given the area of inquiry's existence and importance, we should have an encyclopedia article on it, and we should not get hung up on what people might improperly infer from the use of the most common words in the title. We should start the article with some disclaimers, and to my mind, the whole front-end is practically dripping with everyone's cumulative caveats. Enough, already. --DAD 29 June 2005 23:18 (UTC)

Patrick wrote:

we have a social responsibility to frame the information somehow so that people do not jump to the conclusion that the present article title suggests, that one's race determines one's intelligence

Well, why don't we say in the introductory paragraphs that the article examines the question of how race and intelligence may or may not be related? I would suggest:

• Researchers have long sought to define the relationship between "race" (i.e. skin color) and intelligence. Some, such as Prof. Q of University #1, assert that race correlates strongly with IQ test scores. Others, such as Prof. R and Politician S, dispute the accuracy of Q's assertion.

We might even go so far as to say:

• Q argues from this correlation that there exists a "racial disparity" which he explains with the hypothesis that:

  the darker you are, the dumber you are (Journal of Irreproducible Results, Volume -6, page 4F)

• R and S loudly contend than Q is just a racist who:

  deliberately ignores other factors such as wealth and educational attainments of the test taker's parents; cultural bias in the tests themselves; the lingering effects of centuries of slavery and segregation; and the parodoxical attraction of under-educated sports heroes.

Okay, we can leave out the sports heroes, but that's how i would like to start things off. Nobody could possibly misconstrue it, anyway. -- Uncle Ed (talk) June 30, 2005 01:13 (UTC)

In addition to its flippancy, this proposal has numerous problems which suggest only passing familiarity with the subject.

Most importantly, your statements misrepresent the debate as it exists in the literature and even on this site. That some racial groups in the U.S. have different average scores on cognitive tests is beyond dispute. What people are disputing, here, is whether there is anything meaningfully called a "racial group", whether cognitive tests have anything to do with the common-sense concept of intelligence, and whether any meaningful relationship exists (or, in extreme cases, whether the two subjects can even be placed in conjunction).

No scientist I'm aware of has "asserted" a correlation between race and IQ test scores ("assertion: Something declared or stated positively, often with no support or attempt at proof"). Correlations have been reported, and explanatory relationships have been both reported and hypothesized. Moreover, I don't know of anyone in this discussion who would equate race with skin color as you have ("i.e." means "that is"). I'm strenuously opposed to the use of labels like "racist" in the article, and hopefully do not need to belabor the reasons.

All these distinctions matter, and it is precisely this kind of fine-toothed comb that the present article has been subjected to over many months. I would urge great care in suggesting changes. All that said, I welcome your input. --DAD 30 June 2005 01:58 (UTC)

IMHO, the current article covers the appropriate distinctions sufficiently; or rather as best as we can w/o violating policy. Re-read the article and I think you'll see it's very carefully written. If this were a personal essay, I would emphasize the distinction between thinking about races/intellligence in terms of Platonic typologies/categories versus statistical populations/distributions. But I don't know of any good references to support making that kind of distinction matter-of-factly in the intro of this article, so we are left with more basic (citation supportable) claims like the distributions of IQ scores overlap. --Rikurzhen June 30, 2005 02:58 (UTC)

Rationale for recent changes

• There is no nothing approaching consensus on whether IQ is an objective measure of intelligence, so that is why I changed the title to Race and IQ. Though my other title criticisms as far as the issue errantly being framed only one way still apply (see above and in the archive).
• I cleaned up suspicious, repeated out of place emphasis in the "Background information" section. Can someone explain that, what use did it serve?
• I cleaned up the wording of the intro for the sake of clarity. The pro "correlation equals a conclusion" people can add to it or dispute my changes if they want. I am still trying to figure out what the correlation study authors have come up with, seems to me they have only, repeatedly, described a correlation, and have not, and don't seem to be working toward, trying to find an actual cause for the correlation (description of a correlation does not equal causation for that correlation).

Comments? zen master T 30 June 2005 06:06 (UTC)

Zen, you cannot do this. We have debated the title at length over the last few weeks. The article has been through a VfD. There was nothing even approaching consensus for renaming, changing, or moving this article to Race and IQ. You are POV-pushing and violating WP etiquette. It is difficult to view this as an act of good faith, and I will revert you.

To reiterate the main reason to oppose the name change: the article is not only about IQ. It is also about SAT, g, brain size, and reaction time. Race and IQ is a misleading title. Arbor 30 June 2005 06:18 (UTC)

Huh? All the other correlations are even more dubious. "IQ" is less misleading as a title than an unscientifically conclusive correlation with "intelligence". How can certain "races" have good "reaction time" in sports yet not when it comes to intelligence? That does not make sense, this article is one giant racist propaganda machine. There is no consensus for what you are saying, the title and article should reflect where the lack of consensus begins which is exactly the changes I made. How do you explain the emphasis all over the history section? Can you please restore exactly the changes that you do consider "good"? If you don't explain the full revert then I will revert. zen master T 30 June 2005 06:47 (UTC)

I'm sorry, Zen, but you are breaking Wikiquette, not me. We have discussed this article at length here, and in the VfD. To make a substantial change (like moving the article's title and making it be only about IQ, not about other measures of intelligence) you need consensus among Wikipedia editors. You don't have that. Quite the contrary, actually. So you are out of line, from an administrative point of view. Lacking consensus for a major change, the status quo is to be maintained. That's how we do it here.

You are also wrong about your repeated allegations of us being unscientific. There is a scientific journal (peer-reviewed) called Intelligence. It is not called “Intelligence” (in quotes) not IQ nor Intelligence measures nor anything like that. It's called Intelligence. That is the term used by the scientific community to discuss the topics pertaining to this article. (Studies of Race and IQ are a subfield of this line of inquiry.) You may not like that. You may think it's misguided, racist, stupid, inflammatory, and whatnot. But it is strictly scientific. (Again, I urge you to have a look at Mainstream science on intelligence or the APA report.) So please stop labelling our endeavors as unscientific. Indeed, it would be welcome if you yourself increased the level of scientific reliability in your contributions. So far, you have posted web pages. Stop doing that, and refer us to peer-reviewed scientific papers that contradict what is said in this article, preferably some that are not already mentioned here. Your scientific method so far has been google. The rest of the editors use peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals.

As to your changes, some of them I quite liked and I will be happy to put them back (you write good prose, and some of the bumpier passages improved from your attention). But the majority were either heavily POV, or simply bad Wikipedia style. For example, you removed a lot of wikilinks and boldface on title terms. You also boldly removed a few paragraphs whose removal you must have assumed were controversial. You need to take these things up in talk first. Arbor 30 June 2005 09:08 (UTC)

Amen. ZM, build consensus. We're literally in the middle of discussing possible changes to the intro here; your etiquette violation is quite astonishing. Propose the changes here, and let's discuss. You will not be able to remake a relatively stable community-edited article in your own image overnight. Arbor's reaction is perfectly justified. --DAD 30 June 2005 14:43 (UTC)

If it is your own, personal POV that race and intelligence are unrelated then:

1. You are welcome to say so, here, on the talk page. We will all take note of your opinion.
2. You may not mention your opinion in the article, either as I Zen-master believe this or Wikipedia says so
3. You might be able to find a published source which sees the matter from the same POV. In which case, please make sure that this POV is in the article, properly sourced. -- Uncle Ed (talk) June 30, 2005 15:08 (UTC)

But you may not change an article title to make it seem as if Wikipedia endorses or condemns a particular point of view. You said something like race and intelligince are unrelated and so you changed the title of the article to race and IQ. Is that correct? -- Uncle Ed (talk) June 30, 2005 15:11 (UTC)

I am not saying what you claim. The issue isn't about my "POV" of thinking that "race" and "IQ" are "unrelated" as you misdirect, the issue is the non neutral and unscientific presentation of this subject. The problems with this article are beyond POV, only one way of describing the issue is being allowed, why? That does not follow the scientific method. If your or the article's goal is to prove some "races" are inherently less "intelligent" you have failed miserably given the fact that the language trickery and lack of scientific method employed by you and the article taints any conclusions or assumed conclusions. "Peer reviewed journals" doesn't mean much if "researchers" and people such as yourself ignore valid criticisms, especially when the criticisms are pointing out how the issue is unscientifically framed. zen master T 30 June 2005 17:08 (UTC)

That's not my goal at all. If you'll check out my contribs you'll see what I've been doing. The three main POVs are (1) race determines intelligence, (2) environment determines intelligence, (3) no one knows what determines intelligence. If you think I'm pushing one of these, I couldn't begin to think why. -- Uncle Ed (talk) June 30, 2005 20:03 (UTC)

On the IQ vs. other measures point, what's your (ZM) citation for "dubious" correlations between other measures? In particular, I'm thinking of g, where work on Spearman's hypothesis has quite reliably shown a positive correlation between g loading of a test and the degree of black-white score disparity. This work is treated (and cited) on Race and intelligence (Culture-only or partially-genetic explanation). This work is crucial as g is the most widely accepted measure of cognitive ability (see the APA report) and would be discounted by the title "Race and IQ". Moreover, "...[the ability to deal with cognitive complexity] coincides well with lay perceptions of intelligence. The g factor is especially important in just the kind of behaviors that people usually associate with 'smarts'..." "The g factor is also the one attribute that best distinguishes among persons considered gifted, average or retarded." (Gottfredson 1998). To summarize the dominant scholarly view, g measures what people seem to mean by intelligence, and measures it well.

Finally, given your preoccupation with language abuses, please don't use "dubious" to describe correlations. Do you mean "statistically insignificant"? If so, please re-read the literature. Do you mean "small"? If so, please provide examples (preferably from the literature) to help the reader calibrate. Do you mean "unreliable"? Then report the conflicting results. --DAD 30 June 2005 15:43 (UTC)

The fact that correlation "researchers" have repeatedly focused on just one way of looking at the issue taints the analysis and all inferred conclusions and is therefore dubious. G theory seems like a way of further misdirecting the issue. The controversy begins before interpreting the difference. Are IQ tests an objective measure of intelligence? Why only focus on one bit of data warehouse type information about the test taker? Why isn't nutrition/environment given a scientific chance at being presented neutrally? zen master T 30 June 2005 18:12 (UTC)

Correlation between race and "IQ"

I found this after only a few seconds of googling:

The research on IQ and race by Arthur Jensen, William Shockley, Herrnstein and Murray (The Bell Curve) and others have not found any significant correlations between race and intelligence. They have found correlations between race and IQ, which has been used to support the notion that some races are inferior to others. [8]

Is this what you're referring to, Zen-master? -- Uncle Ed (talk) June 30, 2005 15:21 (UTC)

I think most of the editors here know the skepdic passage by heart. I am personally a member of the Skeptic society, and find the entry completely unacceptable. It was, however, among the first things I learned about the subject, so it has been very influential. Afterwards, I started to read less biased accounts, actually examining the data, and had to change my mind. So please read at least the "reader comments" section after the skepdic entry; to see that this is a hotly debated issue even among skeptics, and this entry is subject to a lot of scorn. Also, one of the editors of the Skeptic society's magazine (Frank Miele) has written at length about this subject, including a very good and lengthy interview with Jensen in book form. I repeat that google really isn't the most powerful form of scientific inquiry known to mankind, and if you want to read up about the subject (which I would heartily invite you to), start with Rushton and Jensen (2005), which you can download. There you can find a very comprehensive survey of peer-reviewed, scholarly works that establish a correlation between Race and XYZ for lots of XYZ other than IQ, all related to whatever fuzzy concept of intelligence one might subscribe to. (Of course, instead of going to Rushton and Jensen, you could also just trust your own Wikipedia editors and read the current article instead. It's less convincing, because we aim for NPOV, but it's very well referenced.) Arbor 30 June 2005 15:36 (UTC)

I'll go a bit further. The statement you have found by Googling is false; see above and, in particular, the Spearman's hypothesis work on race and g referenced in Race and intelligence (Culture-only or partially-genetic explanation). Another poster child for why we need primary sources, not Web opinions. --DAD 30 June 2005 15:43 (UTC)

I didn't say the statement was true. But I mention it because it seems to resonate with a repeated comment by ZM.

Nor did I imply that you believed the statement. Only saying that it's demonstrably false. As such, given that several of us continue to agitate for primary sources, it adds little. We have N references from websites supporting ZM, but precious few primary research articles. --DAD 30 June 2005 17:14 (UTC)

Also, there seems to be a considerable controversy over the correlation between skin color or race, and scores on IQ tests. So I have started a new article on race and IQ.

I hope Wikipedia's series of articles on human intelligence will cover the broad scope of academic and social views.

No argument here. I hope that the reader will not be confused as to which is which. As a population geneticist, I'm (obviously) appalled at the degree to which unsubstantiated claims and ludicrous mudslinging (e.g. the quote comparing Jensen's [supposed, unstated] goals to those of Hitler), counterfactual statements (e.g. "The research...has found no significant correlation between race and intelligence"), and outright falsehoods (e.g., that the APA denounced The Bell Curve as fraudulent) are mixed together with data from top journals. My view is that there should be a clear distinction between the science, the academic criticism, and the lay debate, which bears almost no relation to the expert debate. --DAD 30 June 2005 17:14 (UTC)

And I'd still like to hear from Z. -- Uncle Ed (talk) June 30, 2005 16:47 (UTC)

Brain size info moved to craniometry page

Much of the info on brain size and structure was moved to the craniometry page. But much of that info, such as info on studies using MRI or autopsy, or the info on cephalic indices, is not directly related to craniometry. Perhaps it deserves its own page, maybe "Race and brain structure" or "Race and brain size"? Dd2 30 June 2005 17:36 (UTC)

Three POVs

On standardized intelligence tests, black Americans score an average of 10-15 IQ points lower than white Americans. There is no debate on this point. The controversy revolves around the interpretation of this difference. Some experts believe that the two groups differ in inherited abilities. Others argue that the difference in average IQ can be caused entirely by environmental differences between the two groups. A third view holds that genetic and environmental differences are so entwined that we cannot adequately resolve the controversy now.

Why can't we put it this way? -- Uncle Ed (talk) June 30, 2005 17:43 (UTC)

The presentation's fine. Given the centrality of these data to the entire page, I urge citations. I prefer the APA's language: "the Black mean is typically about one standard deviation (about 15 points) below that of Whites (Loehlin et al, 1975; Jensen, 1980; Reynolds et al, 1987)" as it a) is the standard way of reporting the data, b) gives both magnitude and basis for comparison, and c) is followed by several citations. --DAD 30 June 2005 17:59 (UTC)

You both have jumped to conclusions again, the controversy begins before interpreting the difference. Are IQ tests an objective measure of intelligence? Why repeatedly correlate with just one bit of data warehouse type information about the test taker? Why repeatedly frame an abstract issue just one way? You don't seem to allow for the possibility that nutrition/environment is 100% the cause? Your propaganda is slipping, it's only a matter of time now. Instead of "POVs" why don't we use the scientific method to frame this issue? zen master T 30 June 2005 18:06 (UTC)

The debate over whether IQ measures intelligence is treated on that page. The debate over what creates intelligence differences has never been framed solely or even largely in terms of race. However, the question of why races differ in measured intelligence is necessarily framed in terms of race, and the article properly entertains all respectable non-race-related explanations.

Editorial comment: ZM, you're teetering precipitously on the edge of being ignored (by at least me) for lack of productive/coherent contributions now, and not for lack of rather heroic attempts to accomodate your views. --DAD 30 June 2005 19:02 (UTC)

Here is how your language propaganda works, since you fortunately encapsulated it into just one sentence, you say "the question of why races differ in measured intelligence is necessarily framed in terms of race, and the article properly entertains all respectable non-race-related explanations" -- the fact is non "race" related explanations don't get a fair or scientific presentation if they are forced within your exclusive "race" descriptive framework. Why can't the nutrition cause possibility be described within the framework of a "nutrition disparity"? Please explain the scientific necessity that requires framing the abstract issue excluisvely in terms of race? Even a random racist would want to present this issue scientifically to achieve objective conclusions rather than use psychologically tricky language games, which is orders of magnitude more evil, I hope you enjoy your jail cell soon enough. zen master T 30 June 2005 19:26 (UTC)

ZM, I'm afraid your conduct has just crossed the line. We're done. For the more level-headed contributors who share ZM's concern, the question, "Why do races differ in measured intelligence?" is necessarily framed (i.e., stated) in terms of race because otherwise that question would not have a first noun. That's all. At no point in the article is race claimed to be the sole or even the dominant cause of intelligence differences. --DAD 30 June 2005 19:38 (UTC)