Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 71
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Captain Occam, I read your comment. Using the term "hereditary hypothesis"... You have not demonstrated that the hereditary hypothesis is viewed as a valid theory by psychologists. In fact, I doubt you'll find a citation which shows broad support for the idea that the hereditary hypothesis is a meaningful hypothesis. What you have found is significant support for the hypothesis that "environment plays an important role, and genetics could be involved too". Aprock (talk) 21:28, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
- I have explained at least three times in what way the sources I'm using support this argument. Each time, you have repeated this same assertion--"My sources don't support my claim"--while not even acknowledging my explanation of how they do. Until you at least make an attempt to address my point, your continued claiming of this is not meaningful. it’s no longer necessary for me to reply to you when the only thing I can reply with is re-explaining what I’ve explained multiple times before, which you’ve ignored each time. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:39, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
- I certainly haven't been ignoring what you've written. What I have been doing is trying to point out that your sources do not say what you think they do. The hereditary hypothesis is a minority/fringe view, and your sources support that position. The "Mainstream Science" editorial states that "Most experts believe that environment is important in pushing the bell curves apart, but that genetics could be involved too." That position rules out the hereditary hypothesis, which proposes something akin to the inverse: "that genetics is important in pushing the bell curves apart, but that environment could be involved too." Likewise your other source, the 2005 journal publication, illustrates that the hereditary conclusions of Rushton are actively disputed by other researchers. Aprock (talk) 21:54, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
- I think you may not be aware of what the hereditarian hypothesis actually says. If you listed to the NPR interview with Rushton that I linked to earlier, he says in it that he believes the IQ difference to be caused by 50% environment and 50% genetics. That’s what the hereditarian hypothesis is—not that the IQ difference is 100% genetic, but just that is has a substantial genetic component. If genetics are involved in causing the IQ difference, then the hereditarian hypothesis is right. So for this reason, saying “most researchers think genetics could be involved” means the exact same thing as, “most researchers think the hereditarian hypothesis could be right”.
- And you still haven’t addressed my point about the 2005 publication. I know they’re actively disputed by other researchers, but that has nothing to do with my point. If you want to dispute my conclusion about this, address the point that I actually made about it. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:12, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
- Yes, the hereditarian hypothesis is that genetics play a significant role in determining the shape of IQ test curves for racial populations. "genetics could be involved" != "hereditarian hypothesis could be right". WRT to the 2005 publication, you seem to be saying "because it was published, it MUST be a mainstream hypothesis". That sort of leap is awfully close to original research. The hereditarian hypothesis is a minority/fringe hypothesis will very little (no?) genetic data to support it. Aprock (talk) 22:23, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
- No, that’s not what I’m saying. I can’t believe I need to explain this again. I’m just going to quote my earlier comment about this:
- “This issue of Psychology, Public Policy and Law contains papers by seven authors. Three of them argue for the hereditarian hypothesis, two of them argue against it, and two of them offer a combination of criticism and qualified support. While this is obviously a pretty small sample, I maintain that the fact that a well-respected peer-reviewed journal chose to frame the issue in this manner is an argument that the psychology community views this as a valid hypothesis.”
- And then again:
- “You’re missing my point. The indication is just the fact that a well-known, well-respected psychology journal chose to present the issue in this particular way. For something like creationism or the flat-earth view, which is regarded as truly fringe, you would never see a professional journal attempting to present the controversy about it in a balanced manner like this.”
- In response to this, you disputed whether creationism was presented in a balanced way by peer-reviewed journals in the 1920s, which is irrelevant for reasons that I explained. This is what you need to address if you want to address my point, and which so far you’ve been ignoring.
- The other point is incredibly simple logic. If genetics are involved in causing the IQ difference, then the hereditarian hypothesis is right. Therefore, any statement that refers to possibility of genetics being involved in causing the IQ difference is, by proxy, referring to the possibility of the hereditarian hypothesis being right. This is because genetics being involved in causing it is what the hereditarian hypothesis says.
- I’m not going to explain this again. If you continue to just claim that I’m wrong without acknowledging either of these points, I’m going to just refer back to this comment, and point out that you’re continuing to ignore my point no matter how many times I make it. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:36, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
- I've acknowledged these points, and explained to you why those points aren't valid. Allow me to try one more time (1) publication does not indicate anything other than the articles were worthy of publising. (2) genetics being involved != hereditarian hypothesis. Aprock (talk) 22:42, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
- Hey, just as long as the article clearly indicates that the majority view is that genetics may play some role in racial differences in IQ... Fixentries (talk) 22:44, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
- Whether you want it or not, genetics is clearly a factor in IQ differences. Just think of certain people with mental retardation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.29.241.123 (talk) 22:47, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
- 1: I’m not talking about the fact that it was published. I’m talking about the fact that a professional journal devoted an entire issue to this controversy, with a collection of papers arguing both for and against this position. This is something you would not see if they didn’t take it seriously as a hypothesis, which is why you don’t see it for things like creationism.
- Claiming that my argument is just based on the fact that it’s been published is a strawman.
- 2: The hereditarian hypothesis is that genetics is making enough of a contribution in the IQ difference to be considered significant. How is this different from saying that genetics is “involved” in causing it? The only difference is a semantic one, so if you aren’t willing to equate the two, you’re splitting hairs. --Captain Occam (talk) 22:51, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
- There is a good amount of evidences suggesting that intelligence is inherited; however, saying that genetics is playing a major role in racial differences in IQ is another thing--although there are more evidences suggesting it is effectively the case. If it wasn't the case as Aprock suggests, scientists would not widely use psychometrical data in conjunction with biological data to assess heredity of intelligence in its different aspects. Even the slightest knowledge in physiology is enough to suggest that intellectual potential is determined by genetics as within a group there is a wide variety of brain morphology. Now, if that is the case, the hereditarian view is quite clearly acknowledged as not being a minority/fringe hypothesis, while lacking, or seeming to lack, public acknowledgment for obvious reasons. There are perhaps two confounding factors to genetics, namely, decisional and environmental factors. http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/28/41/10323 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WNP-4CTN475-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1040556075&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=821d19ec33c5f391c5dd9bae43fb160a —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aerain (talk • contribs) 23:36, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
(Outdent) Aprock, I can’t assume good faith about you here anymore. Nobody could have the same thing pointed out to them so many times, in so many different ways, and still believe the other person to be saying something other than what they actually are. I think you know that Wikipedia’s policy dictates nothing significant can be changed in the article without obtaining consensus, and that by continuing to stonewall like this you can prevent any kind of consensus from being reached, logic be damned. That seems to be the only thing you care about here.
I can’t stop you from doing this, but you need to realize (regarding your recent edits) that in this respect you can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you’re going to resist allowing any kind of consensus to be reached in the discussion here, so that I can't remove the tags from the article, that means none of your recent edits to the article are allowed to stay either.
Ramdrake, Slrubenstein, is this what you wanted? I know you care about the tags remaining in the article, and I also notice you’ve dropped out of this discussion. Are you satisfied with Aprock continuing to stonewall so that no consensus can be reached, and nothing in the article can ever be changed? --Captain Occam (talk) 00:29, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- If that is so, there is hardly any reason to say that the "hereditarian" view is minority/fringe. First of all, you cannot attribute all of the group differences to environment. Secondly, "considerable" is a matter of debate, it can be anything from "10% or less to 50% or more". Thirdly, it is even less likely that group differences is entirely due to the environment (100%/0%) than to say the effect distribution is the same (50%/50%), or around mid-way (~75%/25%). It is also hard to explain with a purely environment model (100%/0%) why the gaps between groups are virtually the same among trans-racially adopted children. It is hardly arguable to say that the "hereditarian" view is minority/fringe —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aerain (talk • contribs) 00:35, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- Capt. Occam, as far as I can see, you seem to be the one stonewalling the discussion. You dismiss out of hand explanations that demonstrate the fallacy of your position (such as Alun's and Aprock's), and ignore the responses they give to your queries. This looks like it is going sooner or later into dispute resolution. Why not have an RfC and see where your position really stands? After all, WIkipedia is run by consensus.--Ramdrake (talk) 12:48, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- As far as I'm concerned, this section has veered way into OR territory, and Captain Occam, you have threated to disrupt Wikipedia to prove a point. A huge problem here is that there are fundamental differences of opinion that aren't even being discussed. On one side we have
people saying that "race" (and to some even "intelligence") are so ill-defined/undefinable that the whole argument is meaningless (to wit, very few people are sufficiently genetically different from each other for between group differences to mean very much--racial designations are usually self-reported--, and intelligence is such a culturally biased concept that it's nearly impossible to control all the independent variables). On the other hand we have people saying that because of observed differences in IQ scores of various populations that look different from each other, (and given the fact that with-in groups it is possible to show a link between parents/offspring IQ) it is possible to infer some population-wide genetic basis for IQ scores.
- Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that these are the two view points we should be comparing. It is certainly the way I perceive the argument to be phrased by the likes of Gould and Gardner, as well as in education psychology literature and basic psychometric theory. Certainly the concessions given by so-called hereditarians seem to follow these socio/anthropological lines, and concessions from non-hereditarians seem to refer to statistical/genetic reasoning. The real question raised in this section should be, laying the spectrum out as I just did (and given the tacit assumption that most academics do favor the socio/anthropological side of the spectrum), is the other side of the spectrum (favored by Jensen etc.) considered minority/fringe. T34CH (talk) 01:26, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- As far as I can tell what that all meant (after reading it 3 times), you seem to be restating exactly what is being discussed. Fixentries (talk) 01:40, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- How have I threatened to disrupt Wikipedia? I've accused Aprock of stonewalling, and said that if he prevents consensus from being reached, that means the article can't be improved. That isn't disrupting Wikipedia; that's simply restating Wikipedia's policy. If there's anyone here who's disrupting Wikipedia, it's him.
- I agree that the things you're mentioning would be worthy of discussion, and we can discuss it if you like. Something to keep in mind, though, is that we don't need to actually determine which of these viewpoints is correct. Since both viewpoints exist, NPOV policy states that we should simply present both of them without taking sides. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:52, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- The POINTY part I was referring to was the reversion of his edits simply because he didn't ask permission first. Aprock certainly has permission to change things, and you certainly have permission to revert, but BRD also has a very important D at the end. I respectfully request that you either self revert or start a new section specifically addressing your problems with his changes.
- NPOV policy: now we're getting back to a very important point... significant minority viewpoints should be mentioned, but the article should spend give each side space proportionate to the weight each side holds in the academic world. We need to be on the same page here. If the academic world is most interested in and persuaded by the socio/anthropological explanations, most of the article should be about that. Right no that's not the case. T34CH (talk) 02:02, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- I guess I'll mention here what problem I had with Aprock's edits: he removed one properly sourced sentence that he claimed was original research even though it was supported by the source, and he also added a new paragraph that was POV. Although the article should give more space to the environmental hypothesis than to the hereditarian one (as it currently does) making a statement like that in the lead paragraph suggests the issue to be more resolved than it is.
- I don't think pointing this out deserves a new section, though, for two reasons. First, I'm already discussing with Aprock the same viewpoint of his that these edits were based on, and his desire for it to be in the article. In fact, he edited the article in the middle of my discussion with him, in order to make it conform to his viewpoints which I was in the process of disputing. And second, Aprock has already demonstrated a lack of interest in working towards consensus on this topic. He's welcome to discuss this issue with me again in the context of his new edits, but I don't expect this to accomplish anything.
- Anyway, I agree with what you're saying about NPOV, and I think you can see from my earlier comments what my perspective is about this. The hereditarian perspective is a minority viewpoint, but still a significant minority; significant enough that a peer-reviewed journal was careful to present the arguments for and against it in a balanced way, and also significant enough that a majority of researchers acknowledge the possibility of it being correct, even if most of them don't personally agree with it. With these things in mind, I think it receives about as much coverage in this article as is appropriate. Aprock didn't appear to understand my point about this, but if you do, I'd appreciate knowing what you have to say in response. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:44, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- BTW, I think what is happening is not so much stonewalling as it is a bunch of semantic arguments. It looks like terms such as "valid", "meaningful", and "broad support" are being used in slightly different ways. I suggested the format of a continuum because it avoids such semantic issues (though it may oversimplify the sides at times--something we can address later). T34CH (talk) 02:08, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- Look at my points, and his responses. I described several times how Psychology, Public Policy and Law presented this topic, with an entire issue devoted to it, a collection of papers arguing both sides about it, and the issue’s featured paper one that argues in favor of the hereditarian view. Each time that Aprock replied to this, he claimed that my point was simply that a paper about this had been published: “publication does not indicate anything other than the articles were worthy of publising.” No, that was not my point; my point was that the journal that published about this considered the controversy significant enough to devote an issue to it, and was careful to present this controversy in a balanced way. But no matter how many times I pointed this out, Aprock claimed that I was the one misunderstanding him.
- This isn’t a matter of semantics. There is an inherent difference between simply arguing from the fact that a paper was published, and the point I’m making about the balanced way that this journal chose to present the topic in their issue devoted to it. I think Aprock is aware of the distinction between these two points, and just isn’t willing to acknowledge it. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:44, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
Updating and cleaning up article
It's clear from the recent discussion that there is some interest in addressing some of the issues related to the current tags. Instead of delving into another deeply nested conversation about what exactly it means for a viewpoint to be a minority one, I'd like to take the time to list some of the main issues with the article, and hopefully resolve one or more of them.
- It is not clear what is meant by Race in this article. Generally, the article deals with race as a social construct, primarily because the ability to genetically determine race is still in its infancy and very little (any?) research has been done which links racial genetics and intelligence. Many of the studies that have been done have used self identification as the determinant of race, not genetic race. This becomes a significant issue when people of mixed ancestry identify with a single race, whether through limited choice, or through ignorance of their own ancestry. Race as a social construct may correlate with genetic race, but it's important to be clear on how race is being used in the article, and in the citations that are referenced.
- It's also not clear what is meant by intelligence. Most of the article uses various psychometric studies to infer intelligence of populations identified with a particular race. This is a fairly minor issue, but need to be addressed early in the article.
- Most of the conclusions that are made by researchers about the relationship between genetic race and human intelligence are, by necessity of current methodologies, correlational inferences, and do not represent actual data relating population genetics and psychometrics.
- It's not clear what this article is trying to be about. Currently it is a hodge-podge of various trivia. A lot of the prose in the article is just baggage which has accumulated over years of various editor dropping in whatever reliably cited information they could find into the article. This causes a lot of duplication with other (better written and organized) wikipedia articles. Ideally, summaries of the other WP articles would replace the currently clumsy mish mash that there is. Finally, a decision needs to be made as to what this article is trying to be. Is it ... ?
- a summary of the history of various efforts to try and measure the relationship
- a summary of current scientific understanding
- a discussion of testing methodologies and results
In the end, I think much of the article could be cleaned up by using the summary technique, possibly augmenting it with new sub-articles for sections where there is no useful reference already on wikipedia. When that is done, a reorganization and redirection of central topic might be easier. As a point of comparison I'll refer to the IQ page which manages to be much more organized with another hotly debated topic. Aprock (talk) 04:31, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- Nice summary of the article there. I think that this sort of article will always be a magnet to those who want to promote a specific point of view. For example the talk page nearly always descends into a discussion of the evidence rather than a discussion of the article. The article cannot really have a good focus because it does not really deal with a specific subject, it deals with a plethora of subjects (1) the validity of race (genetics indicates that humans are not divided into anything like discrete genetic populations) (2) the validity of cognitive testing (e.g. cultural bias) (3) the utility of heritability estimates (they do not measure genetic causation) (4) the lack of any direct evidence (no genes have ever been discovered that directly affect intelligence, despite lots of people looking for them). The article has been put up for deletion several times, but the fact is that there is clearly a body of academic work covering this subject. But all of the work covering this subject is not equal, much of the work cannot be considered proper academic work, e.g. The Bell Curve was not written by people who could be considered experts. This subject was pretty much put to bed in the seventies by Montague's book "Race and IQ", which comprehensively debunked the proposition. In the nineties it was brought again to the fore by "The Bell Curve", but this is a political ideology, and not a scientific book, currently the proposition is promoted by those espousing right wing economic policies, there's no more evidence for this belief system than existed in the seventies, it's still based on conflating heritability with heredity and pretending that "race" is a simple easily definable, tangible thing, and it is still full of the same basic flaws that Montague et al. dealt with in the seventies.
- So I recommend summary style. We can have a brief discussion of the validity of "race" and link to the main article. Another section about cognitive testing, and link to that article etc. etc. If it needs a history section dealing with the misuse of cognitive tests by past eugenicists, then I'm happy with that. Alun (talk) 06:14, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- Aprock, I agree that in principle, the article would benefit from cleanup. However, your history of edits and comments makes me necessarily mistrustful about your ability to overhaul the article in an NPOV manner. If you want to make major changes to the article, what I would recommend doing is showing us your proposed edits first, either here or in your userspace, in order to build a consensus for them before you change the article itself.
- If you decide to do this, something that might be useful to you is this, an explantion of the hereditarian perspective that was posted on the discussion page last year, with the intention of being included in the article in some form. It’s rather unfortunate the way this went: although that explanation is probably too long to go in the article in its entirety, the idea was to summarize it and put the summary of it in the article. What happened instead is that certain sections were included almost verbatim, while others were omitted entirely. And as a result, while our current article devotes about as much space to the hereditarian hypothesis as is appropriate, its explanation of this theory is not very informative.
- Alun, it’s important that we present the science on this topic as it currently stands, not as it was in the 70s. Of particular importance with regard to the concept of race is Cavalli-Sforza’s 1994 study about genetic populations, whose results are described here. As can be seen from the chart there, genetically-defined populations based on continental origin do exist; the reason why race is a sociological as well as biological concept (rather than purely biological) is because people do not always self-identify with the race associated with the population to which they belong, and their ancestry also usually isn’t 100% pure. But as Aprock pointed out, the sociological concept of race correlates with the genetic populations that it’s based on, so it’s important for the article to not dismiss race as biologically meaningless. --Captain Occam (talk) 06:54, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- I don't know what you mean by "genetically-defined populations". Can you expand? Can you specifically say why what you call "genetically-defined populations" are the same as "races"? Who makes this claim? My degree is in genetics, and it is my understanding that any population of any size can be "genetically defined". In fact you can "genetically define" the population of England as different to the population of Wales, if you want to, certainly the distribution of Y chromosomes in these two countries are different, and we could certainly use statistics to show that the difference is not due to chance (i.e. is significant). Does this "prove" that English people and Welsh people are different "races"? Apparently you believe it does. In population genetics a population is a theoretical entity, all we can do is sample organisms from a geographical region and theorise that they belong to a "population". But a population is a theoretical entity, it is not a discrete group of organisms. Anyone who makes this claim simply is ignorant of genetics. Indeed there's a very good paper about this called What is a population? An empirical evaluation of some genetic methods for identifying the number of gene pools and their degree of connectivity The fact is that population geneticists have used small island models to try to understand genetic variation, and these have worked relatively well. The idea of "populations" is based on this model, but no one has ever claimed that these theoretical populations represent real discrete subdivisions of organisms. In fact most population geneticists would agree that in truth organisms are isolated by distance, and not distributed into discrete groups.
- The reason why "race" is a nonsense is because it doesn't make any sense when we look at human demographic history. To put it another way, all non-Africans represent a sub-population of Africans, or Africans are a paraphyletic group to non-Africans. What we actually see is a gradual diluting of African diversity as humans move away from Africa, what we don't see is any well defined bounded groups, we don't see separate human clades, and we don't see any subspecific division.
- We don't include original research in Wikipedia, what you seem to be saying is that you believe that Cavalli-Sforza’s work proves that races are real. But if I can be frank, Wikipedia doesn't exist to promote your personal interpretations of Cavalli-Sforza’s work. Indeed Cavalli-Sforza himself makes the opposite claim to you, that his work disproves that "races" are real. You can promote the opinions of reliable sources if you like, but if you want to claim that this work "proves" that humans are divided into well defined subspecies, then you need to find an anthropologist who says this, or at least a well respected taxonomist.
- Who say that "the sociological concept of race correlates with the genetic populations that it’s based on"? The only claim I saw here was that on average African-Americans have ~80% of their ancestry from Africa. That's not a definition of "race" is it? I don't think so. For example there are African Americans who have a majority of their ancestry from Europe, but they are still African Americans, no? So being African American is a cultural marker, no? To be African American means to subscribe to African American culture, it is not to belong to a genetically "defined" group, because clearly African-Americans are a genetically heterogeneous group. Likewise the idea that in Africa there is genetic homogeneity is absurd, there is about twice as much genetic diversity in Africa than there is in the rest of the world combined. Indeed, if there is any sensible way to genetically divide the global human population, it is between Africans and non-Africans, and that is only based on the much reduced diversity seen outside of Africa. Loo at it this way, as Long and Kittles say, about 100% of global human genetic diversity can be found in an African village, whereas only about 70% of the global human genetic diversity can be found in New Guinea. In Europe we are closer to Africans in our diversity, but still much reduced.
- Besides, the truth is that the debate is identical to the seventies. The debate is not about the existence of "race", there is greater consensus from experts today that "race" is biologically meaningless than there was thirty years ago, so the academic world is going in the opposite direction to you. But more importantly, the fallacy that the measure of the proportion of test score variance within group that is due to genetics (i.e. heritability) can tell us anything about the causation of between group average score was dealt with decades ago, and it hasn't changed. See esp. Lewontin and Lazer papers in Montagu's book "Race and IQ". The claim has been comprehensively debunked as a fallacy. Indeed this article should concentrate n the fact that these claims are fallacious. The claims are based on confusing heritability with heredity, and they have become a matter of faith to so many people that it has become impossible to have a decent article here, we always have to pretend that this fallacy is somehow scientifically valid. Alun (talk) 10:31, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- I’m aware that you can view any interbreeding group of humans as a population, and there’s no biological reason why we use the term “race” for the some populations but not others. That distinction is purely a sociological one. The point is simply that when you look at the ancestry of groups of people who consider themselves “races”, their ancestry tends to correlate with certain genetic groups shown on that chart. (Such as “Black” with sub-Saharan African, “White” with Indo-European, and “Oriental” with East Asian.) The reference for the Race and genetics article mentioning this is from Arthur Jensen, and Aprock made this point also.
- I’ve seen your comments on this article’s talk page before, and I’d like to politely point out something that you ought to be aware of by now. When you post a huge block of text like this that’s laden with ad hominem, claims about what the overwhelming majority of researchers believe but without any citations for these claims, and so many questions that it would require a post several times the size of yours to answer them all, you aren’t likely to get a very detailed response. And sure, you can claim that you won the argument by shouting down the opposition, but it won’t by any standard be a consensus. So if you have any interest in actually improving the article, I’d advise that you change your tactics. --Captain Occam (talk) 10:56, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- "there’s no biological reason why we use the term “race” for the some populations but not others." That's the crux of the matter. If race is defined here more by social constructs than by biology, then that needs to be clear. Non biological definitions of race are going to be fundamentally flawed when applied to the problem of racial genetic determinism. Aprock (talk) 16:43, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- Actually you can view any group of organisms of the same species living in the same geographical region that can interact with one another as a population, e.g. the population of Chicago. Who says populations have to be breeding? Take a look at the paper I link to above, they discuss at least three different concepts of biological population. The term "race" is not "applied to some populations and not others". Who says it is? What is the source of this claim, or is it simply your opinion? As a geneticist I don't think one would ever call a "race" a population. For one thing a breeding population would at least have to include individuals with a very good chance of meeting and interbreeding, that hardly applies to, say the African American population of the USA. Indeed it hardly applies to someone from Cape Town and someone from Addis Ababa.
- As for the claim that the genetics of people with ancestors from geographically close regions correlates, that's not rocket science, neither is it relevant to concepts of "race". If the Race and genetics really has a definition from that non-expert Jensen, then clearly it needs a major overhaul, if it had contained such non-genetically valid povs when I was editing it regularly I would have removed them. Jensen is neither an anthropologist nor a geneticist. In fact as far as I can see his only contribution to any conception of race is to demonstrate that he is truly ignorant of the basics of both biology and anthropology. If you take Jensen's pronouncements on race with any seriousness then you really are gullible.
- I didn't make any ad hominem attacks, if you're going to say I did, then at least have the decency to point them out. As for "winning the argument", seriously? Do you really think that is what it is all about? I thought it was about improving the article.
- The fact is that I've been contributing to population genetics articles on Wikipedia for four years or so, I have read extensively around the area, and when you claim that the vast majority of expert on human genetic variation support the concept of "race", then I can only conclude that you haven't read any of the serious scientific literature.
- It's simply true that those who have a deep belief in "race" see any evidence of genetic and phenotypic variation as supporting this belief. It doesn't matter that this variation is not distributed in anything like a fashion that supports this concept. It doesn't matter that the overwhelming majority of geneticists and anthropologists have proven again and again that "biological race" is a meaningless concept, the only thing that matters is their belief.
- Seriously, you'll have to do better that the argument "race is real because there is genetic variation" because I can cite numerous papers about population genetics that say the exact opposite. Alun (talk) 16:56, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- I am uncomfortable with all the claims made in this article. The entire topic is questionable. Not because I don't believe there are population differences in intelligence, but because the science is too immature. We haven't identified the specific genes that may offer intellectual advantages. We don't know what mutations are involved or when they may have happened. Both sides of this issue seem to rely largely on speculation. Fixentries (talk) 17:01, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- There is no speculation with regards to the distribution of human genetic diversity. The consensus is that "races" derive from folk concepts of heredity, they are social constructs and do not conform to the distribution of genetic variation as observed experimentally. This is well understood by physical anthropologists who long ago found that the more metrics they take, the more "races" they get, currently molecular biologists find the same thing. When one samples in discontinuous regions one finds "discrete groups", but when one samples on a continuous basis, one gets clines of variation. See e.g:
Early anthropologists and human geneticists focused on defining “biological races” of humans. This treated races as fixed, naturally derived, categorical entities in our species, which was odd because it was always known that each individual is biologically unique. The classical definitionwas that races differ in the frequencies of at least some genes (10, 100). This makes race inherently a population concept. In practical terms, this also means that results depend upon one’s choice of sampling or inferential frames of reference. But not everyone agrees on what these should be. Kittles and Weiss "RACE, ANCESTRY, AND GENES: Implications for Defining Disease Risk" (2003) Annu. Rev. Genomics Hum. Genet.
Anthropologists long ago discovered that humans’ physical traits vary gradually, with groups that are close geographic neighbors being more similar than groups that are geographically separated. This pattern of variation, known as clinal variation, is also observed for many alleles that vary from one human group to another. Another observation is that traits or alleles that vary from one group to another do not vary at the same rate. This pattern is referred to as nonconcordant variation. Because the variation of physical traits is clinal and nonconcordant, anthropologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries discovered that the more traits and the more human groups they measured, the fewer discrete differences they observed among races and the more categories they had to create to classify human beings. The number of races observed expanded to the 30s and 50s, and eventually anthropologists concluded that there were no discrete races (Marks, 2002). Twentieth and 21st century biomedical researchers have discovered this same feature when evaluating human variation at the level of alleles and allele frequencies. Nature has not created four or five distinct, nonoverlapping genetic groups of people. Ossorio and Duster "Race and Genetics Controversies in Biomedical, Behavioral, and Forensic Sciences" (2005) American Psychologist
I could quote many many more examples. But this is not speculation. Anyone claiming that human populations are "genetically defined" does not know what they are talking about. Alun (talk) 17:46, 9 October 2009 (UTC)..genotyping to estimate biogeographical ancestry can be a better control for population substructure than self-identified race, ethnicity, or ancestry... labels such as “Hispanic,” “Black,” “Mexican American,” “White,” “Asian,” “European,” or “African” can have ambiguous or contradictory meanings among researchers, research subjects, and the general public. Use of such broad labels without careful definitions can impair scientific understanding and imply that distinctions between socially defined populations are genetically well established. Race, Ethnicity, and Genetics Working Group, National Human Genome Research Institute, Bethesda "The Use of Racial, Ethnic, and Ancestral Categories in Human Genetics Research" Am. J. Hum. Genet. 77:000–000
- There is no speculation with regards to the distribution of human genetic diversity. The consensus is that "races" derive from folk concepts of heredity, they are social constructs and do not conform to the distribution of genetic variation as observed experimentally. This is well understood by physical anthropologists who long ago found that the more metrics they take, the more "races" they get, currently molecular biologists find the same thing. When one samples in discontinuous regions one finds "discrete groups", but when one samples on a continuous basis, one gets clines of variation. See e.g:
- I am uncomfortable with all the claims made in this article. The entire topic is questionable. Not because I don't believe there are population differences in intelligence, but because the science is too immature. We haven't identified the specific genes that may offer intellectual advantages. We don't know what mutations are involved or when they may have happened. Both sides of this issue seem to rely largely on speculation. Fixentries (talk) 17:01, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- I agree with your cited material, but you’re drawing an inference from it that isn’t warranted. Let’s look at the part that addresses your point specifically:
- “labels such as “Hispanic,” “Black,” “Mexican American,” “White,” “Asian,” “European,” or “African” can have ambiguous or contradictory meanings among researchers, research subjects, and the general public. Use of such broad labels without careful definitions can impair scientific understanding and imply that distinctions between socially defined populations are genetically well established.”
- I agree with this, and I think it’s best to view ethnic differences in IQ in terms of differences between “populations” rather than “races”, and break it down according to the groups on the chart that I linked to. This is the way Arthur Jensen breaks it down in The g Factor. However, even though it’s less precise to view human groupings in terms of socially defined “races” than in terms of populations based on area of ancestry, none of the material you’ve cited supports your assertion that there’s no correlation between the two, or that it isn’t possible to define certain populations in a genetic sense. If Indo-Europeans are more genetically similar to one another than they are to any other group (as can be seen from the chart), and people who self-identify as “White” tend to have predominantly Indo-European ancestry, then this “race” can still be defined biologically in a statistical sense.
- The reason why the article is called “race and intelligence” rather than “population and intelligence” is because most of the data available about this topic is based on statistical races, rather than genetic populations. Most people have a self-identity of what “race” they belong to, but not a precise idea of their genetic ancestry, so it’s necessary to use the first as an (albeit imprecise) proxy for the second. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Captain Occam (talk • contribs) 18:15, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- What are you talking about? You say you agree with the papers I cite, then go an and make the same erroneous claim that I just showed is wrong. You don't even have a definition of a population, except to say that "race" is a population, which is clearly not correct, and you won't find any scientific support for any such claim. What you are saying is that you want to replace the word "race" with the word "population" as if that solves the problem. This is about more than just the use of a word. The whole argument about populations is just incorrect. Any group can be a "population". In genetics we can define our population as the inhabitants of New York, and we should almost certainly show that this population in New York is "genetically different" to the population of Los Angeles. We could also show, that these populations have different average IQ scores. But you want to pretend that "population" can be used as a synonym for "race". Your argument is not only not convincing, it is confused and without any sound footing. Indeed it does not derive from any anthropological or population genetic perspective. You'd be laughed out of any taxonomy meeting with this sort of logic. Besides it's clearly OR and synthesis. We're here to describe the work published in the literature, and that is about "race" and not "populations" Jensen is not a population geneticist. You continue to claim that Jensen's "populations" are "genetically defined" but they are not populations, and are not genetically defined. Jensen has done no genetic work, and is not a geneticist. Where is the genetic analysis of his research subjects? I wish you'd stop talking about Jensen when you talk about population genetics, the guy is not an expert and clearly doesn't know what he's talking about. Your claims about correlation between genetics self defined ethnicity is irrelevant, all people are genetically more similar to those who derive from a geographically close region. That's got nothing to do with "race" or "population". Humans are not divided into "populations" in any natural way, simply populations are a convenient theoretical framework for geneticists to think about how diversity is distributed. Jensen seems to have latched on to this in a despetrate attempt to cling to his archaic ideas about "race". How do you know that "most people have a self identity about what 'race' they belong to"? Who says this? Again, it's just you giving your opinion. I can't help but feel that mostly you're here to justify a single point of view, much of it your opinion, and much of it unsupported by any reliable source. This whole argument you've got about "populations" does not derive from a reliable understanding of population genetics. I again suggest that you go and read the paper What is a population? An empirical evaluation of some genetic methods for identifying the number of gene pools and their degree of connectivity, because you are claiming some sort of deeper insight into this subject than even academic geneticists, taxonomists, ethologists and ecologists. In effect you are saying that you know what a "genetically defined population" is, when this is the subject of heated debate in the field of biology. Alun (talk) 04:13, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
- The reason why the article is called “race and intelligence” rather than “population and intelligence” is because most of the data available about this topic is based on statistical races, rather than genetic populations. Most people have a self-identity of what “race” they belong to, but not a precise idea of their genetic ancestry, so it’s necessary to use the first as an (albeit imprecise) proxy for the second. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Captain Occam (talk • contribs) 18:15, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- Alun, you didn't respond to what I said. Please re-read it. I was talking about this topic of this article. I didn't say I thought your statements were speculation, you are right. You do seem to be harping on a pet topic with a hair trigger though. Please be more careful to read what people actually say, and let's stick to the topic of this article. Fixentries (talk) 18:43, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- To an extent I agree with wobble, that there is only one solid and objective biological distinction to be made, between Sub-saharan Africans and non-Africans (see Haplogroup F (Y-DNA) and related). There are a few other groups that also seem to have a very homogeneous background but they are limited in number, and aren't mentioned in this article that I have seen. However, the topic of the article has a meaning that is understandable to any reader, and the statistics only claim to based on self-reported or apparent ethnic background. This article should have some mention of the dispute over the definitions of race, and possible ambiguities. It doesn't invalidate the article or require a detailed explanation. We can refer the reader to the appropriate articles. Fixentries (talk) 16:54, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- Well, whether or not we consider race as a social construct, it does not matter at all; in fact, if we were to accept such a claim, it would merely result in an insignificant semantic shift, that is, A, B, C, D have higher IQ than E, F, G, H instead of Z has higher IQ than Y. Whether we consider ethnicities instead of races, we need to explain why differences occur. IQ is certainly an imperfect measure of intelligence, it ignores the multi-aspect nature of intelligence, such reduction don't give us information on how deep test-taker A understanding of concept B is, nor how effective his cognitive processes are, and so on; however, it correlates with too many life-history and biological variables to dismiss it as meaningless.--Aerain (talk) 21:58, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
intro edit
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I removed the last sentence of the first paragraph: "The only consistent claim of consensus on this issue is that as of yet no one knows what causes racial group difference in cognitive ability because no single answer is widely supported[1]." The citation is unclear as to the source, but I assume it is referring to Volume 37 of Intelligence. The article on pages 1-2 can be found here. The book review authored by Hunt can be found here: Book Reviews. Neither article makes a mention of there being "claim of consensus" in this regard. Aprock (talk) 15:49, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
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the 1990s debates
This section only discusses the book "The Bell Curve" and related work. I'd like to suggest that this section be retitled to "The Bell Curve" and replaced with a summary of the corresponding wikipedia page. Aprock (talk) 17:51, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- I think that calling this section "The Bell Curve" would present too limited a view of the debate. Although the Bell Curve was what initiated the 1990s controversy, many of the articles that were published as a result of this controversy (such as the APA statement) are arguably more significant than the book itself was. This is the same reason why we don't refer to the 1970s debate under the name of Arthur Jensen's paper that initiated it. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:54, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- Currently the section is entirely about the book and the debate it created. If you read the Bell Curve entry, you'll find that there is nearly 100% coverage of the section there. I'm fine with a more appropriate title, like "The Bell Curve debate", or something similar. Aprock (talk) 17:56, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- Why can't we just call this "the 1990s debates"? That's at least as descriptive a term as anything referring to The Bell Curve specifically. We refer to the debates in the 1970s as "the 1970s debates", and it's best to be consistent about this. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:33, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- This section of the article includes a lot of topics than the article about The Bell Curve doesn't. The Bell Curve article talks about the "Mainstream Science" statement and the APA "Knowns and unknowns" statement, but it doesn't include the other 1990s statements from the APA that this article covers, or the coverage of the "Knowns and unknowns" statement in American Psychologist.
- Some of these are only tangentially related to The Bell Curve. The coverage in American Psychologist was a commentary on the APA statement, which itself was only an indirect commentary on The Bell Curve. As a result, referring to the American Psychologist coverage under the heading "The Bell Curve" is a bit of a stretch. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:51, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- This stuff is in The Bell Curve see: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#American_Psychological_Association_task_force_report 4.1 American Psychological Association task force report. But I certainly agree that a better title would be "The Bell Curve debates". Aprock (talk) 18:59, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- I already acknowledged that it mentions that report, but it doesn't mention any of the other APA reports that the race and intelligence article does, or the American Psychologist coverage. If you're going to dispute what I'm saying, please respond to my actual points, rather than a strawman of them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Captain Occam (talk • contribs) 19:05, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- It does mention the AP coverage. From The Bell Curve: "The APA journal that published the statement, American Psychologist, subsequently published eleven critical responses in January 1997." If you could be more specific about which reports are not mentioned, that might help. Regardless, the issue isn't whether the content is a mirror image of The Bell Curve. The issue is that this section is about the debates that publication of The Bell Curve produced. Changing the title to "The Bell Curve debates" is an improvement over "The 1990s debates" Aprock (talk) 19:10, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- If you want its title changed, can you address my point about consistency? The section titled “the 1970s debates” is about the debate caused by Jensen’s 1969 paper about this in the Harvard Educational Review. But the section about that debate is named after the decade during which it occurred, rather than the piece of writing which caused it. If we don’t name that section after Jensen’s article, we shouldn’t name the 1990s section after The Bell Curve either. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:15, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- If we’re going to change the name of “the 1990s debate” to “The Bell Curve debate”, what name do you think should we use for the section about the debate that occurred during the 1970s? --Captain Occam (talk) 19:24, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
- I don’t have any better ideas either, and I also think it’s important to be consistent. If we’re going to name one of these sections after the decade in which it occurred, we should do that for both of them. So I would suggest that we don’t change the title of the “1990s debate” section unless we can find a suitable new title for the “1970s debate” section also. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:29, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
Analysis by bloggers
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This statement in the article: However, in 2007 the New York Times reported preliminary results suggesting that some genes which influence IQ may be distributed unequally between races. Refers this NYT article [1]. However this NYT article refers to a blog. Blogs don't qualify as reliable sources on scientific matters. I looked up some of the recent studies concerning the particular genes discussed in the blog, including
According to the abstract of Kircher et al. "Results Significantly lower scores on the SPQ-B (p=0.0005) and the Interpersonal Deficit subscale (p=0.0005) in carriers of the A-risk allele were detected. There were no differences in any of the cognitive variables between groups". According to the abstract of Hashimoto et al. "This haplotype did not affect IQ and its sub-scores as measured by the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised in both groups." In the genomic age, it is frequent to hear of genes for this and genes for that. As long as it is a single gene/SNP I think it can be treated with some degree of skepticism. I believe the Robert Plomin group do the most comprehensive genome scans for IQ traits, and as yet they admit to not finding any single trait that associates with IQ. Such traits may be found in the future, but currently there doesn't seem to be any reliable DNA association. Genes have been identified that depress IQ due to diseases such as schizophrenia, but no gene that affects IQ in healthy populations. Wapondaponda (talk) 18:24, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
← Note that I have shortened the length of the full-protection from 24 hours to 12 hours. I felt that perhaps 24 was perhaps a bit much for something like this. The one thing I ask is that everyone keeps a cool head and try to rationally discuss changes here between now and then. MuZemike 21:46, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
Slrubenstein, since when is "race" a topic of science? This article isn't "genetics and intelligence", in which case you would be right that only geneticist sources would be permissible. But as we both know, race is a social construct only partially based on genetics, and the "race and intelligence" debate is very much a sociological question just as much as a genetic one, so that it is perfectly permissible to use a wider range of sources, including major newspapers. --dab (𒁳) 11:39, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
(reset) I read your comments on phrasing, below, and do not take any particular issue with them. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:10, 10 October 2009 (UTC) |
NYT/blogger information
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Currently it reads: The New York Times has reported on an analysis of this study performed by a non-scientist blogger, which compared its results to an online database of allele frequencies in various ethnic groups, and claimed that the alleles of this gene which influence IQ are distributed unequally between races. The New York Times emphasized the speculative nature of these results, because the relationship between these alleles and IQ is unconfirmed. The NYTimes article does not identify any particular study that the blog post refers to, it only says "described a recently published study" (my emphasis). Linking it to a particular study would be synthesis. Further, the NYTimes article did not "report" on any analysis or blog posts at all. It merely identifies an example of a blogger who has misrepresented a scientific study. The article itself is about how genetic studies are prone to misrepresentation to support racial discrimination. That's what the article is about. It's not a report on a blog.--Nealparr (talk to me) 15:06, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
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NYT citation problems
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This summary is based on the following paragraphs from the article
I believe the current summary misrepresents the content and context of the NYT article, which was using this situation as an example of non-scientists making unsupported and highly speculative claims. I also think this information does not belong in the section describing the genetic hypothesis. It may have a place in the Criticisms section, as this is really about the NYT criticizing the criticism of a non-scientist. It would be much better to replace any third hand reference to research such as this with a citation to the actual research. Aprock (talk) 05:15, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for bringing this information, however this is the wrong article for discussing the individual heritability of intelligence. Only sources that deal with group, ethnic or racial differences are really relevant. Everyone seems to agree that intelligence is heritable in individuals. Let's stay focused on discussing specific edits or changes that are directly relevant to the article. Fixentries (talk) 15:21, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
T34CH, is this the kind of thing you mean?
(The above are intented to indicate that I am quoting Fixentries). It certainly seems like, as soon as you have proven Fixentries wrong, he starts accusing you of doing what he had just been doing. Does this make you feel frustrated? Slrubenstein | Talk 11:55, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
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I would recommend spinning Genetics of intelligence from Heritability of IQ. AFAIK, with the exception of Microcephalin and ASPM, no study has yet to implicate any of the other of candidate genes in the race/iq debate. So at the moment extensive detail is not required in this article, but would be appropriate in a genetics of intelligence article. Of course if a candidate gene consistently replicates for general intelligence, someone is bound to raise the race issue. Until that is done, I don't see the need for extensive discussion on this article as there aren't any peer reviewed publications. Wapondaponda (talk) 19:40, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
- I missed a bit. What journal articles are now being used, that should be made clear in this record? Verbal chat 12:00, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
- ^ Hunt. Book review. Intelligence (2009) pp. 1-2