Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 82

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Archive 75

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Archive 80

"Unbiased"

I would like to remove the first part of the first sentence in the "Flynn effect" section: "Although modern IQ tests are unbiased". The reference states the following: "Despite widespread belief to the contrary, however, there is ample evidence, both in Britain and the USA, that IQ tests predict educational attaintment just about as well in ethnic minorities as in the white majority." The only thing this reference says is that IQ tests predict educational attaintment equally for both groups. Well, of course! The education system is probably biased in the same way as IQ-tests are biased, valuing certain capacities higher than other ones. So, unless anybody has any good arguments against this, I'll remove this part of the sentence, but not sooner than 13/6. Lova Falk talk 09:32, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes. Please go for it. And well done pointing out how these "facts" can be misinterpreted. HiLo48 (talk) 10:30, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

If you read some of the sources for this article, you'll see that IQ predicts a lot more than just educational achievement. It also predicts job performance, income, lifespan, and law abidingness, all to the same degree for all ethnic groups. In order for test bias to account for this, the people in either ethnic group who are favored by test bias would have to be the exact same people favored by bias in all of these other aspects of life.

I have no sources at hand but I think that educational achievement is one of the predictors for job performance, income, lifespan and law adingness - so it is not so strange that also IQ tests are a predictor for all these things.Lova Falk talk 11:30, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Here we go again. Bias is a scientific concept. The research shows no slope / intercept bias and measurement invariance. Validity is a scientific concept. One form of validity is predictive-- a sense of what a test measures can be inferred by what the scores predict. Perhaps you should get some sources at hand, and maybe operate under the assumption that researchers in this area are not so droolingly incompetent that they haven't looked into these issues over the last 100 years or so. -Bpesta22 (talk) 15:17, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

This article is probably about to enter arbitration, so most of the people who are normally involved in it aren't currently as active as they normally are. Perhaps coincidentally, there are a lot of questionable changes that have been being made to the article lately, with little or no discussion about them about the talk page. I'm not sure what ought to be done about this, since most of the regulars here are under a 1-revert-per day restriction in preparation for the arbitration case, but it would be nice if more or the regulars could pay attention to what's going on here and see if they can come up with any ideas about how to handle this. --Captain Occam (talk) 11:10, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I am clearly none of the regulars, and I don't even know what you mean by this "1-revert-per day restriction", but you can certainly drop a note on my talk page if you would like me to revert a dubious edit. I'm happy to check and revert if I agree it is not a good edit.Lova Falk talk 11:30, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

One has to be really careful with this information. It may be that there is a correlation between IQ, educational achievement, job performance, income, lifespan, and law abidingness. But a correlation does not automatically mean that any one of those factors causes the others. HiLo48 (talk) 11:27, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

No, correlations don't say anything about causality. But my point is that this correlation does not mean that IQ-tests are unbiased. Lova Falk talk 11:32, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

But correlations DO say something about cause. One cannot use a correlation to prove cause, sure. But, cause implies correlation. What evidence would you need to conclude that IQ tests are not biased? Could you describe the data pattern that if found would falsify your view that they are biased? -Bpesta22 (talk) 15:25, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Most of the people involved in this article have agreed that the source we should use as the overall basis for its perspective is Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns. This is the official statement on Race and intelligence from the American Psychological Association, and we’ve agreed that it’s the most neutral and mainstream explanation available of the current state of research about this topic. I’ll quote the paragraph of this statement that summarizes the APA’s conclusions about the social effects of what IQ tests measure:

In summary, intelligence test scores predict a wide range of social outcomes with varying degrees of success. Correlations are highest for school achievement, where they account for about a quarter of the variance. They are somewhat lower for job performance, and very low for negatively valued outcomes such as criminality. In general, intelligence tests measure only some of the many personal characteristics that are relevant to life in contemporary America. Those characteristics are never the only influence on outcomes, though in the case of school performance they may well be the strongest.

Notice their word choice: they refer to the characteristics measured by IQ tests “accounting for” school performance and “influencing” social outcomes. That’s saying more than just that the two are correlated; it’s describing as causal link between one and the other. Regardless of whether any of us agree that it’s reasonable to assume this causal link exists, if this is what the source material says (which it is) then our job is to just report what it says, rather than trying to second-guess it. --Captain Occam (talk) 12:52, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, what goes in the article must be restricted to what reliable sources say. I'm a newcomer to commenting on the article. While you say that "Most of the people involved in this article have agreed" that the APA's view is the best, I have reservations about the true independence of such a body. It's psychologists who gain income from creating IQ tests. While I am sure that most APA members are very professional people, at least some of them must have a financial interest in maintaining IQ testing as a popular assessment tool. Hardly the basis for an independent view. Hence, I question the APA being defined as a reliable source for this subject matter. HiLo48 (talk) 13:09, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Notice taken and thank you for the explanation! And they actually also make my point:"It is often argued that the lower mean scores of African Americans reflect a bias in the intelligence tests themselves. This argument is right in one sense of "bias" but wrong in another. [...] African Americans are subject to outcome bias not only with respect to tests but along many dimensions of American life. They have the short end of nearly every stick: average income, representation in high-level occupations, health and health care, death rate, confrontations with the legal system, and so on. With this situation in mind, some critics regard the test score differential as just another example of a pervasive outcome bias that characterizes our society as a whole (Jackson, 1975; Mercer, 1984). Although there is a sense in which they are right, this critique ignores the particular social purpose that tests are designed to serve. From an educational point of view, the chief function of mental tests is as predictors..." So, because the article says about bias that the argument is right in one sense but wrong in another, I still think that we should remove the statement that IQ tests are unbiased. Lova Falk talk 13:14, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Captain Occam, what do you think about quoting the paragraph you have just mentioned here in the article itself? That might go a long way toward allaying some reader concerns about what is being said about IQ tests in the article text. WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 17:05, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

WeijiBaikeBianji: I’m intending to add a section to the article that quotes this paragraph sometime shortly. I and several other editors have been discussing this revision to the article for more than a month; I just want to wait for the article to get a little more stable before I add it. (Right now there seems to be some minor edit-warring going on over recent changes.)

Lova Falk: it’s important to make sure you understand in what sense the APA is saying that IQ tests have a bias against African-Americans. The only way in which the APA agrees that “bias” exists in this context is that blacks do less well at them on average than whites do. That can be considered “outcome bias” in a statistical sense, but it’s not how most people use the term “bias” when claiming that IQ tests are biased against blacks. In the sense that most people tend to claim this, meaning that they think IQ tests underestimate blacks’ abilities and potential achievements, the APA is saying that IQ tests are not biased against them. The part of that paragraph after the part that you’ve quoted points this out.

Two other sources which discuss this are Arthur Jensen’s 1980 book Bias in Mental Testing (which, despite its title, presents evidence that no such bias exists) and the 1982 report from the National Academy of Sciences Ability Testing: Uses, Consequences, and Controversies, Part I, which agreed with most of Jensen’s conclusion about this. The second one might especially be of interest to HiLo48, because unlike Arthur Jensen and the APA, the National Academy of Sciences does not profit from designing IQ tests, so there isn’t the same danger of bias from them that you think there is the APA’s case.

I don’t think the fact that “outcome bias” in IQ tests can be said to exist in a statistical sense is worth mentioning in the article. The article obviously already mentions that the average IQ of blacks is lower than that of whites, and mentioning that the term “predictive bias” can be used for this difference is just going to be confusing to anyone who isn’t familiar with statistical terms. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:05, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Captain, that's not quite correct: while the APA report does state the absence of any simple bias, it does not rule out the possibility of some sort of complex bias (although it doesn't raise the question specifically). If you need help locating the exact sentence within the report which says that, just let me know and I'll find it for you.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:01, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

My knowledge of statistics is not very strong, so I'm not going into discussions on that. To me, an IQ test is an intelligence test and not a school-success-prediction test. I am very familiar with some of these tests and I don't know how it would be possible to create an unbiased test - that is, an intelligence test that gives the same results to two children with the same intelligence, one of them living in an enriched environment and the other in an understimulating environment. The intelligence tests I work with have subtests called "Information" or "Comprehension" and of course a deficient education lowers subtests scores. That is what I call bias. However, I see there is consensus amongst you to keep the statement that modern IQ-tests are unbiased, so I withdraw from this discussion and this page. Lova Falk talk 15:04, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

I too "don't know how it would be possible to create an unbiased test". I teach high school in a major Australian city. Despite widespread claims (including in Wikipedia) that Australia has a 100% or 99% literacy level, around 10% of our Year 7 students cannot read well enough to understand written tests, and hence would score poorly on IQ tests. The reasons for this are not properly researched nor documented. It does seem to me to be related to socio-economic status. While that can all be Wiki-dismissed as OR, nothing will convince me that such tests are unbiased. HiLo48 (talk) 17:51, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Just to further expand on the above... Upon occasionally visiting the homes of the poor readers, an obvious contributor to that state (obvious to me, anyway) is the fact that in these homes one sees no reading material. No books, newspapers, anything. All news is gained from TV and radio. Hence no reading practice, nor incentive.

As an Australian who has worked with Aboriginal kids too, I must tell the story of the Yolngnu people of Arnhem Land in our Northern Territory. Traditionally, the answer to a question that you would receive from a member of that community was the answer that the listener thought you would be most pleased to hear. Nothing to do with it being the truth, or the "right" answer. How do you test such a person's IQ?

Unbiased tests? Rubbish! HiLo48 (talk) 21:35, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Could you guys describe what an unbiased test would look like? -Bpesta22 (talk) 00:13, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

No. HiLo48 (talk) 02:08, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Rubbish indeed. -Bpesta22 (talk) 16:28, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

The lead

"Race and intelligence research investigates differences in the distributions of cognitive skills among human races." This rather misses the application of quantititative methods, no?

"Race and intelligence research investigates differences in the distributions of quantitative results of tests created to measure cognitive skills among human races."

Without that qualifier, it makes it appear the activity is independent of how intelligence is measured. PЄTЄRS VЄСRUМВА ►talk 20:25, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

You raise an excellent point. I've inserted the word "measurements" in the first sentence. Thanks. WavePart (talk) 10:36, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with that change. But, please, changes in the lead should be discussed in Talk before they are made (or after they are reverted the first time). David.Kane (talk) 19:47, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

In which case, another change in line with my suggestion and the change made...

Race and intelligence research investigates differences in the distributions of cognitive skill measurements among human racial groups. Much of the debate in this area centers around questions of how intelligence is ~~measured~~ quantified ...

Together with the mention of measurements, I think this makes for a crisper definition. Thoughts? PЄTЄRS VЄСRUМВА ►talk 19:54, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Same idea, but sounds crisper. WavePart (talk) 06:16, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

A serious informational question: what establishes consensus for a "stable version" here during the arbitration?

I see an edit summary of an edit that deleted quite a lot of good content (from the keyboards of multiple editors over several days) from the lead portion of the article. The edit summary says, "(reverted lead to stable version of May 5, 2010. Please, no edit warring in the lead while Arb Com is considering this article. Any changes to the lead should be discussed at the Talk page first.)" My question is, where do we have documentation here on the article discussion page that there was a "stable version of May 5, 2010"? If I am not mistaken, the editing I have done to the article was in the most recent instance preceded by a post to this article discussion page explaining a rationale for my edit, posted soon afterward. That edit had a wording change--for which I thanked the subsequent editor on his user talk page--almost immediately, and then was "stable" for quite a while thereafter. What I'm not seeing here in this article just now, as I view the article history, is anything that is very stable. So, again, my question is, where else on this article discussion page are there discussions of edits that make clear what version of the lead section or any other section is stable and supported by broad consensus? -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 21:54, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I can't speak for David.Kane, but since I agree with him about this, I'll explain my own reason for feeling this way. The version of the lead as of May 5th was the result of the discussion here, on April 9th-11th, and underwent almost no changes for the following two months. In fact, if you compare Ludwigs’s wording there to the version as of June 4th, you’ll see that the differences between the two are fairly minor. I think two months of only minor changes to this section is sufficient to quality as stability.

Then on June 6th, WavePart introduced a large number of changes to the lead without any discussion. Several editors have commented here opposing these changes, and WavePart hasn't responded to these comments in an attempt to defend his changes. That on its own should be sufficient to establish that these changes need to be reverted until consensus can be established for them, and I find it strange that other people would have a problem with this.

When Arthur Rubin undid David.Kane's revert, he didn't attempt to respond to David's comment above in which David.Kane explained this. I'll give Arthur Rubin a few hours to reply to my own explanation about this, but if he doesn't I'll be restoring David.Kane's version, since no attempt is being made to explain why WavePart's changes should be kept, he hasn’t made any attempt to discuss them here, and several editors are opposing them. --Captain Occam (talk) 03:36, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I see no reason to exclude the edits. As will probably be shown in the RfAr, to the extent that the article was "stable", it was due to the (unaccepted) "moderator" removing opposing edits and discouraging editors from making (justified or unjustified) changes. I can't say I would have made all the changes WavePart made, but they are generally closer to NPOV than what was there before.

I think that, if we're going to revert to a "stable version", it needs to be one before Ludwigs2 became involved. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 04:52, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

You don’t seem to have been paying very much attention to what was happening between when the mediation concluded and the present. Ludwigs2 hardly edited the article at all after the mediation case concluded, and when he did, it was only to implement compromises between people who were arguing here. I challenge you to find a single example of Ludwigs2 actually discouraging people from making changes to the article during the past two months—I’m quite certain that’s never happened at all.

The reason the lead was stable for the past two months was because nobody had a problem with it. And over the past two months, there have been people from both “sides” of this dispute commenting that the lead was one of the only parts of the article that was supported by a strong consensus. If your only justification for reinstating WavePart’s undiscussed changes to the lead is based on this inaccurate an understanding of what’s been the case in this article while you weren’t participating here, then they need to be undone. --Captain Occam (talk) 05:08, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

It would be difficult to check, as Ludwigs2 also redacted talk page comments critical of the expert quoted by Bpesta22 (who may be the same person, but it's not relevant) on NPA grounds. If the editors critical of the lede stopped in on the talk page or mediation page first, and their comments were redacted by Ludwigs2, it would now be difficult to determine whether there was dissent at the time. I'm not claiming that I would have disagreed with the lede, but I didn't feel my discussing it would have been fruitful while Ludwigs2 was "in charge". — Arthur Rubin (talk) 05:18, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

You aren’t making sense here. Ludwigs2 redacted personal attacks from everyone, including a few questionable comments that I made, but there’s no evidence that he ever redacted any comments about content. If you’re going to make this serious of an accusation against him, the burden of proof is on you to provide evidence for it. Perhaps more importantly, the mediation case was concluded within three days after the new lead was added to the article, so the vast majority of the time that everyone seemed to approve of it was after Ludwigs2 was no longer “in charge”.

All of your objections to the lead appear to be based not on content, or even on any concrete examples of user conduct, but just on suspicions about Ludwigs2 for which you haven’t provided any support. Can you accept that these aren’t valid reasons to reject the version of the lead that resulted from mediation? --Captain Occam (talk) 05:33, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I haven't been around the page much lately (sick of haggling over trivialities), but the last time I checked the lead was largely the one written my Mathsci (which I had tweaked a bit after the mediation was over). As for my redactions, they were surgical, (carefully removing personal comments without affecting the meaning of the sentence), and mostly affected TechnoFaye (whose mouth consistently runneth over). I redacted Mathsci's comments 3 or 4 times, as well as comments from several others - it had no impact on the discussion except to remove inflammatory wording.

Occam, Arthur is trying to insinuate that I'm guilty of some sort of malfeasance without actually coming straight out and accusing me of malfeasance, because has no evidence (or even a decent reason to believe) that I've done something wrong. Plus, he thinks we're all too stupid to recognize that he's being uncivil when he does it indirectly like this. If he wants to make an explicit argument against me out of this mess of hand-waving, let him. As soon as he does, I'll take him to ANI and request he be blocked for gross incivility. If he just wants to keep insinuating then he's got a toothless argument that you can safely poo-poo in proper Victorian style. --Ludwigs2 06:40, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Ludwig. Arthur, if you aren’t going to make any further effort to justify your revert, I’ll be restoring the lead to the way it was before WavePart’s changes.

I think reverting it all the way back to the May 5th version (the way David.Kane did) is probably more than is necessary here, since the lead was stable up through June 4th. this version from Aprock contains some minor (non-contentious) improvements over the May version, so I think it makes most sense to just use that. I’ll also add some citations in the places where this version of the lead says that it needs them, since almost all of what’s in the lead is basically just a paraphrase of the APA report. --Captain Occam (talk) 07:29, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I think reverting to the January 12 version is probably more sensible. It was clearly stable, then, except for clear vandalism and reversals.

As for personal attacks by Ludwigs2, what he removed of my post was not a personal attack. It was questioning the qualifications of the expert Bpensa22 quoted, not Bpensa22 himself. That's clearly misfeasance. It would only be malfeasance if he chose which editors to redact; as he redacted so many, and I have no idea what his criteria are for deciding what to redact (only that it's not related to Wikipedia policies), that I cannot tell. I couldn't prepare a detailed analysis in a week even if I did nothing else; so, unless I can find a personal attack (say, on Mathsci, or on one of the (generally) environmentalist editors who hasn't returned), which wasn't redacted by Ludwigs2, I couldn't say that he directed the edits in one direction. I can only testify that his ~~censored~~ actions convinced me it wasn't worth my time to attempt to remove the clear errors in the article, which are still there. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:02, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I changed my mind. I am reverting to the last stable version of January 12, 2010. I selected a revision by Ludwigs2. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:19, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

My god, you’ve reverted the entire article back five months? Do you seriously think you can roll back five months of changes to an article without first obtaining a consensus for it? --Captain Occam (talk) 08:35, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Why not? The article was fairly stable pre-October. Certainly David.Kane's skewed version had no consensus. If David.Kane's suggested draft article had been written on a subpage of the mediation pages or in userspace - something suggested by Aprock and me but rejected unilaterlly by Ludwigs2 - a reasonable discussion could have ensued. Possibly the draft would have been rejected and somebody else could have had a go. But that is not what happened. It's no use pretending that the fourth stage of mediation worked in any way whatsoever. Mathsci (talk) 09:14, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

<== (ec) How can there be a stable article while editors - at the encouragement of Ludwigs2 - are only using primary sources? The only neutrally written and properly sourced parts of the article are the lede (written in its first form by me), the history section (copy-pasted by David Kane from the lede of History of the race and intelligence controversy, written by me) and the "current debate" section (also written by me). If a standard textbook is consulted on Intelligence - for example IQ and Human Intelligence (1998) by Nicholas Mackintosh, Handbook of Intelligence (2004) edited by Robert Sternberg or Intelligence (2009) by James R. Flynn - there are statements about what is known about IQ tests and ethnic groups. This is unfortunately not properly conveyed in this article: at the encouragement of Ludwigs2, editors have been skewing the mainstream view, because of their strong personal beliefs. It would seem that Ludwigs2 continues to encourage undue weight for fringe viewpoints and fails to recognize problems with these fringe viewpoints. His intemperate language and personal abuse has not helped. Instead of recognizing active WP:SPAs involved in WP:CPUSH, he termed that "paranoia" on my part and suggested psychiatric assistance. That got him blocked. In the 2004 handbook John C. Loehlin writes extensively about race and intelligence; with Nick Mackintosh, he agrees that no scientific analysis has shown to date that the black-white IQ gap is due to genes and that more research would need to be done to reach any such conclusion; and others do seem to be in agreement that population groups from the far east have a different form of visio-spatial ability that is genetic in origin. None of this is in the article, because it has not used secondary sources. I'm sure that Captain Occam, Varoon Arya, Distributivejustice, Ludwigs2, Victor Chmara, Mikemikev and David.Kane could produce hosts of reasons why secondary sources shouldn't be used: it wouldn't be surprising to learn that using these sources would be a BLP violation, would break long established consensus, they're too recent, they're too old, they're too long, they're too short, Robert Sternberg has long been identified as a hate-monger by Linda Gottfredson and that this would go against all mediation agreements (have I forgotten something?). Ludwigs2 has extensively edited the wikipedia policy pages on WP:POV and WP:FRINGE, so presumably must be aware at least of some of the issues involved here. Captain Occam certainly does not represent any kind of consensus on this page. The segment User:Captain Occam/significance that he tried to include against all consensus is a personal essay, written improperly using WP:SYNTH, WP:OR and WP:POV: of course it adheres to the "Ludwigs2" rules for editing wikipedia. But it is nevertheless unacceptable according to core wikipedia editing policies. I note that Ludwigs2's last content edit was in mid-April and that was to Goatse.cx. That might indicate where his priorities lie on wikipedia. Mathsci (talk) 08:32, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I have to agree with MathSci and Arthur here. Start again, get it right. Propose restoring some changes if you like, add good WP:RS, and get consensus for them. The "mediation" isn't working, principally because of the mediator. Verbal chat 09:20, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Tag it as controversial and wait for ARBCOM to deal with the behavioral issues --Snowded ^TALK 10:03, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

It's my understanding this article has serious problems obtaining NPOV, and apparently also problems with editors being unwilling to compromise in the attempt to obtain this. Clearly "stable version" is a myth, and reverting to months back does not solve anything. I am reverting to Arthur Rubin's most recent version as the current version before you guys went on a revert-spree. The goal must be to obtain a neutral perspective by editorial compromise! Seriously people, we're talking about an article about a simple correlation between race and scores on IQ tests. There are plenty of facts to go around, and all we have to do here is essentially list who has said what facts. This should be much simpler than you are all making it out to be. My advice is, take whatever you feel about this topic, and ignore it. Feelings do not write encyclopedia articles. Neutrality does. WavePart (talk) 10:28, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Seriously people, we're talking about an article about a simple correlation between race and scores on IQ tests. There are plenty of facts to go around, and all we have to do here is essentially list who has said what facts.

I agree with this completely. But if I could provide a slightly more controversial analysis of the situation, we have a group of editors who want to do this, and another who want to trash this article to the point of deletion because it's "racist". mikemikev (talk) 10:51, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, fortunately they don't get to do that, per wikipedia policy to the contrary. If you agree with this principle, then hopefully we can work together to nudge the article toward that form. I haven't followed all the past bickering here, so I don't really know your perspective on the topic, but also don't much care about your history if you're willing to work toward a compromise coverage of the article topic. WavePart (talk) 11:03, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, I'm willing to work with sensible editors, but anyone who states "revert to last stable version" when then version was during or after the mediation is incorrect. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:30, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I meant to say that this was a stable version of the lead not a stable version of the entire article. And, perhaps obviously, this was a good faith effort to describe a section of the article that many editors with diverse views had worked hard on and come to a rough consensus about. (For the record, I have several complaints with this version, but I recognize that productive work on a difficult article requires me to compromise.) If you don't like the May 5th version, then feel free to pick a different version. (And, again, this is just about the lead, not about the entire article.) Long experience has shown that making good faith edits in the lead, and then refusing to discuss them in Talk after they have been reverted, is a recipe for disaster. David.Kane (talk) 19:46, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I can see your point in regard commentary, but, as WavePart is now discussing his edits, I don't see any problem with leaving his edits in place, rather than going back to a (probably false consensus) "stable version". — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:55, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, without diving deep into the edit history, it is tough to know which edits are Waveparts and which of those he strongly believes in. So, how about if I start a new section to discuss this but, at the same time revert to the May 5th version (or pick any date you like)? David.Kane (talk) 20:28, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

It's been my experience that going backwards is, well, going backwards and best left for undoing vandalism. We don't necessarily need long protracted discussions—smaller increments of improvement accompanies by succinct discussion may work better. I haven't gone through edit history to exhaustively acquaint myself with past issues, so I can't say that hasn't already been tried at some point. PЄTЄRS VЄСRUМВА ►talk 23:01, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

(od) It's just my decrepit middle age setting in, but where is the honkin' huge notice that this article is embroiled with ArbCom? Thanks for your indulgence especially if I missed something obvious somewhere. PЄTЄRS VЄСRUМВА ►talk 19:58, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm. I can't find one, either. I don't know which template would be appropriate. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:02, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

(ec) BTW, on reading through some of the wailing and gnashing of teeth, I have to observe that numbers are numbers. The article cannot help but be a reflection of that—this is why I have brought up that the article needs to be clear that it is about (attempts at) quantification and analysis thereof—not about superiority, inferiority, or any qualitative conclusion. It is people who are racist when they misappropriate numbers to advocate agendas which disparage others. Let us not confuse the two. PЄTЄRS VЄСRUМВА ►talk 20:11, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

"It's just my decrepit middle age setting in, but where is the honkin' huge notice that this article is embroiled with ArbCom?" I looked for a while for suitable templates, and have not found one either. But in a case such as this, when editors cannot even agree on how much to allow editing while the dispute is going on, it seems to me that readers of the article ought to be able to see a dispute template, which will send them to this talk page. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 21:16, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Article temporarily full-protected and 1RR

I have full-protected the article following a couple of active days of edit warring. I had hoped people wouldn't do that with an Arbcom case pending, but apparently some of you couldn't resist...

Additionally, I would like to formally notify everyone here that as an uninvolved administrator, I am applying a temporary but indefinite 1RR restriction on this article. Once the article full protection expires, for the duration of the Arbcom case, the article or major sections may only be reverted one time per 24 hr period by any given editor, interpreted broadly. Editors violating this restriction may be blocked for edit warring.

Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 21:00, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

This is all fine, however, there needs to be an "oversight" template which can be populated for any article (to appear with the article and be inherited by article talk) to indicate restrictions and administrative actions, including, but not limited to:

1RR restriction
semi-protected (if applicable)
subject to prior dispute resolution enforcement(s) w/pointer(s)
object of current dispute resolution(s) in progress or other oversight

You can't address a conflict or observe the rules of engagement if there's nothing to tell you about it. Certainly, the POV template helps, but that's only a starter and not the real answer. PЄTЄRS VЄСRUМВА ►talk 22:53, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm placing a POV template on the article page because there is plainly a dispute about POV going on here.

As a courtesy to readers of the article, I've put a POV template on the article page, so that the readers will visit this talk page and see what is going. The only template I could find related to the Arbitration Committee refers to completed ArbCom actions, not ongoing cases. This was a good suggestion from another Wikipedian, who posted on the previous section of this talk page. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 21:27, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Well of course that template has already been there since before I became a Wikipedian. That's why I habitually come straight here whenever I land on the article page. The templates seem to be doing their job of bringing people who would like to edit the article constructively here for discussion. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 21:52, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Stereotype Threat

Removing the section on stereotype threat. It is pure speculation and there is no evidence to indicate that the stereotype threat is causing racial IQ gaps or that studies that have found racial IQ gaps was a result of stereotype threat. The study itself is unrelated to IQ but primarily of SAT and grade scores which is considerably more environment based than IQ, which is a much stronger measurement of psychometric g. It is also in complete contradiction to the APA Task Force Report that states biases in the construction or administration of tests is not the cause of the White-Black IQ gap. Given that there is no evidence to suggest any of the studies that have found IQ gaps between races were using stereotype threat, to try to state that it is causing the gap is without any foundation. BlackHades (talk) 08:21, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I don’t think the section discussing stereotype threat ought to be removed from the body of the article, as long as qualifications such as the Wicherts study are mentioned there also. But I approve of removing the paragraph about it from the lead section, which is what you’ve done. Apart from what you mentioned about it being synth to discuss this in the context of IQ, when the source only talks about SAT scores, I think it’s also WP:UNDUE to mention stereotype threat in the lead section without mentioning any other specific possible cause of the IQ gap.

I removed this paragraph from the lead section yesterday, but Muntuwandi added it back without explaining why. (He reverted eight edits from me all at once, but only provided an explanation for his reason regarding one of them.) I encourage you, or anyone else, to look through some of the other recent changes that WavePart made to this article without any discussion, and see whether you approve of them all. I tried to change some of them yesterday, but all of these changes are what were reverted by Muntuwandi without any explanation. --Captain Occam (talk) 10:03, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I think ST should indeed be mentioned in the article, but not in the lede. -Bpesta22 (talk) 16:28, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I see that Mikemikev has added back the "significance and policy relevance" section, but Ramdrake has reverted both this edit and the previous edit that removed the "stereotype threat" paragraph from the lead. His justification for removing the "significance and policy relevance" section is the fact that it doesn't have consensus yet, while his justification for adding back the "stereotype threat" paragraph is that it's cited and relevant.

Now, this is a rather blatant double standard. If lack of consensus is sufficient reason to keep something out of the article, then the "stereotype threat" paragraph definitely shouldn't be in the lead, because at the moment three users are arguing against its inclusion there and none are arguing for it. The way this is supposed to work is that material gets removed from the article if there are content-based objections to it; "no consensus" is never a stand-alone reason to revert, as explained here. Right now there are content-based objections to the "stereotype threat" paragraph in the lead, but the only equivalent thing for the "significance and policy relevance" section is the fact that Aprock is offering to provide some criticisms of this section in the next few days. And it isn't appropriate to exclude a section from an article based on suggestions that haven't been made yet.

Ramdrake, I think you know that you aren't being consistent here. I'll give a little while for you (or anyone else) to justify this revert, but if nobody can provide a justification for it, my argument for what's wrong with it stands and it'll need to be undone. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:55, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I think Ramdrake is correct that major changes while Arb Con is reviewing this case are problematic. I think Occam is right that such an argument applies especially to the lead. Since the lead is such an important part of the article, I have a reverted to a stable version from May 5, 2010. Please discuss any proposed changes (and I am sympathetic to many such ideas) on the Talk page first, at least while Arb Con is going on. David.Kane (talk) 19:05, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I have absolutely no problem with that. I agree that we shouldn't try to effect major changes to the article while arbitration is going on, and I thank David for conveying in better terms what I was trying to point out.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:33, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing the lead, David. A lot of the changes I made yesterday that Muntuwandi reverted were to undo non-consensus changes that WavePart had made to the lead without any discussion, so I’m glad it’s back in a stable state now.

I definitely agree that large changes ought to be discussed before they’re added, especially during an ArbCom case, but the new material I tried to add is something we’ve already discussed for more than a month, and content-wise I don’t think there are any outstanding objections to it at this point. Something I think we need to ask here is, how much discussion about this is necessary? And if a month and three separate drafts aren’t enough, how much more discussion about it do we need? I really get the feeling that we aren’t accomplishing anything by delaying this any longer. This is especially the case if we end up having to delay adding this section until after the arbitration case is finished. Arbitration cases sometimes last for months, and by that point the recent discussions about this section would have lost relevance, and I would most likely have to re-explain the justification for it to an entirely new group of editors. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:43, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Hi BlackHades. It's not even remotely legitimate to call the existence of a stereotype threat "pure speculation". As shown by the list of references on the stereotype threat page, it is documented in countless peer reviewed studies about social perception and its impact on IQ, so it unquestionably has AN effect. The only thing that can be reasonably debated is how MUCH of an effect, or what portion of the race/IQ effect it can explain. However, I have seen no evidence put forward that an answer is available to this in the scientific literature, and therefore, no answer will be obtained by people arguing here about how MUCH of an effect it has, and thus that should not factor in to the content of the article. The goal here is NPOV, which is achieved by listing the things which contribute to the topic, and drawing no conclusions about which ones dominate. And that is what the article must do. Therefore, the article should describe that stereotype threat effects exist, and not attempt to draw original-research conclusions about how much they can explain any observed effect. WavePart (talk) 10:16, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

It is pure speculation. There is absolutely no indication that any of the studies that found racial IQ gaps were using stereotype threat. There is absolutely no evidence that these studies manipulated the administration of IQ tests on specific racial groups on reaching their IQ gap conclusions. Stereotype threat is completely irrelevant to the discussion since 1. studies demonstrate IQ gaps exist without any evidence of stereotype threat and 2. SAT and grade scores is significantly less intelligence based in relation to psychometric g than IQ. BlackHades (talk) 14:17, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Why would you say "there is absolutely no evidence" when the stereotype threat page clearly lists studies showing that it applies to IQ tests? Perhaps you misunderstand what the stereotype threat is supposed to be. It is NOT about a failure in the administration of an IQ test. It is about the psychological effect of the mere test-taker's knowledge about a stereotype relating to the contents of the test, which is present even in a properly administered IQ test. WavePart (talk) 06:12, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Occam, you said you want to include more mention of Wichert's study showing that stereotype threat is inadequate to explain the full racial gap. I'm okay with integrating more mention of this study, but I am unable to locate an original document for it. The reference in the stereotype threat section of this article seems to be gone, and googling for the article seems to mostly only find this wikipedia article and clones thereof. Do you know where a copy of this can still be located, so that I can properly consider its inclusion? Thanks. WavePart (talk) 11:13, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Stereotype threat does not explain the typical one SD IQ difference between whites and blacks, and I don't think any reputable researchers have ever claimed otherwise. Sackett et al. (Am Psychol 59 (1): 7–13) put it this way:

"Thus, rather than showing that eliminating threat eliminates the large score gap on standardized tests, the research actually shows something very different. Specifically, absent stereotype threat, the African American-White difference is just what one would expect based on the African American-White difference in SAT scores, whereas in the presence of stereotype threat, the difference is larger than would be expected based on the difference in SAT scores."

In the media, stereotype threat has frequently been misrepresented as eliminating the typical white-black gap. ST should be mentioned in the article, but it's not a terribly important phenomenon.--Victor Chmara (talk) 14:52, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Well correct me if I'm wrong, but the article title is not "Proving Whether or Not Race Has a Hereditary Impact on Intelligence". Many of you seem to be reflexively editing the article as if that were the real topic, when by definition of NPOV that CANNOT be the topic of the article. At no point did I, or any edit I made, claim that the stereotype threat can explain anything in entirety (nor should the article claim that it can). But, you just showed from your own quote that stereotype threat has a significant effect on intelligence test scores between the races. That is all that is required for its inclusion as a major topic in an article describing the issues around Race and Intelligence. After all, our goal is not to prove anything, but to neutrally describe everything relevant that relates to the topic! WavePart (talk) 06:12, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Stereotype threat does not explain any of the gap. It explains what may happen in low-stakes laboratory experiments, but it does not explain any of the gap in, say, SAT scores. My point is simply that ST should not be misrepresented in the article. There are some good comments about this is Hunt and Carlson's article "Considerations Relating to the Study of Group Differences in Intelligence" in the section "Example of Overgeneralization From Laboratory Research". I'd recommend that article in general for editors of R&I articles.--Victor Chmara (talk) 08:45, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

WavePart, the article already talks about the Wicherts study I mentioned. It’s in the second paragraph of this section. Since there are a fair number of reliable sources which discuss stereotype threat as a possible influence on IQ, I don’t think this topic should be excluded from the article entirely, but the article definitely ought to also cover some of the shortcomings of this explanation that Victor Chmara has mentioned.

Victor, I think I largely agree with you about this. Several of the shortcomings you’ve mentioned are already described by the paragraph about the Wicherts study, but if you want to add some additional sources about this (after the article is unprotected), you’re welcome to do so.

On a different topic, I would like it if someone could respond to my comment about the new section I was hoping to add. David.Kane and Ramdrake both suggested that I ought to discuss this section some more before adding it, but how can that be possible if my attempts to discuss it are going to be ignored? --Captain Occam (talk) 15:32, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Hi Victor. Steele and Aronson report that African American groups perform worse when usual when instructed that their cognitive ability is being tested (where White Americans perform similarly to usual), while White Americans perform better than usual when instructed to take the test seriously (where African Americans perform similarly to usual), and they specifically state that they consider these results related to IQ testing. I concur completely that Hunt and Carlson argue against their interpretation (although state that they think there is still a significant effect there). The most important part, however, is that it is not our role to declare one of these two groups correct! Per NPOV, we should simply state them both, as they are obviously both prominently published in the literature. (Heck, I'm pretty sure stereotype threat was even in one of my old college textbooks, listed as contributing to testing differences, so obviously it is a prominent position.) So I accept adding mention of Hunt and Carlson as an appropriate counterpoint. I reject the idea of removing stereotype threat as a contributing factor just because another set of researchers disagrees with it. On a controversial article you do not exclude things just because they are countered. You describe both, and mention that they disagree. WavePart (talk) 07:11, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Hereditarianism

I was going to tack on above but decided to start a new section. In all those intelligence tests I did throughout childhood (I was part of a study of significantly premature @ St. Vincent's in New York, I'm my own case study of IQ et al. testing in the 60's, hence my ongoing interest since then), I always neatly filled in "OTHER" and "LATVIAN". I was crushed when I was informed I was merely "white." The presentation of hereditarianism seems a bit one-dimensional—that heredity plays a part in cognitive skills associated with intelligence (based on correlation of scores) from biological parents to their offspring is established. I would like to see more exploration of scholarship which contends that what applies in the cases of individuals does/does not also then apply to (self-identified) groups (which have been shown to correlate to identifiable biological markers), i.e., SIRE. But first I think the stuff above (FAQ 3) should be laid to rest. PЄTЄRS VЄСRUМВА ►talk 14:05, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I also noticed I couldn't find "haplotype" in the current article although there is published research in that area. More post-FAQ-tum. PЄTЄRS VЄСRUМВА ►talk 18:29, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Hi there

I have no vested interest, history with, or emotional concern about this article. (Full disclosure: I'm a smart white guy with a multiracial friends and family network.) I spotted that this page is having a significant conflict, and I will try to interject some outside somewhat-detached perspective and increase NPOV. WavePart (talk) 05:09, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Even though your edits are well-sourced and I trust that they've been made in good faith, I still have some problems with them. For one thing, I think the existence of international IQ differences ought to be mentioned in the lead section. Stereotype is also only one of several possible contributors to the racial IQ gap, and I think for us to mention it specifically in the lead section (without mentioning any other possible contributors) is undue weight.

I'm going to edit the lead section in order to fix some of these problems. Since the version of the lead that existed on June 4th was the last version that was clearly supported by consensus, I think anyone who would like to implement large changes to this section should discuss these changes here, and obtain consensus for them before reinserting them. (That is, the "D" in WP:BRD.) --Captain Occam (talk) 09:27, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Hi Occam. I'm not going to concern myself with whether or not I edited The Wrong Version, since whatever conflict was going on there didn't seem to be working too well. I will simply try to edit from where it is. I also find that in these controversial articles (how this on managed to become controversial is beyond me), repeated calls for "consensus", which is very hard to define in the midst of a conflict, are often used to try to manipulate contents toward non-compromise positions, while a compromise toward NPOV is the only stable solution. I of course don't care much what the article actually says, as long as it sticks to NPOV. And I think controversial articles achieve NPOV best when they focus more on describing what a topic is about rather than conclusions about a topic, and when they state in the text who has said every sourced claim made. So I will try to keep following that recipe. WavePart (talk) 21:19, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

It seems clear to me that you're having trouble getting other editors to accept many of your changes to the article. Perhaps if you explain to me the major points you think are most important to include, I can try to help you find ways to include those points which will be written in a way that conforms better to NPOV and will be accepted better by the other editors. For example, I would like to help you include some information about international IQ differences, but at this point I don't understand what it is you would like to say about this. I see the sentence, "Similar findings have been reported for related populations around the world, most notably in Africa, though these are generally considered far less reliable due to the relative paucity of test data and the difficulties inherent in the cross-cultural comparison of intelligence test scores." It's unclear to me what you mean by "related populations" or "most notably in Africa". But if you can explain to me in some detail what you mean, and perhaps provide a source that I can read over to better understand the point you want to include, then I will try to help you include this. WavePart (talk) 21:19, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Occam, why did you not take me up on the above offer? I made a genuine offer to help you insert the things you are interested in there, but you just started reverting pieces instead of explaining to me here what you want the article to cover. The offer still stands. WavePart (talk) 10:31, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

WavePart, the way this generally works is that when a person makes a bold edit to an article, and that edit is reverted, the prerogative is on the person trying to make the change to justify it and obtain consensus for it. If there’s no consensus, then there’s no change. Since you hadn’t yet made an attempt to justify your changes to the lead, I reverted it to the most recent version that was supported by consensus during earlier discussions about this topic. Even if that earlier consensus no longer exists, it’s necessary to build a new consensus before keeping the new material.

Now that you’re making an effort to discuss your changes, though, I’ll answer your question. There have been a lot of studies about differences between races outside of the United States, and they generally show the same differences in scores that exist in the United States. The person who’s most famous for writing about international IQ differences between races is Richard Lynn. A lot of people have accused Lynn of cherry-picking data in support of his viewpoint, but the vast majority of studies about IQ differences outside the USA were performed by people other than Lynn, so a more important question is whether IQ scores can be accurately compared between cultures in general. There’s a lot of debate over that point also, hence the lead’s qualification that data outside the United States is generally considered less reliable then within-country differences.

I also think it isn’t appropriate for the lead to mention the study from Flynn and Dickens that the IQ gap has recently shrunk, for two reasons. First, this study is a primary source. Even though I tend to be fairly lenient about articles making use of primary sources in general, the goal of the lead is to provide a concise and general overview of this topic, and for that purpose I think we need to only use secondary sources, and it might even be best for the lead to be cited to nothing except the APA report. And the second reason I have a problem with mentioning this study in the lead is because the idea that the IQ gap has shrunk is disputed, and I don’t think it’s consistent with NPOV to present only one perspective about this. In fact, the same issue of Psychological Science that published the paper from Flynn and Dickens also published this response from Jensen and Rushton in when they claim that the paper from Flynn and Dickens hasn’t adequately examined the data, and that the IQ gap actually hasn’t shrunk. I’m not saying that Jensen is necessarily right or that Flynn is necessarily right, but I don’t think it’s NPOV for us to present one perspective and not the other.

The article’s now protected for three days, but it would be good to have this resolved by the time it’s unprotected. Based on my explanation, can you agree with changing these things? --Captain Occam (talk) 15:17, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Hi Occam, thank you for replying. Regarding Lynn's studies of international IQ differences, can you show me a source representing the basic idea you want to have in the lead? It is of course obvious IQ tests have been given in many countries, but how do you propose we state this as a cohesive (and referenced) point which relates to race? To do that, we must find a way to use only one or two sentences to relate studies across countries to studies about race. This may be quite tricky, given that different countries are very different environments, but I'm willing to consider it if you give a starting sentence. WavePart (talk) 06:47, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the Rushton/Jensen response to the Dickens article. Upon reading it I agree that for NPOV it should also be included in the same sentence. I propose, in the simplest phrasing I can think of, "A more recent 2006 study by Dickens et al. found that the gap closed by about 5 or 6 IQ points between 1972 and 2002[6], however this was challenged by Rusthon & Jensen who claim the gap remains stable[7]." This provides an example that there is some debate in the field about the size and movement of the gap. WavePart (talk) 06:47, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Regarding the possible shrinking of the IQ gap, I think it would probably be sufficient to just state what the APA report says, which is that some researchers have claimed that the gap has been shrinking, but that this hasn’t been convincingly demonstrated. I think it would be better for the disagreement between Dickens/Flynn and Jensen/Rushton to only be covered in the body of the article; we already have a section titled “score convergence” in which this topic is discussed. What do you think of that idea?

As for what to cite about international score differences, I guess I can think of a few sources we could use. One of them can be Lynn’s 2006 book Race Differences in Intelligence: an Evolutionary Analysis, which presents a lot of data on this topic (most of which is from researchers other than Lynn), although Lynn’s conclusions from this data are also highly contentious. And then for the point about this data being disputed, we can include this review of Lynn’s book as well as this one, both of which argue that Lynn is right about some points (the international score differences exists) but wrong about others (that the score different isn’t as large as Lynn claims, and that it doesn’t directly cause differences in national wealth.) There’s also this review of Lynn’s book, which argues that because of the difficulty comparing IQ scores between cultures, the data cited by Lynn has no validity at all.

David.Kane has also mentioned at one point that international score differences (and their shortcomings) are discussed by Machintosh’s book IQ and Human Intelligence, although I don’t own a copy of that book. If he can provide the exact page number for the relevant part of this book that discusses this, that might be a good source to use also. --Captain Occam (talk) 13:52, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, my problem with stating ONLY what the APA report says is that it seems to imply the gap has remained stable, while there is other dispute in the field. So it wouldn't be NPOV to preferentially only state the APA report without at least mentioning that there is more recent dispute about whether it is staying stable or shrinking. I can agree that the lead might not be the best place to go into details about how much it is or is not shrinking, but at the very least mention of disagreement in the field should be present for completeness. I could accept replacing the sentence about the gap shrinking with a simpler one which states, "More recent publications have disagreed about whether the gap is shrinking or remaining stable." followed by both the Dickens and Rushton citations. Then the detailed sentence I proposed above can be moved down into the Score Convergence section (which apparently requires some significant NPOV improvements as well, as it seems to also incorrectly be drawing conclusions). WavePart (talk) 19:14, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so then your proposal is that the lead should mention the debates in the field about the correlation between IQ scores and national GDP. Perhaps we can develop a small paragraph here in advance of the unprotection? WavePart (talk) 19:14, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

IQ scores and national GDP

Please edit the following paragraph in preparation for inclusion in the lead. Comments/discussion should follow after it.

In his controversial 2006 book^[1], Richard Lynn discussed the correlation between average IQ scores between nations and national GDP, and concluded an evolutionary explanation, that differences in national intelligence contribute to differences in national GDP [1]. This has resulted in widespread debate, where most other publications accept the existence of this correlation, but offer a range of explanations for the direction of causality and the source of this relationship[2] [3], ranging all the way to the opposite explanation that differences in national GDP result in differences in national intelligence[4].

Lynn has an in-press paper in Intelligence where he further validates his National IQ estimates:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2010.04.007 -Bpesta22 (talk) 01:49, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I just read it. It provides a comparison with educational achievement as justification for the validity of defining a national IQ that can be compared across nations. It seems reasonable to tack on as a reference, so I've added it there, but it doesn't seem to introduce any new ideas so I've left the text the same. WavePart (talk) 02:13, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

New / short article by Flynn should be featured

It's in press in Intelligence now.

His seems like a much more powerful argument than Nisbett's. The link is ghastly-- if anyone wants the article, send me an email: b.pesta@csuohio.edu

available at ScienceDirect —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bpesta22 (talk • contribs) 00:56, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Bpesta. It's certainly a more convincing argument than cherry picking a few studies, and I agree some mention should be made in the article. Try putting square brackets around the link to collapse it. mikemikev (talk) 09:03, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

It's amusing how Flynn keeps trumpeting the ancient, deeply flawed Eyferth study of children of American GIs in Germany. I think I'll write a WP article about the study.--Victor Chmara (talk) 12:30, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I would just note that our role as editors is to be inclusive with regard to sources (even ones discredited later) and deal with differences and evolution of scholarship as part of article narrative, and not to render our personal judgements as to what sources to include or not include.

On Eyferth, here's a good title to stir up hornets, how about Human biodiversity denialism. (Absolutely no personal editorial opinion expressed here, for or against, this is just the most attention-garnering term I've seen referring to those who quote Eyferth.)

P.S. Seriously, per some comments above, this article is about test scores and what is said about them, not about making conclusions. What drives editors away is the seemingly bottomless pit of angst and (IMHO) needless outrage over the (IMHO) needlessly monolithic "consensus" which has been constructed and is being debated as to agreed to or not/include or not. The more I read here the more I think we'd be better off chucking the whole thing and simply sticking to incremental improvements (which may or may not include chunks off the monolith).

P.P.S. Personally, I couldn't care less what the article looked like months ago, if we've lost something useful it will make its way back incrementally. Can we have the article unprotected so we can make judicious progress? PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 15:45, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

The problem isn't (necessarily) that we've lost something useful. The problem is that we've gained questionable data from unreliable (and possibly even WP:FRINGE sources), which reflect a minority view (note, I'm not saying WP:FRINGE here) of the scientific community as if it were scientific consensus, with dissenting editors blocked or threatened with blocks. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:12, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

@Peters - Agreed. @Arthur - You seem to be hung up on the edit history here. Since I just arrived at this article, I have thankfully missed all the drama which apparently took place here. But the wiki way to fix content problems is to edit forward, not to worry about how past edits got to the current state. So I suggest pushing a mental reboot button, and focusing on how to make needed improvements to the article given its current condition. As I've asked a few times, what specifically do you think the article should state that it doesn't, or shouldn't state that it does? WavePart (talk) 18:36, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

@Arthur, we are not the arbiters of what scholarly work is questionable or unreliable. We

organize what has been quantified and interpreted, by whom and when, and
what has been said (by experts in the field, et al.) regarding those exercises.

That way, what has been rightly questioned or deemed unreliable is dealt with appropriately and included in the overall content to paint a complete picture. And I shouldn't need to add that in any evolving area of study that majority and minority are points in time. (No judgement on current majorities or minorities!) PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 21:16, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I'll defer to Mathsci on those questions, as he's been more involved in (attempting to) edit the article than I am. I had been (since March, at least) trying (and failing) to ensure that a process conducive to constructive editing was in place. He would certainly point out that reliable criticism and commentary on Jensen's work has been removed, and his (Jensen's) self-description of his work has been added, in its place, but I'm not sure what other content problems there are.

And, to return to your first point, we are the arbiters of what scholarly work is considered questionable or unreliable.

After the RfAr is completed, so that future edits may be done with a modicum of sanity, we should then discuss whether than January 12, May 5, or current version of the article is closest to a reasonable article, and work on from there. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:32, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there are no "hard facts" here, only methods of measurement, quantification, and subsequent interpretations. Our task in representation of the subject matter here is to organize that information in as comprehensible fashion as possible, particularly where we have the inevitable criticism and counter-criticism. So, at face value, criticisms (whether aligned to camps or not) all stay as part of the portrait of the landscape. This is not rocket science. As for what we are working with, the current version is the one we are all looking at, pimples or not, let's please move on. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 21:47, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

P.S. Let's not pepper our conversations with WP:ALPHABETSOUP reminders of what conventions we should, or should not, be following, that comes across as condescending and lecturing. @Albert, don't be offended, I'm only observing that wikilinking to WP:RS does nothing to enhance the quality of conversation. My experience is that anywhere WP:ALPHABETSOUP rears its ugly head, gutter-sniping is bound to follow. We're all adults here, let's please use plain language going forward. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 21:56, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the link to (Flynn 2010). I've downloaded it and will be reading it while I update my bibliography some more. Whew! I've been spending a lot of time reading user talk pages, article discussion/talk pages, and arbitration case pages that I would rather devote to reading high-quality psychology literature, so thank you for the change of pace. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 22:10, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I wrote an article on the Eyferth study. Comments/improvements are welcome.--Victor Chmara (talk) 19:06, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Comment at article talk. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 21:39, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

FAQ Q3 Vote

I'm not really seeing how the above discussion is leading to a resolution of anything. So to cut to the chase, let's try a simple vote to see where people ACTUALLY stand. I have chosen the most recent point in the history as a version for voting, just so that all votes are on the same version. This can obviously be amended, and in fact will have to be as further research continues to be released. WavePart (talk) 06:28, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Statement: "I support making FAQ Q3 as stated in this version a part of consensus."

Agree:

[sign here]

Disagree:

[sign here]

Neutral:

My suggested changes have been included, and, although I see some statements of fact which are probably not adequately researched, I don't see anything I wouldn't be willing to follow, tentatively. However, the SIRE points are only tentatively supported by research. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:18, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure what a vote to "agree" says versus a vote to "disagree." If the thrust of that FAQ section is the heading text "The results of this mediation are disputed, and these 'decisions' are not binding on current editors, nor are they necessarily reflective of current consensus," then it seems to me that an "agree" vote opens up the possibility of revisiting any of the issues listed under that heading. Is that the intended meaning, that those who agree are saying that we may all edit boldly at will, subject to all the usual Wikipedia policies and guidelines? -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 21:30, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
I don't have any objections to the monolith, however, I think we need to get away from the massive changes mentality that's become the M.O. here as relates to the FAQ, personal copies of article sections being edited, and, of course, the ever-present "let's revert (fill in # of weeks) back to X." I'm rather inclined to chip away at the monolith and see what develops. Big changes + big reverts = lurching forward and back, I think we can take a bit of a hiatus from that all. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 22:43, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

@WeijiBaikiBianji: Well, I kind of meant the seven bullet-point items, and didn't notice the wishy-washy text right after "Q3". If consensus were obtained here in the vote, I would probably change the text right after Q3 to say something like, "Guidelines agreed to during chat". But it seems non-commitment to those bullet points is the name of the game here so far. Perhaps it would be more meaningful to agree instead to some editing guidelines as Vecrumba indicates like avoiding long distance reverts? I don't fully object to editing sections separately from the article for a brief time, although generally this is done much better collaboratively if people can be mature about it. Generally incremental changes are best, even if a lot of incremental changes are used. It's best to assume the benefit of the doubt about the validity of keeping something that's already there, and try to find a place for it or a way to keep as much of it as you can. WavePart (talk) 02:27, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so I see you were referring to the body text of that FAQ section rather than its heading. Procedurally, because I first came by this page as an editor only as the mediation broke down (I visited here a year ago--August 2009--solely as a reader, while working on a seminar presentation I did in October 2009), I reserve the right to edit boldly on any factual point in any part of the article, letting the sources take me where they lead me. As a courtesy to other editors, I am trying to share a variety of sources as a subpage on my user page, so that any editor who wants to look something up for verification while editing this article is able to do so. (Correspondingly, I welcome additions to the source list from anyone. I am still revising the list, and obtained dozens of books over the last weekend to add to the list.) For the moment, also as a courtesy to all the editors here, I am mostly reading pages upon pages of the archived talk pages here, the articles and talk pages on related topics, and the arbitration case file related to this article. So I will mostly be data-gathering (both about the topic proper and about the Wikipedia editing process that preceded my presence here) before doing any major substantive edits. But please consider me NOT signed off on any previous consensus as to article content. All content issues are open, as far as I am concerned, until I have looked things up and digested the sources. Just as I am trying to be courteous to previous editors, so too the previous editors must honor the spirit of " you can edit this page right now"" as a core value of Wikipedia from the beginning. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 16:46, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Very well. I see pretty much uniformity on this topic, and the FAQ Q3 already states (now) that it's not binding and not necessarily reflective of current consensus, so I guess we can consider it resolved in the direction of there being a general consensus that nobody cares much what it states. WavePart (talk) 07:25, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Reminder of Current Arbitration Case about This Article and Link to Case File

I see from research notes I kept last year that on 30 June 2009 (even earlier than I remembered a moment ago) I surfed by this page as a reader and downloaded its current citation as of that date. I have been researching issues more or less related to human intelligence--mostly from the perspective of parents looking for appropriate education for gifted learners--since 1989. I first read an article by Arthur Jensen, a popular article reprinted in a newspaper, in 1972. After I began reading John Broughton's book Wikipedia: The Missing Manual (2008) and How Wikipedia Works by Ayers, Matthews, and Yates (2008), I got up the boldness to begin editing on Wikipedia. I first surfed by here as an editor just as the mediation was breaking down and the article was referred to the Arbitration Committee. As some other sections of this talk page have mentioned, this article is currently before the Arbitration Committee, and of course some of the editors here are involved persons in the case and some of us are people who just happened to surf in as the case opened. The arbitration case file provides more details. Wikipedians who are familiar with relevant evidence, whether or not they are listed as "involved persons" in the case, would do well to post the evidence they can readily link to over there. The evidence subpage of the arbitration case file notes that "Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page." -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 17:08, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Unless there is clear and unequivocal evidence that someone is being grossly disruptive, I don't expect much to come from the arbitration except the usual reminder to "play nice" as WP cannot rule on content. Most of what's there surrounds editor "X" at mediation. I haven't seen "X" in discussions lately so the whole thing appears to be moot. Even if sources are being demonstrably misrepresented, that is still a content dispute and is not within ArbCom jurisdiction. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 18:54, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I will be sharing references with all the editors to help improve this article.

Last year I began a major revision of a working paper project (begun in 2006, based on shorter research notes I began compiling as early as 1993) largely on the topic of IQ testing and theories of human intelligence, topics which relate this Wikipedia article's topic of race and intelligence. As the talk page templates note, "Race and intelligence was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time." Currently the article here is listed as a B-class, mid-importance article for WikiProject Psychology, so it's good to see so many editors active here. As a courtesy to the editors who have long been here, I will note that I will soon post citations (Wikiformatted by template codes) for the dozens of books and articles I have at hand for my non-Wikipedia project (a literature review for popular audiences interested in the primary source literature on IQ testing) to a subpage of my user page. I will add more references to verify the statements that have already long stood here in this article, without favor to one point of view or another. (I hope to add specific page numbers to both the references I add and the existing references that I am able to look up here. I also hope to clean up what appear to be some duplicate reference names that now appear in the notes for this Race and Intelligence article.) At some length, I expect to expand sections with additional facts, perhaps add a few subsections, and from time to time do substantive edits under the NPOV principle, as the sources report various points of view. Thanks to all of you who have already worked on this very detailed article. I am lucky to have access to a very comprehensive academic library at which I have circulating privileges, so I am delighted to add some V and NPOV to various Wikipedia projects. WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 17:00, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I've had two fruitful library runs in as many days, and I'm still cobbling together a master list of references from materials I have at hand and materials I have read before and materials cited in those. I'll be glad to hear suggestions from all of you for further sources to consider. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 21:37, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I am working alphabetically, from A to Z, on this, and have folded into a Wikified bibliography quite a few references from conference handouts and working paper drafts I have prepared over the years. There is still much more to add, but already enough there that I invite you all to visit the Intelligence Bibliography page to tell me about sources you think should be added to it, or to correct typos in my Wikifying the bibliography. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 19:45, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I obtained some more good sources today by interlibrary loan, but business travel will soon force a wikibreak, so it will be a while before I post another update to the Intelligence Citations subpage on my user page. I look forward to discussing reliable sources with the other editors here. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 04:39, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Significance and Policy

Let me ask one more time: does anyone have anything to say in response to my comments about the new section I’m hoping to add? I’ve been asked to try and discuss this section before adding it, which is what I’m doing now. If other editors aren’t willing to cooperate with my attempts at discussion about it, yet still continue to revert it when I try to add it, then they’re the ones who are acting out of line with regard to this. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:31, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

What new section? WavePart (talk) 18:39, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

The one we were discussing here. David.Kane and Ramdrake suggested that this section ought to be discussed in greater depth before it’s added, to which I responded by pointing out that it’s already been discussed for more than a month, and asking them what more discussion about it they think is necessary. Neither of them have replied to my question about that. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:50, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I found the text you are considering here, and I made two very minor edits to it. I'd say it seems fine for inclusion, and is more well-developed and NPOV than many of the existing sections that are here. (I have not checked each source listed there, so hopefully each one correctly supports what you have stated it does.) I will support it's inclusion when the article is unprotected. WavePart (talk) 19:29, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. (And I approve of the changes you made to my draft.)

The article will be unprotected tomorrow. If there are any objections to adding this section when the article is unprotected, including the modifications that WavePart made to it, now’s the time to mention them. And obviously, if anyone has any, please be specific about what you think needs to be changed about this section before you can be satisfied with it. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:09, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

(od) continuing the above...

I read through the content mentioned and I think it is fine. It does need some copy-editing for readability and de-densification (for example, de-jargoning predictive variables and ranges of values above zero and their significance), but there's no reason that can't be done after the content is added. Once this section is added I would also request we cease and desist with "revert to date X because of complaint Y by editor Z." PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 20:53, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Oops, someone is cooling their heels as is wont to occur on occasion. I expect I'll do a bit of copy-editing where "the content mentioned" sits at the moment. Given the short fuses in evidence, I suggest we stick to bits at a time for now once the article is unprotected. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 22:26, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I've inserted the section as discussed, since it seems to have passed inspection by a number of sets of eyes with no major objections except for a few improvements, and seems to have some worthwhile content. We should be able to better edit it in-place in the article. WavePart (talk) 08:00, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

I have undone the changes, because these were made while Arbcom is process. Most involved editors right now are preparing for the arbcom case, which is why you see no major objections here. But there are objections on the Arbcom page about this very section. While the case is at Arbcom it is not the best idea to make significant changes. When progress is made at Arbcom, I am sure we will be able to address the significance section along with other pending issues. Wapondaponda (talk) 17:37, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

The verdict

What is the verdict then, is there a link between race and intelligence? There's an awful lot of opinionated material in this article, but what's the black and white answer? It looks to me that yes, some races are more intelligent. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.142.18.57 (talk) 12:07, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Define race.

Some groups of people defined as races by some people perform better on some tests called IQ tests than some other groups of people defined as races by some people. HiLo48 (talk) 12:32, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

"Define race." -- Human population clusters, corresponding to geographical ancestry, which stably transfer characteristics over generations. Hanxu9 (talk) 12:21, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Hi 86.* ip. It's not the role of wikipedia articles to draw such conclusions, and thus we must oppose any attempt by editors to insert a conclusion of that sort into the article. (And that's why you will hopefully not see it there.) I will say, for anyone worried about the topic, that given the amount of debate around it, it seems hard to say with any strong scientific certainty what the answer ACTUALLY is. But even if there IS a non-zero difference in the average, it doesn't say anything about individual members of any race (given how very broad the measured distributions are), so you shouldn't take anything personally, or take pride in any such result, or use it to form conclusion about any individuals you meet, because none of those things would be at all reasonable given the information available. WavePart (talk) 10:44, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

We can only talk about studies and scores. As my wife observes, for a bright person I can really be bone-headed (that would be not particularly bright). Intelligence has many dimensions—we can discuss what bits of it we put in a box and study and what we observe as results, but there's no certainty that it correlates to what remains outside the box. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 21:05, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

This talk page is not a WP:FORUM

Please do not use this talk page for discussions like this. Buy a good textbook at a bookshop - eg What is intelligence? (2009) by James R. Flynn, Handbook of intelligence (2004) edited by Robert Sternberg or IQ and Human Intelligence (1998) by Nicholas Mackintosh - read it carefully, and you will find out that usually population or ethnic/racial groups are discussed. There is a mainstream consensus that population groups from the Far East have better visiospatial abilities for genetic reasons. However, there are no conclusions about the black-white racial gap in IQ scores being genetic in origin. John C. Loehlin indicates in a long entry in the Handbook on "group differences in intelligence" that not is enough is known so far to make any conclusion like that; Nick Mackintosh comes to a similar finding; and Jim Flynn indicates that the gap is closing according to his most recent research. Wikipedians should not attempt to be amateur scientists, if indeed "science" is the discipline involved. Secondary sources like the ones above (all reference books published by Cambridge University Press) are what we look at when writing articles; not half-digested papers, possibly wrong, hot off the press. Those are primary sources which are unassessable on wikipedia unfortunately. Mathsci (talk) 16:43, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Hi Mathsci. I think there's nothing wrong with using a significant number of journal articles on an article about something which is subject to a lot of ongoing research. In fact, I'd say it's the only way to cover it properly. One simply has to be careful to describe it in a direct and neutral way with minimal interpretation or acceptance of conclusions present in the primary sources. It can take decades for journal articles to be adequately described in secondary sources with some authority. Sometimes they are covered quickly in news articles, but this is fairly arbitrary on the part of journalists selecting articles to cover, and as you are probably well aware, coverage of scientific topics in the news is severely lacking in accuracy, as journalists usually lack the education needed to understand what they are trying to describe. (Also, I'm not sure why you're implying books are more accessible than journal articles. Both require either buying them or accessing them through a library, although journal articles are more commonly available online through a college/university.) WavePart (talk) 18:15, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Please read (or reread) WP:PRIMARY. This is an encyclopedia, not a presentation of bleeding edge research results. And while some results may take decades to become established and verified, there is a very good reason for that. The books Mathsci listed are all contemporary (less than decades) and are all reasonable reliable secondary sources. This article needs to rely significantly less on primary sources, not more. aprock (talk) 19:42, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

I would add that there is hardly any "ongoing research". Most direct measurements are made for completely different purposes and supported by government funding agencies, e.g. the National Science Foundation. In the real world researchers in psychometrics work on things from quite a different point of view.[5][6] Wikipedians cannot possibly evaluate primary sources. On the other hand we can read reviews by experts (like the researchers I named) and come to the conclusion that articles by Rushton and Lynn are probably unreliable. That is how secondary sources are used on wikipedia. Mathsci (talk) 20:55, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

You can't just pick a book by one author on a controversial subject, and use it to justify labeling all the journal publications by another author "unreliable". That does not at all seem a proper application of WP:PRIMARY to me. It says firstly, "Primary sources that have been reliably published may be used in Wikipedia", and then describes in some detail the care which must be exercised in using them, namely that one should use them only to make descriptive statements and not interpretive statements, about which I completely agree. In the case of this article, a book by Flynn does not seem to qualify as a secondary source, since he appears to be a primary player. A primary source is defined on WP:PRIMARY as "written by people who are directly involved". As for the other two books, I at this point have no objection to them being treated as secondary sources, provided they were written as actual scientific reviews (and not as just opinion pieces, which books are at times), although I do not have access to them at this moment and cannot speak to their content. WavePart (talk) 08:23, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

By the original comment by Mathsci up there, he claims they state that there are no conclusions about race/IQ correlations being genetic in origin. If they state that, then I think that makes perfect sense to have sourced to them, and it seems even that it should be uncontroversial here that there are no conclusions in the field about whether or not there is a genetic origin to the correlations. (Particularly, since no one has presented one.) Just please note that this is not equivalent to stating that there IS no genetic component. It would probably be hard to find a preponderance of secondary sources making a sweeping and definitive conclusion like that considering how much is still unknown about the genes behind intelligence. WavePart (talk) 08:23, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

1RR reminder and full protection option

I would like to remind everyone that this article is currently under 1RR edit restriction, applying to all editors.

We had some slippage of that a few days ago. I would like to remind everyone of the 1RR restriction. If there are ongoing abuses of that I will block editors. If there's widespread abuse of that I will re-fully-protect the article until the Arbcom case is resolved.

The last few days have seen quite a bit of constructive discussion instead of head-butting on the article itself. I would like to encourage everyone to keep that up - that's what the talk page is for. Thanks.

Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 07:09, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

It would be very helpful if there were a {{oversight|arg|arg|...}} template which at least appeared on the talk page instead of editors needing to be psychic to list 1RR, prior enforcements, etc. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 00:34, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Interesting but is it relevant to the topic? Not really.

In 2004, Richard Haier, professor of psychology in the Department of Pediatrics and colleagues at University of California, Irvine and the University of New Mexico used MRI to obtain structural images of the brain in 47 normal adults who also took standard IQ tests. The study showed a correlation of IQ scores with the location and volume of gray matter tissue and that only about 6% of brain tissue appeared to relate to IQ.<ref>Richard Haier (July 19, 2004). "Human Intelligence Determined by Volume and Location of Gray Matter Tissue in Brain". Brain Research Institute, UC Irvine College of Medicine. Retrieved August 6, 2006.</ref>

Interesting but ultimately off topic. Marrying up to any cranial volume studies by ethnic or racial groups would be synthesis (and I rather doubt any were MRIs of brain activity), so just noting here that after copy-editing I ultimately removed it. Unless there's any objection, I think it's worthwhile going forward to inventory all changes on talk with at least a brief comment (not necessarily quoting the affected text) to keep a running history that's more navigable than plowing through diffs. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 16:13, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Notices to article participants

Per the notice above, article FAQ here, November, 2009 mediation here
The article is under 1RR restriction
An arbitration is currently open involving this article, here

PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 15:43, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

FAQ Q3

As there is some question as to whether the "mediation" is at all valid, I think we need to reopen /FAQ#Q3, which was "established" as part of that mediation. FAQ#Q1 and FAQ#Q2 seem non-controversial, and do not mention the mediation. This will need to be done regardless of the ArbCom decision, so we might as well discuss it now. In any case, regardless of any wrongdoing, the false accusations of WP:NPA created a hostile editing environment which would discourage any editors who felt that Dr. Pensa was WP:FRINGE (or even, not in the center of the mainstream), from editing. Could someone summarize the justification for that answer? It might very well be appropriate, but we need a new consensus. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:16, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Maybe it's my bad summer cold that has lowered my absorption coefficient, but that's more than just a lot (FAQ Q3 mediation) to go through. If I might offer advice from studying on how to write about history, any encyclopedia article, to tell a cohesive story, must have a point of view. Looking at content like:

In 1916 George O. Ferguson conducted research in his Columbia Ph.D. thesis on "The psychology of the Negro", finding them poor in abstract thought, but good in physical responses, recommending how this should be reflected in education.

which is recited, along with numerous other contentions, in a litanic inventory—in this case, regarding "History"—there is nothing here that advances understanding of "history". This sort of content desperately needs a secondary source to provided context, minimally much better positioning and organization without violating WP:OR (that is, telling a story no reputable source has told before). Absence of context is not "NPOV", it is "open to (accusations of) any POV." "Contemporary mores and interpretations of intelligence" might be a good place to start to organize historical through to modern interpretations of results as there is a clear correlation. PЄTЄRS VЄСRUМВА ►talk 01:59, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

P.S. Nor is this an invitation for scathing 20:20 indictments of historical prejudices. We should be mature enough to know what those are and deal with them appropriately. PЄTЄRS VЄСRUМВА ►talk 02:09, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Can someone please define the term "SIRE data" as used in that FAQ? WavePart (talk) 06:25, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Also, Arthur, can you clarify which parts of Q3 you think should be reopened for discussion? At the moment the five parts I understand the meaning of, the first three and last two, seem like fairly reasonable compromise positions which seem to match up with the sources. But I'm certainly willing to change position on that if given compelling sources to the contrary. WavePart (talk) 06:33, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

"Compelling sources" are not necessary: It was established as part of the invalid mediation, possibly by the moderator without input, so any "consensus" to it should be disregarded. If we can establish a positive consensus for it, including Mathsci, then I would reluctantly concede it belongs. It shouldn't be in the FAQs until a consensus is established. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:51, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, I choose to decide based on content and don't care to argue about the legitimacy of past mediation. It might help a lot if the discussion can stay centered more on content than edit history. So if you cannot provide any content-based objection to the contents of the Q3 section there, then I will have to issue my support for the first three and last two. (I cannot agree to the ones that say "SIRE" unless someone can define what that means.) WavePart (talk) 07:24, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

On the contrary, it needs to be moved out of the FAQ until a consensus can be established, even if it were reasonable. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:25, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Indeed the FAQ should enjoy wide support, and in this case it doesn't. Verbal chat 08:28, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Arthur Rubin, a very strong consensus was formed for that, by people who are familiar with this subject. You saying "I don't like it" because it was mediated by someone who doesn't like your buddy is of no importance.

SIRE is self informed race and ethnicity. mikemikev (talk) 09:17, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

A summary of what is proposed which is not in the article now would be useful for those that have not been involved from the beginning, there is a lot of assumed knowledge (of the past) in any discussions of content debate. PЄTЄRS VЄСRUМВА ►talk 14:05, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

“It was established as part of the invalid mediation, possibly by the moderator without input, so any "consensus" to it should be disregarded.”

What does it accomplish for you to engage in speculation like this, when you’re perfectly capable of reading through the mediation archives for yourself, and seeing how each of these points was agreed on? In no case did Ludwigs2 decide for himself on any of these points, or defer to Bpesta22’s authority; these are simply summaries of the things that everyone participating in the mediation was able to come to an agreement about. If you want to claim that people’s dislike of Ludwig’s handling of the mediation stopped them from raising objections to these points when they otherwise would have done so, you’re welcome to think that, but consensus is always determined only by the comments that are being posted on the relevant talk pages, not by the private opinions of editors who don’t express them. And by that standard, consensus was reached on all of these points during the mediation.

If there’s any particular one of these where you want me to link you to the discussion during which it was resolved, I can do that. Is there? --Captain Occam (talk) 14:36, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Rubbish. As I, for one, was almost sure the mediation was invalid, and found that questioning Dr. Pesta's expert status (not the editor's good faith), required by NPOV, was not allowed, I didn't feel it productive to participate in the mediation. I'm sure there were others. I recall that some content disputes were settled by the mediator by fiat, rather than with editor input. Hence, for this one

All "findings" attributed to the mediation must have a hidden pointer to the relevant section of the mediation talk page,
If there is any present objection by a active editor who did not participate in that thread, "consensus" should be considered not established. If Mathsci agrees with the statements, I would be willing to withdraw my objection to them, but I still think they should be removed if any established editor thinks they are false. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:29, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

“I didn't feel it productive to participate in the mediation.”

This is exactly what I’m saying. Consensus is established by the discussion on the relevant talk pages. If someone declines to participate there, regardless of their motives for not doing so, they can’t be included in determining what the consensus is.

As an administrator, I know you’re aware of this. If instead of a mediation case this had been an AFD discussion, would it have influenced the outcome if an editor had private objections to the arguments being presented there, but never raised them on the AFD page? Even if his reasons for keeping his objections to himself were entirely valid, the outcome of the AFD discussion would still be decided without his input.

“I still think they should be removed if any established editor thinks they are false.”

Consensus depends on more than just whether an editor agrees or disagrees with something, particularly if that disagreement is nothing but WP:IDONTLIKEIT. The strength of the arguments being presented matters also, and whether they’ve been adequately responded to. However, I don’t have a problem with your suggestion that these summaries ought to contain links to the relevant part of the mediation discussion. Does anyone else have an opinion about this?

If other people approve of this idea also, I would recommend Ludwigs2 adding the links. I’m capable of adding them myself, but since he was the mediator, it seems more appropriate for him to do it. --Captain Occam (talk) 15:46, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I notice that Verbal has just removed one of the items from the FAQ, despite the fact that no attempt has even been made yet to re-discuss this point and the arguments that originally resulted in it. As I mentioned in my last comment, WP:IDONTLIKEIT is not a valid reason to remove content, and thus far that’s the only argument that’s being presented against these conclusions. For this reason, I’m undoing his removal of this. The “disputed” tag can stay on it for now, but in order for it to be removed entirely, there’ll have to be some actual content-based objections to it that overrule the earlier consensus and the arguments it was based on. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:00, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

As I noted on the RfAr page, Ludwigs2's actions, even if well-intentioned, had the effect of driving editors away. Any editor so driven away should be able to return and challenge the "consensus" as if it had never been. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:05, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I don’t disagree with your having the ability to challenge the past consensus over this article. You, Mathsci, and anyone else here is welcome to do that, and if a new consensus is formed, then that will replace whatever consensus was reached during the mediation. What I have a problem with is the attitude that because the earlier consensus didn’t include you, it can’t be considered a consensus at all, and that therefore it’s acceptable to undo any change that resulted from it (or every change, in the case of the five-month revert) without discussing it first. This is no different from how it would be if all of the decisions that were made about this article had been made on the talk page rather than during mediation: major changes still need to be discussed before they’re made, even if they’re being made by someone who didn’t participate in the discussion that resulted in them. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:24, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

My objection is that:

The mediation is flawed. Any "consensus" which derived from a process in which established editors were driven away, whether or not apparently consistent with Wikipedia policies and guidelines, is void.
For the particular answer I marked as disputed, there were two participants who objected. As the moderator made "rulings from the chair", I would say that, even if there were (which I don't yet see in the mediation talk pages, pointed to as RfAr evidence) an apparent consensus, it would be invalid.

— Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:58, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Referring to item X of Y or non-descriptive references to what who said before doesn't help those of us trying to sort through this all. Can we please insure we reference briefly what specific bit of content/(non-)consensus is being discussed when we are raising objections (or even agreeing) here? PЄTЄRS VЄСRUМВА ►talk 17:20, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

“Any ‘consensus’ which derived from a process in which established editors were driven away, whether or not apparently consistent with Wikipedia policies and guidelines, is void.”

If that’s the case, then any consensus which has been reached in the past month is void, because Varoon Arya and DJ have both been driven away from this discussion by Mathsci’s behavior. Varoon Arya stated this here, and DJ stated it in his opening statement on the ArbCom case. Is that your perspective about this? If the argument you’re using applies to the mediation, it most certainly applies to the current discussion also.

If you’re going to use the argument that you’ve been making here, this is a question you need to answer. Unless you’re going to apply a double standard, you need to accept either that this isn’t a valid argument against the conclusions of the mediation, or that there won’t be any consensus for any conclusion we reach in a discussion that DJ and Varoon Arya have been driven away from. I would like to know which of these you think is the case.

“For the particular answer I marked as disputed, there were two participants who objected. As the moderator made "rulings from the chair", I would say that, even if there were (which I don't yet see in the mediation talk pages, pointed to as RfAr evidence) an apparent consensus, it would be invalid.”

The main discussion about this was here. It was primarily a discussion between Varoon Arya, Slrubenstein and Aprock, but eventually Slrubenstein stopped responding to VA’s points, even though he was continuing to comment in other threads in the mediation pages. So at that point Varoon Arya continued his discussion just with Aprock, and eventually they reached an agreement about this. Even though there were only two users involved in this discussion by the end of it, it’s important to remember both that Aprock was someone who had initially disagreed with VA about this, and also that most of the arguments VA was making about it weren’t addressed. The strength of the arguments being presented is one of the main things that determines consensus, and in this case no other editor made any attempt to address his points, even when he was specifically soliciting responses from anyone who had a counter-argument.

Ludwigs2 initially concluded this discussion as just stating that research about race and intelligence isn’t fringe in general, but since all of Varoon Arya’s points had been with regard to the D hypothesis specifically (as is apparent from reading his comments), Ludwigs2 eventually also added the conclusion that the hereditarian hypothesis isn’t fringe, which was the actual point that VA had been making. When he added this to the list of current agreements here, nobody raised any objections to it. (At least, not anywhere on the mediation pages, which is what consensus needs to be judged by, as in my AFD example.) What two editors are you saying objected to this conclusion in the mediation discussion, and where did they do so? --Captain Occam (talk) 17:38, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

…And I see that Verbal has removed this item from the FAQ yet again, still without making any effort to justify this removal here. My points about it being inappropriate to remove content based only on procedural grounds, and without making any attempt to address the arguments that have been presented for its inclusion, seem to be falling on deaf ears. And obviously, he’s also making no attempt to respond to my points about this; he’s just repeatedly reverting without engaging in any discussion. Could someone else please pay attention to this situation? --Captain Occam (talk) 17:51, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

It's quite simple, it no longer enjoys consensus. It should be removed from the FAQ and remain out unless consensus again changes. I'm afraid "Ludwigs said" is an argument from (if you'll pardon this inappropriate term) authority, and that's not how wikipedia works. Verbal chat 18:05, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

In fact, it seems quite clear from what you have written above that it never enjoyed any kind of consensus, and should never have been added. Verbal chat 18:08, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with what “Ludwigs said”. Are you going to respond to what I actually said in my comment? Consensus is determined by the strength of the arguments being presented, and in this case no effort has been made to respond to the arguments that Varoon Arya presented about this, either by you or by anyone else. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:12, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, what you said demonstrates quite clearly that only two editors supported the addition. I consider this over now. Verbal chat 18:19, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Although that comment (in archive 3), seems to be an agreement of only two editors (as Verbal noted), and seems to have been disputed in archive 6, it would only be correct to include the entire conclusion in the FAQ. That is, "although the hereditarian view is not WP:FRINGE, it is a small minority view." If that were in the FAQ, I wouldn't object, although Verbal still might, unless some evidence of consensus, as opposed to an agreement between two editors, can be found. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:15, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Saying something along those lines sounds fine to me. I’ll wait a little while to see if Verbal objects to this; if he doesn’t, I’ll add this item back to the FAQ with the modified wording.

Can you please answer my other question? How I regard this discussion will be very different depending on whether you think there can’t be any valid consensus in a discussion that some users have been driven away from. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:31, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm working on it. How about, "driven away by false claims of Wikipedia policy violations". — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:39, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

What difference does it make why they were driven away? Your point was that it shouldn’t be considered consensus because not everyone who had an opinion to express about the discussion was able to express it there. That’s the case regardless of whether they were driven away by accusations of policy violations, or Mathsci’s personal attacks.

Are you actually trying to come up with an argument for there being a meaningful difference between the situation during the mediation and the current situation? I think you know that there isn’t one, and if you’re going to react to this by trying to come up with excuses for using a double standard here, it’s very hard for me to assume good faith about that.

All I need from you is an answer to my question about whether you think editors being driven away from a discussion means that there can’t be a valid consensus resulting from it. You’re an admin; you should have the ability to answer a question like this. Yes or no? --Captain Occam (talk) 18:56, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I think it matters how people are driven away from a discussion. I felt driven away from the discussion because I felt that none of my views were taken seriously by opponents. Maybe this is how VA and DJ feel about MathSci, but my view (which you may consider biased) is that MathSci simply insisted on including material from reliable secondary sources that they did not like, and MathSci does not tolerate any user deleting properly sourced material. Even if you think I am biased and not doing justice to VA or DJ's feelings, I think that any objective third party reviewing the whole mess would see that a great amount of the conflict has to do with what counts as a reliable source, th actual contention haqving to do with the fact that (1) VA, DJ, and others prefer primary sources and MathSci prefers secondary sources, and (2) VA and DJ simply consider a smaller number of sources acceptable, and flat out reject a range of sources. A simple and obvious example is Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man. I believe that VA and DJ would claim that it is reasonable to reject this book because it is a fringe view. My point, for the moment, is that if we put aside reasons for objecting for the moment (because I can call your source "fringe" as quickly as you call my source "fringe"), the fact remains that VA and DJ consider a narrower range of sources reliable and acceptable than MathSci. It is therefore inevitable that they will come into conflict. NPOV and V do not assume much, but they do assume that editors can agree on what is a reliable source and what isn't, what is a significant view and what isn't. If editors cannot reach agreement over this, they are pretty much doomed. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:37, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I don’t think this is relevant to the point that Arthur Rubin was making, though. If the decisions we reached during mediation don’t count as consensus because certain users didn’t express their opinions in it, as a result of having been driven away, then the exact same thing applies to the current discussion. This is the case regardless of why they were driven away.

Also, I’m virtually certain that the reason VA and DJ quit participating had nothing to do with Mathsci’s content disagreements with them. They’ve both said that it was just the result of his personal attacks, and possibly also his forum shopping at AN/I. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:25, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Please, we're not interested in your speculation as to why other people did things. This is not a forum, please stick to discussing improving the article. Verbal chat 18:54, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

This isn’t speculation. In his statement for the ArbCom case, DJ said “I left last month because of uncivil and inexcusable behavior by Mathsci directed at me.”

But in any case, I agree that the reason why other people were driven away shouldn’t be relevant here; all that matters is that they were. The people who were claiming that anyone’s reasons for leaving matter were Arthur Rubin and Slrubenstein, so your disagreement is with them, not me. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:22, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Aprock, I notice that you’ve removed this item from the FAQ again, despite the fact that Arthur Rubin and I had come to an agreement about what it should say, and you’ve reverted edits from both him and me when we tried to make this section reflective of what he and I had agreed on here. You also haven’t offered any comment here to explain why you disagree with the conclusion that he and I reached in this thread. If you aren’t willing to accept his and my agreement, could you please explain here why not? It isn’t appropriate for you to revert edits from two different editors, which are reflective of the agreement that those two editors have reached, while refusing to engage in discussion with either of them about it. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:57, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm not really sure what you're talking about. The content I removed was not a conclusion of mediation. To suggest otherwise is misrepresentation. aprock (talk) 02:17, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

This is what Arthur Rubin and I both apparently disagree with you about. The conclusions of the mediation are listed here, and the one that you’ve removed is the second from the top of that list. Arthur Rubin suggested that I reword this slightly, but after I did he was fine with it, and reverted your edit the first time you tried to remove it. (To which you responded by reverting him also.) If you’re going to revert this whenever it’s added, can you please explain more specifically why you think the second item on the list of the mediation’s resolved points is “not a conclusion of mediation”? --Captain Occam (talk) 02:50, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

The summary you linked to is incorrect. The correct conclusion (from the actual archives) is here: Research into race and intelligence is not "fringe", some of the conclusions drawn from that research are highly contentious and need to be presented as such in the article. Reviewing the history of that infobox you linked to, this mediation decision was come to through discussion between User:Varoon Arya and User:Captain Occam alone [7]. I'll update the rest of the points in the faq to remove all the other mediation "decisions" that were resolved between only the two of you. aprock (talk) 03:25, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

The link you posted doesn’t work, but I assume you’re talking about this discussion. I think I understand what issue you’re having with this, although I explained this before.

Read Varoon Arya’s comments and all of the responses to them, including your own. The actual topic of this discussion was not just whether research into race and intelligence is “fringe”, it was about the hereditarian hypothesis specifically. And Varoon Arya presented his argument there, “5 reasons why the hereditarian model is not ‘fringe’”, and whatever consensus was reached in that discussion was about this argument specifically.

After Ludwigs2 closed this discussion with a conclusion that only addressed the “fringe” point with regard to research on race and intelligence in general, even though that wasn’t the main topic which had been discussed there, I asked him to re-read this discussion because I felt that he hadn’t adequately summarized what was resolved during it. So he did, and concluded that we’d also reached a consensus that the hereditarian hypothesis is not fringe, which is why he went on to list this among the mediation conclusions. As far as I know, the only reason he didn’t also add this conclusion to the discussion in which it was determined is because the discussion had already been archived, so he didn’t want to modify it.

If your argument against including this point in the FAQ is because it wasn’t included in Ludwigs2’s original summary of that discussion’s conclusion, then your argument is based only on a temporary oversight he made which he later corrected, as well as the fact that when he corrected it he didn’t modify the archived material. The actual consensus we reached in that discussion was with regard to the hereditarian hypothesis, and Ludwigs2 has acknowledged this. Can you accept that, and that the fact that his initial summary was incomplete is not a valid reason to exclude this item from the FAQ? If you can’t, I’ll leave a message for Ludwigs2 and ask him to confirm this, but I’d rather not bother him if it’s not necessary. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:04, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

My argument is based on the fact that the "decision" was made by you and Varoon Arya alone. If you have diffs of a broad spectrun of editors supporting the language of the FAQ points generated on March 25-27, I'd love to see them. aprock (talk) 04:12, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

That’s not the problem with this that you mentioned in your initial comment. What’s going on here? You presented what you viewed as a problem with the conclusion that Arthur Rubin and I reached about this section, I addressed it in detail, and you responed that actually the real problem was something else entirely, and then went ahead and start blanking content as though everyone else agrees? Do you not understand what’s wrong with that?

Your new explanation for what’s wrong with this material also has absolutely no relation to reality. If you actually read the discussion that you linked to, which you’re claiming involved "me and Varoon Arya alone", you’ll see that it was actually a discussion between you, Varoon Arya, Ludwigs2, and Slrubenstein. I didn’t participate in it at all.

I guess I need to contact Ludwigs2 about this. In the meantime, please don’t make large changes like this without any discussion, particularly when the only other users expressing an opinion about this on the talk page clearly disagree with you. --Captain Occam (talk) 04:28, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Please reread my comments and the associated links. aprock (talk) 04:43, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Um, I have. Have you? Have actually you looked at which editors participated in the discussion that you claim was between "me and Varoon Arya alone", which you yourself just linked to?

For you to keep adding information to the FAQ that’s this obviously false, while making no attempt to address my comment in which I pointed this out, is the worst sort of stonewalling. How can you expect me to assume good faith about your repeatedly re-adding material that claims a discussion involved only me and Varoon Arya, when anyone who clicks the link to this discusion can read it for themselves and see what four users participated in it (none of whom are me), and your only response when I point this out is that I need to read it? --Captain Occam (talk) 04:54, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Are you talking about the discussion on March 25-27, which included only you and User:Varoon Arya, where the FAQ discussion points were developed? Again, if you have any other diffs which might support the language of those discussion points, by all means present them. aprock (talk) 04:58, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

No, I’m referring to the discussion between you, Varoon Arya, Ludwigs2 and Slrubenstein about whether or not the hereditarian hypothesis is “fringe”, which Ludwig initially summarized as being only about research on race and intelligence in general, but about which he later also added this discussion’s other conclusion with regard to the hereditarian hypothesis specifically. (As I explained three comments ago.) The discussion between me, Varoon Arya and Ludwigs2 about the FAQ itself was not where any of these points was resolved; all we did was remind him of some of the points that had been resolved by discussions between a larger number of users earlier in the mediation.

I really thought you understood this. Let’s start with the discussion about the hereditarian hypothesis: you agree that the discussion which Varoon Arya initiated with his argument “5 reasons why the hereditarian model is not ‘fringe’” was a discussion that did not involve just him and me, right? --Captain Occam (talk) 05:09, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm referring to the discussion where the decisions listed in the FAQ were developed. Again, if you have any other diffs (or quotes) from other editors which support the language of the decisions that you and User:Varoon Arya developed on March 25-27, by all means present them. User:Ludwigs2 was the moderator, not an editor, his re-interpretation counts for naught. aprock (talk) 05:13, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

In the case of the “fringe” issue regarding the hereditarian hypothesis, I already have provided this in the discussion that we both have linked to. I don’t know how you think a single quote or diff can demonstrate the resolution that was reached during a discussion, but I guess I can quote how Varoon Arya introduced the issue which was eventually resolved during it:

If I may be so bold, I would summarize Slrubenstein's main concern in the matter of WP:FRINGE as that he does not want to see a "fringe" view, in this case hereditarian explanations of the IQ gap between the races, presented as a mainstream academic thesis. Taken at face value, this is a perfectly valid concern.

My main concern in regards to WP:FRINGE is that I don't want to see a "minority" view presented as a "fringe" or "pseudo-scientific" view unworthy of serious academic discussion. This, too, is a perfectly valid concern.

If the above is correct, then our central conflict here is over whether the hereditarian position is a "fringe"/"pseudo-scientific" view or a "minority" view. In what follows, I shall present my own reasons for viewing the hereditarian position as a "minority" position which deserves proportional coverage in the article.

At Arthur Rubin’s suggestion, I’ve summarized what was eventually resolved during this discussion as “The hereditarian hypothesis is a minority viewpoint among researchers, but it is not ‘fringe science’ or ‘pseudo-science’”. You reverted this, and then reverted Arthur Rubin when he added it back. Are you able to see how this is an accurate summary of the outcome of the discussion from which I quoted Varoon Arya’s post, despite the fact that Ludwigs2’s initial summary of it was incomplete (which Ludwigs2 later corrected)? Since this is the point I’ve been trying to get you to understand for the past several comments, if you aren’t able to understand how mediation reached even this conclusion, it doesn’t bode well for my ability to explain the basis for any of the other points. --Captain Occam (talk) 05:54, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

It is not an accurate summary. I reread that discussion last night, and there is nowhere in this discussion where editors agree that the Hereditarian viewpoint - The hereditarian hypothesis is a minority viewpoint among researchers, but it is not "fringe science" or "pseudo-science".. That language was developed between you and User:Varoon Arya alone in this discussion, and is not representative of mediation. Using a quote from User:Varoon Arya as evidence that there was broad editor support for that decision isn't very useful here. aprock (talk) 14:30, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

For anyone else who’s been following this discussion, it’s now continuing in the arbitration workshop here. --Captain Occam (talk) 21:25, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Latest revert

I regret that arbitrations et al. do not rule on content, so reverting waiting for something to happen is not progress. I've restored the primarily copy-edit and clarification edits. Regarding the un-done "Significance and policy relevance" expansion from "Policy relevance" as part of this revert, comments solicited on the merits of re-including the reverted content in whole, part, or step-by-step. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 19:06, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't agree with including it yet, I had initially objected to it as WP:SYNTH, and have discussed how Captain Occam is misrepresenting the consensus to include this material in the article. If anything, I would suggest fully protecting the article while arbitration is going on, because any controversial edits made are likely to be disruptive and a major distraction to the arbitration proceedings. There is no need to ruch, the article isn't going anywhere, see the essay on WP:DEADLINE. Wapondaponda (talk) 21:01, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

I've asked myself (elsewhere) if there's a train leaving the station. I see two possible approaches here:

Protect the article, slug it out at arbitration (weeks, months...) unprotect the article, those left standing edit
Allow the arbitration to play out, in the meantime, editors less involved in the long-standing fracas can make some incremental fixes, particularly around getting the article away from stating conclusions about intelligence as such--there are only interpretations and statistical analyses and more interpretations of results. Not to mention there's not even any mention of intelligence testing correlated to haplotypes, etc.

As you are well aware, no content will be ruled on anyway, so assuming the usual "whack those most identified with either (or more) sides" eventually takes place, the balance of power created by the less heinously misbehaving left standing will be pretty much unchanged in any event. Which means we'll basically be where we were when the arbitration started. Everyone seems to have missed the point that at least where this particular topic is concerned it is not about editors warring, it is about interpretations warring; editorial conduct is merely the symptom. Whacking an editor or two or three won't change the basic issue regarding what I mention at the arbitration regarding what is in, and out, of scope regarding conclusions about intelligence.

I'd also add that incremental non-controversial (clarify, make crisp) edits putting the article in the better place will aid progress once the arbitration is over, otherwise, as I indicated, we'll all just be right where we left off--clearly a fate to be avoided if at all possible. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 00:06, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

As is usual in an ArbCom case, it's much better to just leave the article completely alone while arbitration is going on, whether or not there are content issues involved. In this respect, and out of respect for the ArbCom, I would ask you to stop editing the article, except maybe for obvious typos and syntactic errors. Thanks.--Ramdrake (talk) 00:17, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough, but then Arbcom has to commit to a speedy resolution, as the only possible outcome can be deciding who, if anyone, gets stuck on the sidelines. Yet another litany of principles of Wikipedia after a wait of several weeks will not come to the aid of this article, only a proper restructuring. Judging by comments at the proceedings, there are clearly those who have offered their observations who are not identified combatants and who have (IMHO) an appropriate vision for the article. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 02:44, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

(The editing restrictions on my account are lifted now, so I can resume participation here.)

I agree with what Vecrumba said in his previous comment here. Since ArbCom won’t be ruling on article content, and the most likely outcome of the case is that some editors on both “sides” of the debate here will end up with editing restrictions, there isn’t any reason to avoid making large changes to the article while arbitration is underway. The only restriction that’s been placed on the article as a result of the arbitration is 1RR, so I think Ramdrake is overstating what’s necessary here. In addition, even if there actually were a restriction on making large changes to the article, it also isn’t being applied consistently here: Muntuwandi has reverted the new section that WavePart added, but not any of his changes to the lead. (I’m not saying I object to his changes to the lead; this is just a point about consistency.)

If the new section contains synth, as Muntuwandi stated, then that’s a problem that needs to be addressed. However, when we were discussing this section here, I specifically asked any editors who had content-based objections to this section to please point them out, and nobody provided any. This seems to be a recurring problem with this complaints about this section, including Mathsci’s and Ramdrake’s complaints about it in the arbitration case. Several editors have stated that they don’t like this section, and made general complaints about it containing synth or violating NPOV, but when I ask for a specific explanation of what needs to be changed about it in order to solve these problems, I generally don’t receive a response. Apart from the fact that WP:IDONTLIKEIT is never a valid reason to exclude something, the fact that a few editors are opposing the inclusion of this section while refusing to discuss specifics about it seems to run contrary to the expected process of discussing changes collaboratively and working towards compromise.

I think it’s important that we resolve this dispute sooner rather than later. If it continues to go the way it’s gone in the past, then it’s a good example of the stonewalling behavior that sometimes occurs in these articles, and ought to have ArbCom’s attention. Alternatively, the fact that their behavior is being scrutinized by ArbCom may result in editors being more cautious to avoid behavior that could be seen as stonewalling than they would be otherwise, in which case we’re more likely to be able to resolve the dispute over this section during the arbitration case than we would be at any other time. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:39, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

I think while the arbitration is still open, any major changes are going to be pointed to as disruptive, against consensus, et al. as the tone at the proceedings is getting a bit derisive/combative. Whatever is going on there, it's better that not spread back here and disrupt the fairly collegial atmosphere we've had here of late.

I suggest we put up the rest of what was reverted (I believe that was Wavepart's) for discussion, see what emerges, and go on from there. BTW, after the mass revert, I went back to restore the copyedits and including "quantification" in the lead, leaving just the major section expansion; everything had been undone. I respect Ramdrake's request to not make major changes while the arbitration is in progress, but if we proceed prudently and editors are in agreement, I don't see any reason we can't at least start with debating the merits of the section that's pending restoration and see what develops. Sitting on one's thumbs is, well, sitting on one's thumbs after all. On the other hand, as has been mentioned, there's no train leaving the station so there's no reason not to proceed at a more leisurely (though not lazy) pace. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 00:32, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

It’s now been around two days since I asked if anyone had any specific content-based suggestions about how this section needs to be improved, and nobody’s provided any. What would you suggest that we do at this point? “Sitting on our thumbs” with regard to this section is something I’d like to avoid also. --Captain Occam (talk) 20:17, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

I can see you are already dressed in your combat uniform. I believe a general moratorium on major edits is still appropriate while the mediation is in process. Though arbcom does not deal specifically with content, whatever comes out of arbcom is likely to influence article's content. For example, at least two editors have suggested deleting the article, while this is unlikely to happen, if it were, whatever content proposals that exist now would become irrelevant. Wapondaponda (talk) 06:18, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Advocating deletion of the article is just an escalation of stating if one left the mediation, it's invalid. (That is, "If not my way, then not at all.") It's essential the article remain and the topic be discussed appropriately. Not my preference, but I would suggest we leave the article lie for a week or two and see how/if the arbitration progresses. I regret that there's too much drama at the arbitration currently that it won't immediately spill over here if there are any substantive additions here. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 15:19, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

I searched for the word "delete" in the case pages and did not find any advocacy for article deletion, I must have missed them. Please provide pointers. Thank you. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 15:34, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Deleting the article hasn’t been discussed anywhere in the arbitration case. I don’t know why Muntuwandi is claiming that it has.

Something I think it’s important to keep in mind about this section is that there’s a group of around three editors who strongly oppose its inclusion, but who don’t appear to have any specific content-based objections to it. So there tend to be a lot of non-specific complaints that this section contains synth or violates NPOV, as well as procedural objections such as that it shouldn’t be added because the entire article might get deleted soon. This was going on before the arbitration case started, and since ArbCom presumably won’t be ruling on content, it’s likely to also continue after the case is finished.

Vecrumba, even allowing for this, do you still think it’s best that we not attempt to make significant changes like this at the moment? What I’d like to avoid is having the inclusion of this section be delayed indefinitely by one procedural objection after another, without anyone ever coming up with any specific problems with it in terms of content, which is the way this has gone for the past few weeks. If you still think it would be most prudent to wait longer before trying to add this section, I guess I’m willing to defer to you about this, but in that case I’d also like to make a specific plan that we’re going to work on adding it at some point in the future. (Perhaps after the arbitration case is finished, assuming that ArbCom doesn’t make a ruling that somehow disallows the inclusion of this section.) Does that sound like a reasonable compromise? --Captain Occam (talk) 22:37, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

This section states "maybe the best thing would be to not have an article about this topic at all?".

Also This section states "The present state of the article is grossly unsatisfactory, being, to my perception, full of bias and POV. It does not deserve the imprimatur of Wikipedia. Following the suggestion of Maunus below, it should be removed from mainspace on these grounds."

I only used deleting the article as an example, so don't read too much into it. The point is if we start debating content here, then we will have two processes running concurrently. There is the possibility that there would be a conflict between what is proposed in the arbitration and what is proposed here, say for example deleting the article. Since the mediation commenced, activity levels here have gone down significantly because most editors are focused on the mediation rather than here. Obviously it is a great time to slip in a controversial edit, because few are watching. Wapondaponda (talk) 00:34, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointers to the doubts about the article. That there's difficulty does not mean the subject matter is intractable or not worthwhile. I do think it's a bit overstated that the article is a hopeless piece of crap and should be put out of its misery--it's worth discussing general next steps at least assuming the arbitration blows over fairly soon.

I don't expect that the wielders of WP:ACRONYMS practiced just a bit too well will get the results they desire, but that's just my personal opinion. As I've mentioned, ArbCom does not rule on content, so it's up to the editors active at the article. (It's been my experience that on contentious subjects, only the highly motivated manage to have the fortitude to stick around; unfortunately that tends to lead to polarized positions with the middle ground getting caught in the crossfire, especially when uninformed editors wander in with personal notions of NPOV.) Lastly, more as an aside on references, I would just note that there are tons of articles on JSTOR which are generally accessible at public libraries, those tend to be more succinct and accessible (than full texts) and include discussions of competing viewpoints as well as historical background. These would be easier for newly participating editors to access to verify they are being represented fairly and accurately if used within the article. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 03:51, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Vecrumba, could you please answer my question about the new section we’ve been discussing? As I said in my previous comment, if you’re certain that you’d rather not try to add it yet, I guess I can agree to wait on this as long as we make a specific plan to work on adding it at some point in the future. But I also really don’t see why waiting is necessary. ImperfectlyInformed is already suggesting (and making) changes to some of the other sections, and nobody has claimed that these changes need to wait until after the arbitration case is finished. If it isn’t a problem for these current changes to be made during the arbitration case (and I don’t think it is), why would it be a problem for us to work on adding the new section? --Captain Occam (talk) 04:54, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

ImperfectlyInformed suggestions are more along readability. I suppose I'm somewhat ambivalent about major new work at this moment. How about we start discussing the new section and see who decides to take time out from the arbitration and who joins that's new. My concern is that without fairly wide participation on major changes/additions, it will leave the article open to more attacks instead of advancing it. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 05:17, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

You seem to have the impression that the arbitration is significantly reducing the number of editors participating in this page, but the number of people participating here actually isn’t much different from what it usually is. Most of the time any discussion here will only attract comments from two or three editors, and if we want an opinion from anyone else, it’s necessary to contact them about it on their userpage.

In any case, we’ve been discussing the new section for a little less than two weeks now, in the current discussion thread as well as this one. If you include all of the past discussions about this section also, it’s been more like two months. Could you please explain more specifically what you mean by your suggestion that we “start discussing the new section”, and how what you have in mind is different from what we’ve been doing already? --Captain Occam (talk) 06:11, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Please don't assume that an absence of comment from editors indicates a lack of interest. I have been watching this article closely for some months now, but have reduced my active contributions while waiting for some sanity to prevail. What I see is a topic addressing two issues, both of which, as the article points out, are hard to define. Bound to lead to difficulties. I suspect that some would even argue about what I have just written. There is far too much POV pushing, in many directions and in many areas. I am still very interested in the long term quality, but cannot be bothered playing silly tit for tat games with small aspects of the article, My feeling right now is that it really needs a fresh start or total deletion due to the basic definitional difficulties. HiLo48 (talk) 06:36, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

^ "Race Differences in Intelligence: an Evolutionary Analysis", by Richard Lynn, (c) 2006

[1] "Race Differences in Intelligence: an Evolutionary Analysis", by Richard Lynn, (c) 2006

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