Talk:J. Philippe Rushton/Archive 1

message: I've changed the name of the page from J. Philippe Rushton to Philippe Rushton since that is how I've usually seen his name written (in the Canadian press, anyway). --Saforrest 18:29, May 5, 2005 (UTC)
His official faculty page gives J. Philippe Rushton; so do his books, I believe.  Dd2 23:41, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: J. Philippe Rushton or Philippe Rushton?

message: I thought it was really well written, good job all. ¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸ 03:37, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Nice article

message: I find it humorous that u chose to ommit his boyhood days in apartheid era south africa,. I find it more suspicious that u copied his bio word for word except his time for his time in south africa .Check the link people youll see what i mean @www.Rushton rushton@uwo.ca maybe theres more to this "serious scholar" than meets the eye.And dont try and say oh! that wasnt intentional!
DPJ (p.s. sorry im new to this site havent learned to use the link option yet,dont let that dicourage u type it in your browser lazy!)
:Hi DPJ, if that's true it should be included in the article.  Remember to assume good faith ;) --Nectar T 20:57, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: A few minutes ago I watched a tape of that infamous debate between Rushton & Suzuki and the first thing Suzuki did when he spoke was thank the audience for maintaining their peacefulness, stating that he could tell by the politeness in the room that he was "in Canada, instead of South Africa".  He then went on the, rather than point by point denoucing Ruston's theories, simply denouce Rushton himself for promoting unscientific work, and then criticizing the University of Western Ontario "for not having a single Professor willing to debate this man", - pointing out that aa psychologist should debate another psychologist, and that its people like Rushton who are the reason that psychology has a bad reputation in academic circles.  He also said that Rushton shouldn't be able to hide behind academic freedom for unscientific work and cricized the media frenzy surounding him which has allowed him to gain this status. Dowew 23:21, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  WHAT ABOUT SOUTH AFRICA? 

message: Like in the cases of Lynn(even worst in Rushtons cases), the controversial nature of his stdies and his character is not given as much spaces as it is given in the Academia. Rushtons theories like correlations between penile sizes and intelligence, from the years he has actually asked vollonteers to measures their peniles.
Here, a bit of the controversy.
Here, more, the meta-analysis results published in the abstracts titled: "Lack of racial differences in behavior: A quantitative replication of Rushton's (1988) review and an independent meta-analysis." Kevin M. Goreya, and Arthur G. Crynsb
a School of Social Work, University of Windsor, 401 Sunset Avenue, Windsor, Ontario, Canada N9B 3P4
b School of Social Work, State University of New York at Buffalo, 359 Baldy Hall P.O. Box 601050, Buffalo, NY 14260-1050, U.S.A.
Rushton r/K selection theory application on human was rejected by a very serious Cross-cultural evaluation research. Cross-cultural evaluation of predicted associations between race and behavior
Peter N. Peregrinea, , , Carol R. Emberb and Melvin Emberb
a Department of Anthropology, Lawrence University, 515 E. College Avenue, Appleton, WI 54911, USA
b Human Relations Area Files, New Haven, CT, USA 
I have the study in question, if anyone want it, I will email it.
Another abstract, while a critic of Lynn unscientific simplifcation, cover Rushtons "methodology" Are there racial and ethnic differences in psychopathic personality? A critique of Lynn's (2002) racial and ethnic differences in psychopathic personality
Marvin Zuckerman,
Department of Psychology, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA 
I also, can email the full abstract for those that want it.
Tha fact of the matter is that every bit of Rushton simplistic analysis have been answered by serious critics, even the methodology of measuring brain size used were questioned. But when someone read the article, it is as if the critics are averages for someone advanturing in a controversial subject, when it is a lot more than this. And in my opinion, for this article to be neutral this should be clear when someone read, that the controversy around the man and his research is just more than caused by the controversial nature of the subject he treats. Fadix 02:10, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article is not neutral 

message: It seems to me that his assertions, based on pseudo-science, that some ethnic groups have, on average, a lower genetic IQ than others, is damaging to the lifetime earning potential of members of those groups which are low in the league table (but personally financially rewarding to himself). Since hard-science doesn't support the notion that average IQ differences are mainly caused by nature, not nurture, there must be scope for a class-action law-suit against this man.--New Thought 14:41, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the difficulty might come in demonstrating that earning potential is actually damaged by his work.  Unless there's an employer out there who explicitly bases employee pay/prospects on Rushton's "work", I think it would be difficult to demonstrate any harm (which is not to say that there aren't people out there who cement their backward views with his pseudoscience).  The idea of a class action is a very interesting one though.  Cheers, --Plumbago 15:01, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Based on the damage to his career he's experienced and the death threats he receives, he might disagree with you that he's chosen a personally rewarding field.  If you'd like to see expert opinion on the subject of nature, nurture, and IQ variation among ethnic groups, the race and intelligence article is a comprehensive review.--Nectar 15:14, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Off Topic: Why Hasn't This Man Been Sued?

message: I changed the description of Arthur Jensen from "Rushton supporter" to "Psychologist" since this is more accurate and follows the pattern of the description of Psychologist David P. Barash and biologist E.O. Wilson mentioned prior to Mr. Jensen
:Good edit.  Thanks! --JereKrischel 18:57, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Edit of professional opinions

message: The different measurements Rushton looks at are central to his work. It's one thing to not discuss his discussion of each one, but not even mentioning them doesn't seem like a good option, and seems to give less detail to his work than we give to the criticism of his work.--Nectar 04:31, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Doesn't the large table mention enough of them?  Listing them out in text seems inappropriate...would you rather lose the table, and put it just in the text? --JereKrischel 05:09, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Detail his argument? 

message: text says He asserts for example, "that many African-American youth have adopted a culture of anti-intellectualism", implying that their decisions about culture are based on their race.
Is that really what Rushton thinks this implies? --Rikurzhen 04:46, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that's what he's saying, if he's stating that socio-economic and cultural factors are a product of genetic differences.  There was a lot of "Although Rushton acknowledges <blah>..." sections, that kind of editorialized before giving a quote.  It would be nice to have a cite on that quote, and maybe see it in context. --JereKrischel 05:08, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That quotation doesn't appear in Google, but I'm also not sure that the phrasing makes sense. --Rikurzhen 05:16, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  that many African-American youth have adopted a culture of anti-intellectualism 

message: No mention of American Renaissance (magazine)? --Rikurzhen 04:47, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  American Renaissance 

message: where did the blue and green bag of coins example come from? 
here's actual data on the pattern of world-wide genetic variation:
Caption: Human population structure can be inferred from multilocus DNA sequence data.  In this figure, 1048 individuals from 52 populations were examined at 993 DNA markers. This data was used to partitioned individuals into K = 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 clusters. In this figure, the average fractional membership of individuals from each population is represented by horizontal bars partitioned into K colored segments.  2 cluster analysis separated Africa and Eurasia from East Asia, Oceania, and America, 3 clusters separated Africa and Eurasia, 4 clusters separated America, 5 clusters separated Oceania (green), and 6 clusters subdivided native Americans.
--Rikurzhen 04:50, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: blue bag/green bag example just a degenerate mathematical illustration of what "means" are.  Couldn't find an NPOV way of saying, "Arthur Jensen is full of crap - different groupings can be distinguished with different means", so I thought the example was a better way of making the point.  Not sure if the observation of arithmetic means counts as OR - maybe there is a better way of highlighting Jensen's error? --JereKrischel 05:17, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Jensen's error? Lewontin's error? --Rikurzhen 05:20, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, i think this applies to multivariate clustering as well - when 85% of the differences between humans are within "race" groups, you'll get a multivariate graph that overlaps as well - of course, pick peculiar variables that aren't really correlated (but serve as an artificial discriminator), and you can get whatever you want. --JereKrischel 05:56, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe you're not getting it. Consider first the graph above. It uses 993 markers from throughout the genome to classify individuals. These markers were probably selected because they're polymorphic within populations, but they turn out to divide populations geographically too. Second, consider what the 85% number translates into in terms of a biallelic SNP. Denote the alleles + and - ... the allele frequencies that correspond to an average of 85% of total variance within populations is (approximately) 30% +, 70% - in popuation 1 and 70% +, 30% - in population 2. If all alleles were equally as informative as this, then the chance of missclassification is 30% for SNP, but approaches 0% when a hundred such SNPs are taken into consideration. --Rikurzhen 06:04, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, I'm not arguing that you can't define biogeographic clusters - I'm asserting that if you continued using more than 993 markers, those biogeographic clusters would be highly specific (most likely down to the family level), and that the difference between two clusters in the same "racial" category would be greater than the difference between two clusters in a different "racial" category.  Certainly you aren't suggesting that 993 markers is sufficient to map all genetic diversity across biogeographic areas, are you? --JereKrischel 06:24, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

text: What do you mean by "diminishing returns"?  Given the order of magnitude difference betwee 1k and 500k SNPs, and equally weighting differences (which is how you get "K", right?), wouldn't the addition of let's say, 10k more SNPs to your analysis, reveal even more clusters? (K=1...60?)  What you're trying to say, I think, is that 1k SNPs serve as a reasonable proxy for another 499k of common variation - I guess in order to understand this further, I'd compare an analysis of any arbitrary 10 SNPs out of the 993 between each other, then an analysis of any arbitrary 100, to get an idea of how the data refines as more SNPs are used - is that discussed in any of your sources? --JereKrischel 07:15, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Reading over the study, it looks like K is something they predefined - that is to say, they could have run their algorithm on K=60, and gotten 60 clusters...they also specifically said, Our evidence for clustering should not be taken as evidence of our support of any particular concept of “biological race.”.  Reading over their study, it seems as if they wanted to demonstrate that geographically, you will see both clines, and discontinuities, based primarily on geography.  At the very least it blows Rushton away on his idea that there is a single "evolution" of race from Negroid to Caucasoid to Mongloid (the data from the study show multiple clines and discontinuities, and probably would have shown more if they had increased K, their data set, and the loci observed).  Very interesting study, thank you for pointing it out! --JereKrischel 17:14, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  race valid concept? 

message: Okay, I've tried to re-add most of the NPOV portions of the previous POV edits - hopefully this gives us a good place to start.  In general, I'm trying to leave the sections describing his work completely neutral (merely stating his beliefs, not making every argument he has), and putting all the debate in the Criticism sections - mostly that's because otherwise the argument ranges too wildly - one person will point out A, then the other one will say B, but look C, then someone responds to C, which leads to D, and has nothing to do with A.
I also removed text directly lifted from another website.  We're not allowed to do that without attribution.  If we want to make those arguments, we can summarize and reference them, but wholesale copying is not allowed.
Thank you everyone for helping with this - I'm sure with some hard work between us, we'll have a fair and balanced article addressing everyone's issues.  Let's take our time, be polite, and assume good faith.  Thanks! --JereKrischel 23:34, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Moved some stuff

message: The page has now been protected to force all involved parties to use the talk page to resolve disputes, rather than furthering this disruptive edit war. Once you have reached an agreement and protection is no longer necessary, please let me know or request unprotection. Thanks. AmiDaniel (talk) 01:57, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Protected