Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 33

message: [from archive] This gets us back to the discussion about PF and "bias" from above. As per the long thread above, you have mischaracterized claims about the effects PF on research. The test is in how PF research is treated by the reseacher's peers -- not what outsiders and nonscientist think. The opinion is well summarized by Sternberg in the Skeptic magazine interview that was linked previous: PF doesn't matter when evaluating the science. --Rikurzhen 08:44��B�����eGET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Slrubenstein HTTP/1.0
Accept: image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, application/x-sockwave-flash, application/vnd.ms-excel, applic�ation/vnd.ms-powerpoint, application/mswor arises solely from its relation to some theory and its testability, or susceptibility to empirical refutation. Which is the same opinion expressed by Sternberg. I believe this gets to the crux of what Nectar was getting at about comments made by this within/outside the field. If Jensen and Sternberg, who disagree on many points, agree on this matter, then it is important that we take their opinion about what's important into account. --Rikurzhen 01:22, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think when it comes down to it, Jensen and Sternberg's agreement does not obviate the criticism that has been made of the Pioneer Fund grantees and funded research by Gould and other scientists, scholars, and journalists.  To somehow elevate an arbitrary group (say "Intelligence researchers") as the standard by which we discredit criticism is really unnecessary.  We can certainly make mention of some of the positive notes made by people though, to present a balance with the criticism - I just think that in either case (praise/criticism), we shouldn't be trying to undercut their worth by ad-hominem attack, or appeal to authority.  Can we take Jensen & Sternberg's example and work it in without trying to undercut Jensen by calling him "cited by notorious racialists", or overplay him by calling him "praised by unbiased scientists"?  --JereKrischel 06:33, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe that what Nectar was looking for was to distinguish between those people/journals who study intelligence and those looking from the outside, and to make this clear in the text. And of course the MMoM/Gould is a relaible source for his own opinions (despite not being a reliable source for the scientific consensus.) --Rikurzhen 06:36, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think Pete Hurd wrote a good section on generalist journals versus specialist journals - I don't see any worthwhile distinction there as to credibility regarding the issue.  We could just as soon caveat every research with that their background is, psychology, genetics, anthropology, etc.  Rather than distinguish types of criticism in some arbitrary way, why not just stte the criticism, and state the praise in a neutral, sympathetic manner? --JereKrischel 19:44, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The distiction of importance is at the level of individual commentors. Jensen, Sternberg, are specialist in the field of intelligence. Critics of the sort cited are not. --Rikurzhen 20:02, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That seems like something different that what I originally understood you to be saying.  If I'm not mistaken, the original contention was that we should include phrasing to the effect that criticism had not come from "specialist intelligence journals" - if we want to identify the background of critics and commentors, i.e., this one is a psychologist, this one is an anthropologist, this one is a geneticist, I suppose I could agree with that - is that acceptable to you? --JereKrischel 02:10, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Well, no better place to start than the top - Rikurzhen, Ramdrake, et.al., would you like to pick one issue and call for a moratorium on other issues until we get it settled? --JereKrischel 02:10, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Um, the brain size issue is the most active. --Rikurzhen 02:17, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For the record, I agree with the moratorium.--Ramdrake 12:59, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Accusations of bias - about PF fund 

message: Thinking about it in the shower this morning, I thought maybe we could do something more radical than try to fine tune this article - what if we were to create two articles, one called Genetics and Intelligence, and one called Race and Genetics - we could probably write a very good article on Genetics and Intelligence without too much consternation, simply illustrating the various studies and overall agreement on the partial influence of genetics on intelligence, and then have the real disagreements, between whether or not race is a genetically viable proxy for genetics in another.  Just an idea, of course, I'm not suggesting I have a complete answer, but I thought it might be interesting to try. --JereKrischel 21:57, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It would go a long way towards removing the contentiousness of this article.--Ramdrake 22:27, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: These articles already exist in the form of Inheritance of intelligence (which is a sub of IQ) and race. Also, Wikipedia:Content forking generally rules out such proposals. --Rikurzhen 07:13, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

text: No only that. Genetics and intelligence is a field we know very little about. (In the sense that there is only a tiny handful of papers highlighting some candidate "brain-buildling" genes. Not in the sense that we know that there is a genetic contribution.) This is all very new research, and nobody really knows much, not even Bruce Lahn. I sure wish we did know more about it. On the other hand, Race and intelligence is a field that has been studies for a century (or at least for a number of decades) with thousands of publications. You and I and Rik may all agree that Genetics and intelligence is teh shit and the True and Good way of presenting this whole body of knowledge. (I certainly think that in two or three decades that will be the case.) But Wikipedia has no ambition to provide superior presentations. Quite the contrary. It is explicitly forbidden. Race and intelligence is a very real field with very real data and a huge body of work; articles. books. survey papers. Even if we all agreed that Genetics and intelligence (or Test bias and IQ tests or Discrimination and school performance or whatever) is the best way of understanding this complex, we couldn't just write it. But what we can do is to make this the best damn article on Race and intelligence on the planet. Arbor 07:29, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I appreciate your opinion, Arbor - I think if all the people cited in the R&I article could admit that Genetics and intelligence is a field we know very little about, maybe we wouldn't have such consternation :).  But enough said, let's try and knock down one disputed section at a time (currently on the B-W-EA brain size differences argument, if I'm not mistaken), and work on compromises and NPOV.  I move to table my suggestion, and put this in the archive. --JereKrischel 09:34, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is common to distinguish between "genetics" and "inheritance" (or "heritability"). Here, Arbor is taking "genetics" to mean "molecular genetics"; where "inheritance" might be understood to mean "quantitative/behavioral genetics". --Rikurzhen 18:36, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Radical Suggestion