Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 44

message: In Asian Asians: Achievement Beyond IQ, James Flynn estimates that when the mean IQ of white Americans is set to 100, the Asian American IQ is 98 or 99. Flynn cites numerous studies Flynn-Effect-adjusted supporting his estimate, almost all of which show Chinese Americans as scoring 100 on nonverbal IQ tests and 96-98 on verbal IQ tests. The 104 figure is probably taken from the famous Stevenson study, in which Stevenson compared children in Japan to children in Minneapolis and found identical IQ scores. The point is that 104 is not Flynn's estimate; 98-99 is. Consequently, someone should change that. Bulldog123 04:53, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Flynn IQ Data are Patent Nonsense

message: I wanted to pull out a new section based on something WD/RIK said - There is no reason to have the race debate in this article when it is better had in the race article.  I think this may be the very basis of our disagreement.  I believe that if we proceed as WD/RIK suggests, and leave the questions of "race" as givens, rather than issues, we do a grave disservice to the reader.  I understand that in a meta-analysis paper for a scientific journal, typically you'll state your givens, and then ignore any questions regarding those givens for the remainder of your thesis.  This seems to be what WD/RIK is suggesting, and I believe he has some valid reasons for suggesting it - it would greatly simplify going point-by-point through various research papers if the question of "race" wasn't brought up with every reference.  This would make the article cleaner.  It would not make the article very NPOV, and I assert that it would be very misleading.
I've learned a great deal over the past few months following the bouncing ball to the references WD/RIK has put out here, and nearly every time I've ever dug into the details, the "race" issue comes up - the definition of it, or the usage of it, or the validity of it.  No set of studies really ends up using the same definition, although certain folk, like Rushton and Lynn, are quick to conflate things together and ignore the many facets of "race" and how it is used.  When we uncritically accept those claims, and tie them together with other studies with similar claims but different definitions of "race", I believe we are engaging in poor encyclopedic work.
I believe WD/RIK's statement regarding avoiding the race debate gives us his true reason for his disagreement with me, and his desire to simply paint the issue as "partly-genetic" and "environment only".  He sees the race debate as a distraction to the clean presentation of study, counter-study, counter-counter-study, etc.  He is happy to accept that all definitions of race are generally close enough to ignore, and as a geneticist, sees the obvious presentation as "partly-genetic" and "environment only".
I strongly disagree.  And although I believe I've stated earlier that one of my biggest concerns was that this entire article seemed like a meta-analysis research paper, upon further contemplation, I think that was simply a knee-jerk reaction on my part.  I believe I need to accept WD/RIK's detailed, point by point contributions as valid and not particularly OR, but I only think I can accept that if we are crystal clear on the assumptions of "race" being used in every specific study being cited.  If we don't do that, even though the debate may be occurring in the race article, the data and studies being presented here are lacking important context.
I think at this point we need the help of an anthropologist to help us classify the various uses of "race" into manageable chunks (if at all possible).  It may be require some index regarding to time (B-W in 1950's America ignoring European admixture in African Americans, or Hispanic pre-"ethnicity" census, or some other indicator), but I'd like to ask WD/RIK if he has any suggestions on how we could categorize citations by their usage of race.  Rushton/Jensen and other great works of aggregation (Lynn) would probably be in a category "Non-uniform usage of race in source studies".  Individual study citations (those actually doing real research, not just meta-analysis) would probably have a category "Uniform usage of race - self identification based on X groups", or something to that effect. --JereKrischel 07:41, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: The critical issue of how much attention we should give to "race"

message: I think /Proposal 1 from JereKrischel has merit.  The outline that he has created provides the framework for an entirely refactored page.   This could be what this article needs to get to a NPOV balance.  Now, if we can just get along with one another on the talk page.... We need to remember, this page is about the debate on race and inteligence, not a propaganda piece, or an excercise in political correctness.  It's meant to cast NPOV light on the whole subject.
*1 Definitions of "race" 
*2 Definitions of "intelligence" 
**2.1 The Psychometric Approach 
**2.2 Multiple Forms of intelligence 
**2.3 Cultural Variation 
**2.4 Developmental Progressions 
*3 History of research 
**3.1 18th century 
**3.2 19th century 
**3.3 20th century 
*4 Mean scores of different ethnic groups (U.S.) 
**4.1 Test Bias 
**4.2 Characteristics of Tests 
*5 Current debates 
**5.1 Genetic hypothesis 
**5.2 Validity of "race" 
**5.3 Socioeconomic factors 
**5.4 Culture factors
Mytwocents 05:42, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you, Mytwocents.  I took the sections primarily from the APA report WDH cites, as well as Britannica's article, "race" and intelligence.  I would be very interested to get input from WDH (or other hereditarian editors) as to other changes to the layout he would suggest, as well as perhaps an idea of where existing parts of the article could be split into. --JereKrischel 06:03, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

text: This is probably a bad idea, because having "competing versions" is not acceptable on Wikipedia. --causa sui talk 07:09, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It't not meant to be a "competing" version so much as an upcoming version, where everyone can contribute within the framework of the outline.  Once it's roughed out, it can replace the existing version and the sub-sections filled out to make it a complete article.  As of now I think the framework the JK has layed out has promise, but others may differ. JK and WDH may want to do most of the work on the respective sections, since they have been most involved recently.  Mytwocents 07:32, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This outline looks much better than what we have now. Can we make a subpage to start filling it out with things in the current article that work? futurebird 13:36, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: One problem: race is mentioned at the top, and then ethnic groups later on.  In most of the sociological and anthropological literture race and ethnicity are two different ideas.  people who identify as one can also identify as the other, and people who identify as one can change their identification to the other - but they are still conceptually distinct, and in real life they are not the same.  If the mean results are indeed from ethnic groups, then there is simply no reason to introduce race at all.  If the mean results are from races, we should say so.  If we have a mix of mean results from races and mean results from ethnic groups we should discuss that - but we should not treat them as comparable data. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 13:45, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think in any discussion of "race" section, we need to make very clear the idea of the common conflation of "race" and "ethnicity" that is used in most of the studies cited, and how it differs from genetic clusters/clines.  Nearly all of the work by Rushton, Lynn, and other Pioneer Fund folk use ethnicity as a proxy for "race", lumping ethnicities into larger groups, without actually having measured any sort of genetic markers. Since the data we do have is by self-identified ethnic group in the U.S., it seems important to specifically label it as "ethnic" data, but we can explain that some people use these ethnicities as "race".  If we were to eliminate any data that was not based on self-reported ethnicity, we probably wouldn't even have a single bit of data - WDH, do you know of any large scale IQ testing that actually measured participant's DNA?  --JereKrischel 19:37, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposal 1