Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 17

message: Along those lines, we should add something about this:
The racial gap in academic achievement appears very early in life—a fact that we have not touched upon in earlier chapters… But clear racial differences in intellectual development are evident by the time children first set foot in school… For example, black five- and six-year olds in the Children of the  National Longitudinal Survey of Youth … scored a full standard deviation below their white peers on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, a standard gauge of intellectual development for children before the age at which they can read… [O]nly one-sixth of African Americans performed as well as or better than the average white child.
Thernstrom S, Thernstrom A. No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, p. 130-132 Simon & Schuster ISBN: 0743204468
I hadn't heard of this non-written test before. Jokestress 08:54, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Some refs to early age testing made it into the culture/genetic sub-article. Have you read the Thernstrom&Thernstrom book? --Rikurzhen 22:25, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I haven't, but it seems they make a case for aspects of the hereditarian hypothesis from articles I have read. They also make a strong case for amount of television watched correlating with test scores, so their argument has an environmental angle as well. The group that watches the most television also has the lowest group score, and vice versa. Jokestress 23:00, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test 

message: New York Magazines Oct. 2005 issue has a 7 1/2 page cover story, "Are Jews Smarter?" covering Cochran & Harpending's "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence".  They mention Wikipedia's article on it.
Excerpt:
:During the past year, the taboos surrounding the genetics of race and ethnicity have been significantly eroded, in no small part because of the efforts of Risch. A population geneticist at the University of California at San Francisco, a fiercely independent thinker, a fun gossip, and a liberal Jew, he published a paper in the American Journal of Human Genetics in February that rather boldly claimed that the races we claimed to be almost always corresponded with our continents of ancestry. It seemed to represent the consensus view that’s slowly emerging among geneticists. Many have now stopped quarreling with the same vigor about whether race is or is not a genetic fact.
:“I am not sure that most geneticists have agreed to ‘races’ per se,” says [NYU Professor] Ostrer. “But continental groups or clusters, yes.” To deny these clusters, he says, would be folly; it tells us to willfully ignore what all of us can see—that people look different all over the world. [...] In fact, [David Goldstein, director of the Center for Population Genomics and Pharmacogenetics at Duke University], seems to rather appreciate [the paper's] Zeitgeist. “Until recently, most human geneticists almost . . . disallowed discussion about genetic differences among racial and ethnic groups,” he says. “Really. So many awful things had been done with genetic research in this last century that they developed a policy of ‘Just say no.’ But there’s actually a lot of difference between groups, when you consider there are 10 million polymorphic sites on the genome. So it’s not scientifically sound to rule out the possibility of differences corresponding to our geographic and ethnic heritages. It overlooks the basic point: The genome is just a huge place.”  
:[However]  “Race, in this context, should always be used as an interim measure to see us through a period of ignorance,” agrees Goldstein [(and Ostrer)]. “Once we know the underlying genetic or environmental factors that influence individual responses, you consider those directly and ignore race.”
:[...]
:Maimonides came to the [...] conclusion: It’s “great exertion” that makes us who we are. To attribute it to anything in our blood would trivialize our own agency, our hard work, our humanity.
:[...]
And just a reminder of how important these kinds of caveats are in the header:
:[According to Leon Wieseltier,] "the idea that it explains intellectuality seems empirically and philosophically spurious. The world is riddled—riddled!—with dumb Ashkenazi Jews, so it’s empirically false."
--Nectar T 22:53, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: 95% of people don't understand the idea of a probability distribution ;) --Rikurzhen 01:55, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: New York Mag on Cochran & Harpending

message: The following section is fallacious (cum hoc ergo propter hoc):	 
		 
*"Still, even small variance in average IQ at the group level would theoretically have large effects on social outcomes. For example, a group with an average IQ of 103 compared with a group with an average IQ of 100 would statistically have a poverty rate 25% lower, with similar substantial decreases in high school drop-out rates, crime rates, and other outcomes.(Herrnstein and Murray)"	 
Herrnstein and Murray's study shows correlation, not causation. Thus the use of the word "effects" and the general implication that raising a group's IQ reduces poverty, crime, etc. cannot accurately be drawn from this source. From the cited study, it is just as likely that poverty causes a lower IQ rather than the other way around. Please rewrite this paragraph to emphasize correlation rather than causation, or delete it. Kaldari 15:33, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Cause and effect would be a problem if the data from The Bell Curve stood alone as the way of answering that question. (I recall this was an early and well founded criticism.) However, there is more data. For example, in a 1998 paper Murray re-analyzed the outcome-IQ question on the sets of siblings within their data set. By looking at siblings, family environment (i.e. poverty) is controlled for. They find the same correlations. Thus, the environments reflected in their study are not the cause of the IQ differences. Complementary outside data is that the effect of shared environment on IQ from twin studies goes to zero in adults. I haven't seen any refutations of these follow-up and twin studies, which is why the section was written as it was. --Rikurzhen 16:46, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: What are the "twin studies" you mention? Those would probably be useful to cite somewhere.Kaldari 17:16, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: see Intelligence_quotient#Genetics_vs_environment --Rikurzhen 17:17, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Correlation vs causation 

message: Try for gallery image. Gallery does not accept png images.
Image:IQ-4races-rotate-highres.png|try for png image
Image:Sketch_Funnel-Web_range.gif|Range of the two genera (Hadronyche and Atrax) of venomous Australian funnel-web spiders. 
Image:Latrodectus mactans.jpg|Latrodectus mactans Very dangerous Spiders of the genus Latrodectus typically avoid contact 
End gallery.  Try for image in 200 pixel size. It will show up, eventually.
Try for image in "thumb" format. A box will show up, but no image. "Thumb" does not like png.
Clicking on the box intended for the thumb images takes you to the file upload area, indicating that wiki software is not interpreting the filename correctly when it contains a png extension.  Let's replace the png image name with a jpg after copying the above;
-----
I used the same black widow image that I used in the gallery format above.  P0M 21:10, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's the same known bug affecting the image on the eugenics article on some browsers. Jokestress 07:34, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought that might have been it, but I also thought that was linked to Adblock (a firefox plugin) but I still don't see it in IE. So, I was guessing it had to do with the new image upload policy, but I haven't found a work around. --Rikurzhen 07:41, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

text: That's what I thought at first, but check this out: --Rikurzhen 17:37, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  image problem 

message: In my intrepretation this article has many neutrality problems, 
#the first is presenting or describing the IQ test results disparity primarily in racial terms, which includes the title of the article. Other problems include but are not limited to: 
#the two listed "controversial assumptions" in the intro should have caveats within each sentence (the "several controversial assumptions" pre caveat is insufficient), 
#a chart and graph on nutrition vs IQ test results is needed at the top for balance, 
#"... and practical consequences of racial and ethnic group differences..."; who exactly is claiming there are "practical consequences" and what does that mean?, 
#the article should not exclusively use "intelligence research" nomenclature such as "concordant" to present this subject (should use plain, simple, direct language), 
#much more info and details of the controversies surrounding this area of research should be mentioned in the intro and at greater length in the article overall, 
#the article/intro should state exactly what critics of the field allege about the motives of the various studies authors (scientific racism), IQ testing and other measures of cognitave ability are highly disputed, etc. zen master T 05:30, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Your point that the article suffers from bias because it "presents IQ test results is racial terms" is baffling. That's what the article is about. You might as well complain that George Washington suffers from bias because it doesn't contain enough information about Eminem. Everyone here is tired of going around in circles on this. If you think some particular parts of the article need references, feel free to add them. But tagging the article with  is not accomplishing anything at this point. --causa sui talk 05:46, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There is not sufficient scientific consensus to present IQ test results data solely in racial terms especially considering there are a myriad of other equally valid ways of correlating the same test results data. What about my other concerns? What do you mean by "practical consequences"? How can consideration of "consequences" begin until a cause or causes for the disparity have been determined to an extreme degree of scientific consensus? Do you acknolwedge the need to disassociate between description of a disparity and potential cause(s) for that disparity?  zen master T 06:10, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you're confusing my comments and those by Lulu. But to answer your question: No I don't acknowledge the "need" to disassociate between description of disparity and potential causes of the disparity. Looking for the causes of natural phenomena is a perfectly reasonable scientific exercise, and your hightened sense of moral indignation about that be damned. --causa sui talk 06:21, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: What do you mean "natural phenomenon"? IQ tests are man made. Describing an abstract disparity primarily one way is analogous to putting the cart before the horse, it's a violation of the scientific method as far as presentation is concerned. Presenting the abstract issue as "race and intelligence" presents the subject as if you already know the conclusion which is in fact highly disputed. If the disparity is some day determined to be 100% because of nutrition would you at that point support renaming and rewritting this article to nutrition and intelligence? Given that "race" has not been established with anywhere near 100% scientific consensus as the cause of the abstract disparity why is this issue presented primarily in terms of "race"? I am not arguing that determining the cause(s) for the abstract disparity shouldn't be undertaken, I am merely pointing out that the scientific method is apparently not being utilized within this ongoing investigation (at a fundamental presentation/thought process level). zen master T 06:42, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: ZM, that's your personal/novel/original hypothesis. original research, of course, is forbidden. --Rikurzhen 06:53, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, that's a good point. I think this whole discussion is an attempt by Zen-Master to counteract the POV of the referenced views in this article with his own unreferenced, unpublished view. This conversation can serve no further useful purpose, and I don't intend to reply again. --causa sui talk 07:02, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

text: WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, and WP:V are the house rules, and they are quite explicit. Articles should contain only material that has been published by reputable or credible sources, regardless of whether individual editors regard that material to be true or false. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. Even if we all agreed with you, we couldn't write such an article. --Rikurzhen 07:19, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: All the critical citations I presented were verifiable, doesn't "consensus", especially in the context of science, mean including all viewpoints?  And I actually think we can write such an article, here is what we do: when there is a fundamental presentation neutrality dispute we should fall back a level and signify in the title where the dispute begins, which is why I've previously proposed IQ test results controversy. A consensus of scientists would have to all agree that IQ test results are an objective measure of "intelligence" before it even makes sense to correlate them with various sorts of information about the test taker, right? IQ tests by themselves are in fact highly disputed (not to mention the fact that the validity and method of correlations with test takers are separately disputed). zen master T 07:34, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: ZM, I don't have the time for a WP talk page discussion about why that is not a sound research proposal. Suffice it to say -- it's a research proposal. --Rikurzhen 07:42, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: How is striving to describe the issue and the nature of the disputes while giving preference to neither side an unsound research proposal? Isn't that the essence of neutrality? zen master T 07:48, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Like I said -- no time to play this game with you ZM. --Rikurzhen 07:56, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It is your right to choose not to respond to my challenge to justify what I interpret to be a fundamentally biasing and unscientific method of presentation. zen master T 11:13, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Yes --Rikurzhen 20:39, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  npov dispute 

message: Suppose, per Zen-master, that in the future scientific consensus becomes that IQ differences are entirely correlated with nutition.  I think that's unlikely (as I do that authentic "racial" differences actually exist), but sure, let's stipulate it.  In that case, WP should have an independent article Nutrition and intelligence (maybe it should already, seems like a reasonable topic).  But even then, Race and intelligence would continue to be a valuable article about an historical scientific theory.  Obviously, in this future world, the text of this article would need to be changed to reflect to-be-current knowledge.  In any case, this future is pure speculation, and we can deal with it if it comes about, in a couple decades. 
As a good analogy, there is an article on Phrenology.  While scientific consensus is currently against phrenology having legitimate results, there was a time when it was otherwise.  By all means, I support the scientific work necessary to confine Jensen and Murray to the same scientific dustbin as Gall and Lavater.  But until the scientific consensus actually changes, we at WP must report the actual state of scientific belief, not do original research here as to what will eventually be believed. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 17:32, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes --Rikurzhen 20:39, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  What WP is not 

message: It is an appauling misuse of statistics.  It makes a deliberatly false comparison to misleed the untrained reader.  Deliberately misleading informantion cannot be NPOV.
To quote:
The average IQ difference between two randomly paired people from the U.S. population, one Black and one White, is approximately 20 points. However, by the same method of calculation, the average difference between two random people is approximately 17 points, and the average difference between two siblings is 12 points.
This is such shameless drivel and such malicious mendacity that it almost defies rebuttal.  The "error" is in deliberatly obfuscsting between-groups and within-group statistics.  The results showed that on average there was a within group variability of 17 for "all groups" - a figure directly related to the standard deviation for that group - obviously this is based around a mean.  The difference of 20 points between black and white is a modified comparison of means which tells us that a random black will have a score 20 points LOWER that the of a randomly selected white.  Notice LOWER not DIFFERENT - when comparing between groups it is meaningfull (and imperative) to talk about lower/higher.  That is the big lie here. Furthermore, it works because blacks form a minority of the general population therefore the mean difference can be 17 within a population, with the differences between a majority and minority subgroup being not much more even if the mean discrepancy is fairly large.  This distortion would not be at all effective if an evenly racialy-mixed population was surveyed.
This is pure irredemable nonsense.  It is POV. It is a lie.  It may be topical, but frankly my dear, I don't give a shit.
Whenever I notice it has been replaced I WILL delete it.
jucifer 03:25, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Please have a look at Wikipedia:No original research. Wikipedia articles only report what referenced and peer-reviewed sources have reported. Your personal opinion about the misuse of statistics is inadmissible unless it can be cited from such a source. Also, please do not engage in edit warring or you may be blocked from editing under the three revert rule. --causa sui talk 03:32, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

text: Then it should be easy to find a source that gives the opposing view. --causa sui talk 04:04, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

text: (1) You can check the reference, it is correct. (2) The threshold for inclusion in WP has nothing to do with the absolute truth value of a claim, only the verifiabilty, neturality of presentation, etc. (3) Lastly, you are misreading Jensen's claim. He's presenting those numbers as evidence that most variation in IQ occurs within groups not between them, such that the average deviation is only sligthly larger for between group comparisons than random comparisons (essentially a within group comparsion), and that most variation occurs within families (between siblings). (Note the first and second half of the paragraph are in agreement, not contradiction.) --Rikurzhen 05:18, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

text: Also, I checked the math -- those numbers look correct to me. If they're somehow not explained clearly, that would be something to fix. Simple deletion of material is generally frowned upon Wikipedia:Avoiding_common_mistakes. --Rikurzhen 05:43, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Comparison

message: Lulu wrote about the progress towards summary style -- though not particularly well just yet, lots of redundancy between main article and subsections, with awkward breaks and almost accidental organization -- Certainly something to discuss if/when people have time. --Rikurzhen 17:54, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  summary style check-up 

message: I'm not making it up. Common knowledge is not a reliable source for info on this and related topics. --Rikurzhen 18:20, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Seconded, I think most people who did a bit of reading on this subject are familiar with the finding that the influence of family environment decreases significantly upon adulthood. Possibly one "problem" is that research conducted on adults leans more toward the partial genetic explanation. --Scandum 00:52, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  family environment 

message: has anyone come across a citation for our transhumanist final paragraph? Finally, genetic engineering may one day be able to directly change... --Rikurzhen 06:34, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  final paragraph - citation 

message: The direct refutation of the Hereditarian Hypothesis
Others who do not hold their views have conducted research that disproves their conclusions, this research difinitively proves there is no link between race and intelligence (among blacks and whites). The cause of the gap in the United States has been firmly established as not genetic:
A Philadelphia study examined 3000 African Americans and found no link between the degree of white ancestry and IQ.*
A study conducted in the 1970's examined two samples of African Americans and found no correlation between degree of white ancestry and IQ. In fact in one study the correlation went in the "wrong" direction (i.e. the more African ancestry the higher IQ).**
In a study involving Caribbean children showed that there was no genetic basis for the IQ gap between blacks and whites, rather it showed the black children to be considerably more intelligent. The IQ of the children at the Orphanage was: Blacks 108, Mixed 106, and White 103.***
In a study comparing the offspring of American GI's and German women, where the children where raised in Germany as Germans there was no correlation found between IQ and Race. Both the Biracial and German children had average IQ's of 97.****
Many "G" theorists maintain that the gap in white and Black IQ scores in the US (they claim it to be 15 points) reflects differences in innate cognitive ability, scientists who are not "g" theorists (the vast majority) contest this. The hereditarians have never conducted any serious research to prove their case.
*Scarr., S., Pakstis, S. Katz, H and Barker. (1977) "The abscense of a relationship between degree of white ancestory and intellectual skills within the Black population," Human Genetics, 39:69-86
**Loehlin, J.D., Vandenberg, SG and Osbourne, R.T (1973) "Blood-group genes and Negro-White ability differences" Behavioral Genetics 3: 263-77
***Tizard, B., Cooperman, A and Tizard, J. (1972) "Enviromental effects on langauge development a study of young children in longstay residential nurseries." Child Development, 43: 342-3
****Flynn, JR, (1980) "Race, IQ, and Jensen." London Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Refrences:
IQ in Question, The truth about Intelligence by Micheal J. Howe (Book)
The Intelligence Controversy, HJ Eysneck vs. Leon Kamin (Book)
Inequality by Design (Book)
--Anon
====RE: Offspring of American GI's and German women====
:Re:"In a study comparing the offspring of American GI's and German women, where the children where raised in Germany as Germans there was no correlation found between IQ and Race. Both the Biracial and German children had average IQ's of 97."
:Keep in mind that science is complicated.
:Razib at GNXP summarizes Jensen's review of this study in The G Factor :
::* "The fathers' IQs are not accounted for, and it could be that both groups of servicemen, black & white, were not representations of the mean in their parent populations. Jensen notes that 30% of blacks vs. 3% of whites were rejected during preinduction because they failed mental tests.
::* Factors that influenced assortive mating were not tracked. For instance, low SES German women might have had equal preferences for high IQ black officers and low IQ white privates because intelligence could have overcome racial bias in the former case while there was a preference for the latter because they understood that their children might be less ostracized by society if they were not racial minorities.
::* The tests were taken during pre-adolescent years when correlation between IQ scores and genotype is lower than in later years.
::* Heterosis, or hybrid vigor, could have bridged some of the gap."
:When the US military has enough recruits, they "virtually [stop] accepting new enlistees below the 30th percentile (IQs below 92, which is about half a standard deviation above the African-American median). Since the end of the Cold War, only 1% of new enlistees have scored below the 30th percentile [...] because of documented trouble in training and accident prevention [in low IQ soldiers]" -Steve Sailer
:The authors of this study failed to do their basic homework, but their results have been widely circulated because of their positive message.--Nectar T 23:50, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I myself referred to this result for many years in discussions. It is extremely well known, and the "debunking" you give above is impossible to find for a layman. (A back-of the envelope calculation actually predicts this study: American GIs would have mean IQ ninety-something, German women would have mean IQ 100, so their offspring is expected to have IQ 95-100. Very naive, of course, but the result actually confirms the hereditary hypothesis, instead of rejecting it.)  But I don't think there is a good way to put this into WP, which in some sense is at the heart of the problem. Much of the public debate is based on bad science (in both camps). We editors should make a sterling effort of exposing these things (in both camps), but WP isn't really good as that. (It's good at representing viewpoints; bad at arbitrating the truth.) What I would love is a section of the form Common misconceptions. Under this headline we could debunk lots of primitive claims that haunt this debate (I am also thinking of "Whites are smarter than Asians", or "all Whites are smarter than Blacks" and a gazillion other misconceptions of the hereditarian argument.) One could source these claims easily (so verifiability is not a problem), but I cannot see how we can explain "why they are wrong" without violating WP:NPOV. Arbor 09:40, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, we can do the easy thing (which is what we've currently done) and mention the existence of studies which purport to examine admixture and say that side X claims support from them and side Y claims they are inconclusive or actually support Y not X (this is more or less what we've written now). The easy thing saves space (we're already 2X larger than recommended for a single article page), but it is less informative. Perhaps greater depth of detail can be added to the subarticle on causal theories or even futher sub-articles? Certainly not the most compelling solution, but it does have the merit of being worked out already. Also, I agree that a common misconceptions list would be both good and difficult for the reasons you mention. --Rikurzhen 09:53, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

text: A significiant IQ difference in children has been measured as well in a study where the mother is white with a black father, opposed to the mother being black with a white father. Environmental forces at work. --Scandum 10:16, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  moved from article 

message: :Re:"In a study comparing the offspring of American GI's and German women, where the children where raised in Germany as Germans there was no correlation found between IQ and Race. Both the Biracial and German children had average IQ's of 97."
:Keep in mind that science is complicated.
:Razib at GNXP summarizes Jensen's review of this study in The G Factor :
::* "The fathers' IQs are not accounted for, and it could be that both groups of servicemen, black & white, were not representations of the mean in their parent populations. Jensen notes that 30% of blacks vs. 3% of whites were rejected during preinduction because they failed mental tests.
::* Factors that influenced assortive mating were not tracked. For instance, low SES German women might have had equal preferences for high IQ black officers and low IQ white privates because intelligence could have overcome racial bias in the former case while there was a preference for the latter because they understood that their children might be less ostracized by society if they were not racial minorities.
::* The tests were taken during pre-adolescent years when correlation between IQ scores and genotype is lower than in later years.
::* Heterosis, or hybrid vigor, could have bridged some of the gap."
:When the US military has enough recruits, they "virtually [stop] accepting new enlistees below the 30th percentile (IQs below 92, which is about half a standard deviation above the African-American median). Since the end of the Cold War, only 1% of new enlistees have scored below the 30th percentile [...] because of documented trouble in training and accident prevention [in low IQ soldiers]" -Steve Sailer
:The authors of this study failed to do their basic homework, but their results have been widely circulated because of their positive message.--Nectar T 23:50, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I myself referred to this result for many years in discussions. It is extremely well known, and the "debunking" you give above is impossible to find for a layman. (A back-of the envelope calculation actually predicts this study: American GIs would have mean IQ ninety-something, German women would have mean IQ 100, so their offspring is expected to have IQ 95-100. Very naive, of course, but the result actually confirms the hereditary hypothesis, instead of rejecting it.)  But I don't think there is a good way to put this into WP, which in some sense is at the heart of the problem. Much of the public debate is based on bad science (in both camps). We editors should make a sterling effort of exposing these things (in both camps), but WP isn't really good as that. (It's good at representing viewpoints; bad at arbitrating the truth.) What I would love is a section of the form Common misconceptions. Under this headline we could debunk lots of primitive claims that haunt this debate (I am also thinking of "Whites are smarter than Asians", or "all Whites are smarter than Blacks" and a gazillion other misconceptions of the hereditarian argument.) One could source these claims easily (so verifiability is not a problem), but I cannot see how we can explain "why they are wrong" without violating WP:NPOV. Arbor 09:40, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, we can do the easy thing (which is what we've currently done) and mention the existence of studies which purport to examine admixture and say that side X claims support from them and side Y claims they are inconclusive or actually support Y not X (this is more or less what we've written now). The easy thing saves space (we're already 2X larger than recommended for a single article page), but it is less informative. Perhaps greater depth of detail can be added to the subarticle on causal theories or even futher sub-articles? Certainly not the most compelling solution, but it does have the merit of being worked out already. Also, I agree that a common misconceptions list would be both good and difficult for the reasons you mention. --Rikurzhen 09:53, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

text: A significiant IQ difference in children has been measured as well in a study where the mother is white with a black father, opposed to the mother being black with a white father. Environmental forces at work. --Scandum 10:16, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: RE: Offspring of American GI's and German women

message: anyone interested in the latest intelligence research can check out the abstract book for the 2005 International Society for Intelligence Research meeting - PDF. i see at least two papers on causal theories of race differences. --Rikurzhen 20:42, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  International Society for Intelligence Research 

message: This page is biased and implies that these so-called "studies" are true - it does also present very little of the argument agaist it. If we must have an article on this subject, we should at least remove the average scores text and images - I find it extremely offensive, and it implies that this is a well-known scientific fact. These studies even violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." -- Hexagon1 09:52, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Biased 

message: Unfortunately, Scandum has insisted on reverting a phrase that I find both inappropriate for the background section, and quite POV.  Let's see if the phrase has support by more than two editors.
Should the following bullet item be presented as a consensus position in the "background" section?"
* For people living in the prevailing conditions of the developed world, cognitive ability is substantially heritable, and by adulthood the influence of family environment on IQ is undetectable.
Oppose
#Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 01:41, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This might be a better question for a quick poll. Now that we can agree on an accurate formulation, the relevance of the point is a point that warrants multiple inputs. --Rikurzhen 05:43, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quick poll on "undectable adulthood effect" 

message: maybe this text will be a source of inspiriation for better ways to describe the conclusions: --Rikurzhen 03:05, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  wsj statement on individual differences within groups 

message: Your math is way off, even if we accept that a larger number of low IQ blacks were rejected from service, and this raised the average IQ of Black service men, the average IQ would still be well below the white average IQ. We also have to remember that a fair number of whites are also rejected based on low IQ scores. I will work out the numbers tommorow but your explanation is simply wrong.
The other problem is that you assume that the Blacks who did have sex had higher IQ's, I see no reason to assume this. After all much of the writing of the Bell Curve and social darwinism in general emphasizes the so-called dysgenic effects, ie, lower IQ people have more children. 
The scores could also be interprated as showing blacks have more natural ability at IQ tests. Black privates would only have access to less disirable German women, ie poor, ie low IQ, and hence would be mating with German women with worse genes. Also their children have a good chance of suffering discrimination, stereotyping, more social austricism, etc. then the children of White GI's. Despite these disadvantages they still achieve the same IQ score, if you are a strict hereditarian you must then think this means Blacks are more intelligent then whites.
:The children were all raised by white mothers, the tests were performed on children instead of adults, the fathers didn't represent the average afro american population due to rejection from the service of low IQ blacks. Including full environmental influences which you are supporting, especially during those days, the blacks passing the tests would have been likely to have a higher genetic IQ than whites passing the tests. You also forget that European countries in general have no racist culture toward blacks whatsoever since there weren't any blacks in Europe until the second half of the 20th century, so your theory falls in that department. Since racism is correlated with lower intelligence one could actually asume that the white mothers had above average intelligence. --Scandum 13:35, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Debating whether a POV is true or not is pointless.See WP:NOT,WP:NPOV.--Rikurzhen 17:37, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

text: It would help if you sign your comments for clarity. I'm just responding to your assumptions, and making up assumptions in response. While possibly pointless, these discussions indicate in what light and detail the data could, and possibly should be presented so the readers can make up their own minds. Things that come to mind would be the amount of children to know if the study was representative and the age of the children when the tests were taken. --Scandum 21:54, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re: German women Black GI's 

message: You still haven't explained why you reject the admixture studies. Looking at 10 polymorphisms is not 100 percent accurate for determining someones heritage. However on average, those with the fewer "african" polymorphisms will be whiter, and those with more "african" polymorphisms will be Blacker. This connection is even stronger when you look at groups of people, 100 polymorphisms will predict the african ancestry of a group of 10 people as well as 100 polymorphisms will predict the ancestry of one person.
Once again the results could also be read as suggesting a slight black advantage over whites, despite greater discrimination, stereotype vulnerability, etc. Blacker blacks do just as well or better on IQ tests as whiter Blacks. To paraphrase Leon Kamin, 'who knows how well Whites and Blacks would do given the same enviroment it could just as likely be that Blacks did better then Whites, as the reverse.' (Not sure of the exact quote)
:The results are discussed in brief on this page and (if I remember correctly) get a treatment on the sub-article. That's all the space that they deserve if this page is to remain small enough to be readable. Also, note that there have been no studies that looked at anything more determinative of African ancestry than skin color, which according to a paper by Rick Kittles from around 2000, is not determinative of African ancestry amongst African Americans. --Rikurzhen 17:42, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I honestly don't know what study that is. Citation? --Rikurzhen 22:38, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  The admixture studies 

message: Mental functioning is not entirely measured by IQ, it is also assessed by ones ability to function in everyday life. Sociologists and psychologists have noticed many american Blacks and Hispanics despite low IQ's are able to handle their daily affairs with little difficulty, and in day to day matters can resolve problems in quite a sophisticated manner. The Bell Curve would define around 15 percent of Blacks/Mexicans as mentally retarded, and only about 2 percent of whites. However the actual data indicates that the number of Blacks with mental retardation is 10 per 1000, the number for whites is about 6 per 1000, and the number for Hispanics is 5 per 1000. 
If IQ tests accurately measured cognitive functioning across cultures then their would be far more mentally retarded Blacks and Hispanics, instead Hispanics come out on top!!!! The Bell curve and similair sources overestimate Black mental retardation by 15x, and Hispanic mental retardation by almost 30x!!!! Open link in new window:
http://www.epa.gov/envirohealth/children/child_illness/d7.htm
But why are their more blacks with mental retardation, then whites? Well look to the figure on the right, poverty is correlated with mental retardation, and more Blacks are poor then whites. And it is also true that mental retardation in most cases is caused by enviromental factors not genetic ones. One of these enviromental factors is neglect, poor Blacks and poor Whites do not have the strong family structures that Hispanics do, so more children end up getting neglected. Feral children who do not have contact with humans after a certain age cannot ever learn to speak, it would be impossible to assess these childrens true genetic capability.
The other factors that impact low IQ also disproportionately effect Blacks and Hispanics, lead poisoning, fetal alcohol syndrome, exposure to toxic chemicals, poor nutrition, etc.
Finally it is also worth noting that African Americans have a higher rate of Schitzophrenia then whites do, most psychologists/sociologists believe that this is not caused by genetic factors but is caused by enviromental factors. More people have the genetic possibility for Schitzophrenia then develop it, this is because Schitzophrenia is triggered by enviromental factors such as......poverty, stress, drug use, etc. 
For this and a multitude of other reasons I think that we can finally close the book on the genetic explanation......
:This is wonderful, but it's predominately original research. However, you find find most of it discussed by Jensen (1998). In fact, if you read the article and the causation subarticle in full, I think you will find that some of the best data and theories in support of a non-genetic cause of the B-W gap comes from Jensen regarding non-genetic biological factors. --Rikurzhen 17:46, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The data is not original, but AFAIK your interpretation is not published. (As I pointed out Jensen has commented on the same data.) Also, please sign up for a user name if you plan to contribute. That will allow you to sign your comments. --Rikurzhen 01:29, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  And one more thing: Cultural Bias