Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 19

message: This is just style, but "study found" is a common usage, at least in the natural sciences. Check google and google scholar. --Rikurzhen 18:55, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I would say it like this: "Media portrayal of race and intelligence research and intelligence-related topics in general is misrepresentative of mainstream opinion in these fields (Snyderman and Rothman 1987)." There is no reason to have both "A study claimed that" in the beginning and a parenthetic reference at the end. This wording is completely in line with WP guidelines: the claim is undisputed (as far as I know, which may be not much) and properly sourced. Unless, of course, there there is somebody on this talk page who can point us to any respectable source that claims the opposite, in which case the guidelines would indeed (correctly) proscribe that we use the "X claims A but Y claims B". Arbor 19:20, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Of course that's the right thing to do. --Rikurzhen 19:28, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Wikipedia does not depend on terminology by others, but Arbor's approach looks quite OK to me. Harald88 19:38, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  For the sake of possible future consideration of this question, I don't think Harald88 is correct. The claims were a study does not "find" a conclusion and Wikipedia does not depend on terminology by others. in my experience the a phrase like this study found X where X is a conclusion is very common, at least in science writing. moreover, WP does depend on common word usage in so much as it seeks to be easy to understand and must avoid neologisms. --Rikurzhen 23:24, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: On second thought, you may be right if the statement that for example so-an-so "found that all blacks are retarded" is generally interpreted as a found opinion and not as found fact. As English is not my mother tongue, I'm not sure about this. Harald88 00:06, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "study found" 

message: I updated the template strucutres on the reference page. A quick glance over the article finds that our referencing is not completely 100% complete/consistent. We cannot easily eliminate either inline citations or the footnotes. Some inline citations are integral ot the sentence, and some footnotes are extensive. However, we've been inconsistent with the choice of whether to put material in a footnote or inline for intermediate cases. We've also failed to keep the reference page up to date with new references. Suggestions? Happy Holidays. --Rikurzhen 20:17, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Using inline citations except for instances in which a number of sources are being cited does seem to be the best choice.  I wonder if we could include links to online versions in inline citations: () (compared with ()).  Readers would probably appreciate this.--Nectar 00:22, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  references, footnotes, inline citation 

message: I propose that we either move this article in its entirety to Race and intelligence testing, or at least split out most of the article into that and reserve this one for a more historical, less US-centric article. As just one example of my thinking, the beautiful graph that captures your attention as soon as you open the page is about testing, not intelligence. While one could argue that testing is the only way to measure intelligence, that is highly debatable, especialy in light of theproblems with defining who is what race when you do the testing, etc.. etc.
So, what do people think? BCorr|Брайен 04:03, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it would be more parsimonious to keep the title and expand the existing history section into Race and intelligence (History) if/when someone writes more on that topic. Britannica and Encarta have "race and intelligence" articles covering similar material, so there's good precedent for the current formulation. Likewise, the modern research literature is clearly large enough to superceed the history for this name space. I suppose someone could discuss intelligence without "intelligence testing", certainly in the past they did, but it would be something like doing meterology without thermometers. Is there much of a literature on it? --Rikurzhen 04:15, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  A radical suggestion: move this article to [[Race and intelligence testing]] in whole or in part 

message: Nectar, if you want to give a definition used by them, then you should use a source from their website. Ultramarine 04:21, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Tolerance.org is a website of the SPLC (as stated at the top of the linked-to page).--Nectar 04:35, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: OK Ultramarine 04:40, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  SPLC definition of hate group 

message: :(I signed your post for you.) I am not an expert either, but the fallacy of your question is that you apply a standard from one group ("IQ 60 is retarded for Whites") to another group (Blacks, say). That doesn't work. But what is true (terribly), is that a non-retarded, perfectly nice, well-functioning and well-behaved average sub-saharan Black (who may speak five different languages, for example) will perform as bad on an IQ test as a mildly retarded European White. Arbor 08:37, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That being the case, what is it that the tests actually measure? How do the test results actually indicate intelligence if the same score can't be applied in anything near the same way to people? This brings me back to my last question. BCorr|Брайен 14:40, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Because IQ testing is a good predictor for a lot of cognitive tasks, other than solving IQ tests, and they predict this across groups. Doing basic maths. Programming. Reading a time table. Installing a printer driver. "Figuring stuff out." That kind of thing. Your IQ predicts your success in doing these things, no matter what race you are. The fallacy is the claim "IQ 75 is retarded". That's simply wrong. A sub-saharan African with IQ 75 isn't retarded. But he cannot patch a printer driver, no more than an IQ 75 Swede can. Arbor 14:46, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That's about education and exposure, not IQ or ability to learn and carry out cognitive tasks, which is what IQ is supposed to measure. BCorr|Брайен 16:33, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Very good. Group differences in education and exposure would be an explanation of the IQ gap. Analysing the explanatory power of such hypotheses is exactly what this article is about. Welcome. Arbor 18:31, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, Arbor, I'll stop offering my opinion as you seem to think I'm a newbie in need of a primer on the topic. If you review the history you'll see that Rikurzhen and I have been editing this article for a couple of years, even if I have not done so consistently, and I have avoided it because too often it has become flamebait. So I say to you: Welcome, and au revoir. BCorr|Брайен 00:55, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, Arbor, for your note and explanation on my talk page. I appreciate it. BCorr|Брайен 14:26, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

text: This is a provocative but plausible explanation, in any case highly fascinating. However, the main point still remains: regardless of the IQ threshold in any population for mental retardation, any functional society still needs engineers, teachers, lawyers, and politicians, etc. If 70% of the population in some sub-saharan African population is inherently INCAPABLE of doing these jobs (as compared to maybe 30-40% in a European society), how can these societies still function? Well, maybe the answer is: they don't. And that's the reason for their impoverishment. Yet without a hint of reference to political correctness this possibility is, to say the least, questionable. Mental retardation is mental retardation, regardless of race, and when the average IQ is 59 the number of people who can write literature, do advanced math, and deliver political speeches is vanishingly small.  71.29.76.252 05:02, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

text: This seems to be a very valuable explanation. I liked it so much that I have copied it to Race and intelligence (Average gaps among races). It goes without saying that the paragraph might need some extra polish. See you there. Arbor 08:21, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

text: why do African populations in Europe or the US perform substantially differently on the Raven's Matrices than those in Africa if the test is not affected by culture or environment as Jensen claimed -- you are confusing the question of causes of average group differences with the question of test bias. the tests are not biased and they reveal the same factor structure for all groups, moreover Ravens mostly measures g which is highly resistant to environmental manipulation among people in developed countries. however, and here i think all people tend to agree including jensen and rushton et al., the environmental conditions in africa are reducing average IQ substantially, probably as a result of malnutrition. "hispanics" are a complex case, but at least when the term means mexican americans they are indeed genetically distinguishable from whites -- see race, tang et al (2005). at least when it comes to this topic, there is no compelling reason to distinguish between race and ethnicity as the two are mostly confounded. --Rikurzhen 07:36, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

text: You're mistaken about the current state of understanding regarding "race" and genetics. For recent, salient work see  and . Has this Nigerian data been published? Either way, I don't think it has much to do with this particular article as IQ tests given in developing countries are naturally suspect and almost all of the discussion is focused on tests given to U.S. citizens. --Rikurzhen 17:10, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm a grad student in the field of genetics. Those papers have nothing to do with IQ, but rather "race" and genetics. I'm afraid you're behind the times when it comes to research on the structure of human genetic diversity, see for example Lewontin's Fallacy which you mention. But there's no point in this back and forth. Wikipedia is not a discussion forum. --Rikurzhen 02:42, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

text: That's very rude of you. I would lecture to anyone who demonstrated your level of unfamiliarity with the research literature. Your comments on Edward's "Lewontin's Fallacy" are highly inappropriate for an academic. In addition to looking more closely and open mindedly at the literature, you should acquaint yourself with Wikipedia policy. Neither your nor my personal opinions about the subject matter in the construct of the article. --Rikurzhen 03:27, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

text: For those who hold "race" to not be biologically meaningful, the scientific legitimacy of this article's topic should probably at least be established by the existence of divergent brain genetics between the races.
--Nectar 07:05, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Short answer -- the second more than the first. Longer answers: The incongruities of racial classifications are many. However, for the immigrant populations of the U.S., race is still relatively precise categorization. Note that most of the research on group IQ differences is about the U.S.. In that context, self-identified race is an informative marker for (1) social categories/ethnicity and (2) biogeographic ancestry/genetics. It's the denial of (2) that has since c.a. 2000 been theoretically and empirically (e.g.,  and ) falsified. Thus, while race may be largely unhelpful in one field (e.g., anthropology), it may be good enough as a confounded proxy in another (e.g., medicine/genetics), and it may what you want to study in another (e.g., sociology). Intelligence research is in a similar situation to medicine. African Americans have higher incidence of hypertension than European Americans. To what extent is that observed racial difference due to the fact that race is a proxy for (1) versus (2). Analogously, the primary debate over IQ is to what extent is the IQ gap due to (1) versus (2).  --Rikurzhen 18:16, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Not a problem for me as it's really Francis Collins, Neil Risch, et al. that you are disagreening with. However, note that (1) Barbujani is speaking from a global/anthropological perspective which is inapplicable to the immigrant populations of the U.S. and (2) he spoke too soon as Rosenberg (2005) has empirically falsified the claim that there are no genetic discontinuities. --Rikurzhen 00:09, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Indeed it should not (e.g., nothing in that data gets you to the one drop rule for African admixture). But if you are presented with a given race concept, say the racial self-identification of the U.S. population, then there is now plenty of evidence against the strong claim that this particular concept is biologically meaningless. The denial of race is biologically meaningless doesn't imply that race is fully supported by biology. On the other hand, there's plenty of reason to prefer a different categorization concept for any particular research question. For biomedical research, the emerging consensus seems to be that biogeographic ancestry narrowed to continental/sub-continental level is the right way to categorize people for a first-round look at genetic diversity, with the caveat in mind that your categorization will be confounded by social factors. --Rikurzhen 23:02, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Edwards is to blame for that phrase. When I write it I mean Edwards' paper/reasoning, not as a personal attack of RC Lewontin. However, you are in part mistaken that Lewontin has nothing to do with the current debate on race, at least if Edwards' historical analysis of the race is biologically meaningless concept is correct. --Rikurzhen 23:02, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  IQ and mental retardation 

message: *The first sentence is very presumptive and incomplete: "race and intelligence is a controversial area of anthropology and intelligence research studying the nature, origins, and practical consequences of racial and ethnic group differences in intelligence test scores and other measures of cognitive ability". The presumption inducing dichotomy is obvious, "sugar and tooth decay" implies sugar causes tooth decay, but there is no scientific basis to state "race" is a cause of "intelligence". 
:* In the process of writing that was enforced by my dissertation director, one states a thesis for each paragraph in a topic sentence, and then one advances evidence and argument to substantiate that thesis. The same thing applies, in principle, for sections, chapters, and whole books. The thesis ZM quoted above says, in effect, that the word "race" has some meaning in the real world (i.e., that criteria can be stated that will unambiguously put individuals into one of several categories called, regretfully, "race"), that the word "intelligence" likewise is a meaningful term that can be given a valid operational definition, and that average intelligences can be computed for members of each "race." The sentence quoted implies, perfectly reasonably I think, that if you know that R1 has IQ=a, R2 has IQ=b, etc., then you can compare the values. It does not eliminate the possibility that a = b = c... = n. Nor does it affirm that "race" causes "intelligence." In itself, it is perfectly compatible with the idea that R1 is fed rice and cabbage, R2 is fed a diet rich in fish, fresh fruit and vegetables, etc., R3 is fed a SuperPhat diet, and that there is no direct causal link between race and intelligence. (I'm not saying that the article stays clear of confusing coincidence and causation later on, nor am I saying that it does confuse them, just trying to get clear on what is actually being said.)
::*The current intro completely confuses description and causation. Again you fail to provide a justification for the exclusive framing and presumption inducing dichotomy, proponents of this research do not seem to be followers of the scientific method. zen master T 08:39, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Presumptive first sentence 

message: *All alternative causes that would fully explain the test results disparity such as: lack of childhood nutrition, test bias, home environment, and economic disparity are described in terms unbecomming a possible cause, words such as "environmental factors" or not as potential alternative "causes". You don't get any more blatently biased than that. Apparently, proponents of this research only want people to consider "race" as the cause, they've tainted all other causes by labeleling them "factors". The article doesn't even directly state the fact nutrition effects IQ, instead the article confuses clarity by saying "nutrition is known to modulate IQ". And the rest of the intro completely contradicts the sentence at the bottom of the intro "The primary focus of the scientific debate is whether group IQ differences also reflect a genetic component". That sentence states as a fact "a genetic component" as the possible cause is not primarily accepted within the "scientific debate" yet the current version of this article presents a completely opposite reality?
:* I don't get it. Is the first sentence above yours or the article's? Anyway, it would be worthwhile to have an article on "intelligence and home environment." "Intelligence and economic disparity" would probably have to be done some other way since low intelligence may cause lack of economic success, and lack of economic success may lead to poor nutrition, poor home environment, etc., etc. -- factors that ought to be teased apart and checked separately
::* The point is this article and area of research present all other causes dismissively within an exclusive framing of the issue around "race". Environmental causes are causes, not "factors". (I updated the above to hopefully be more clear) zen master T 08:39, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Downplaying and misframing other causes 

message: The article uses suggestive, needlessly wikilinked and needlessly literal word choices:
*Intelligence, just because someone named there test an "intelligence test" doesn't mean it accurately measures intelligence. "Cognitave ability" has the same problem, it is often used in place of or redundantly with "intelligence".
: How do you define intelligence? How would you measure it?  Just curious. Is intuition a matter of intelligence? I suspect that there are people who have very high intuitive abilities who might do poorly on intelligence tests. In fact I can think of one person whom I value very highly who can spot, analyze, and tear apart the rationalizations of recovering narcotics addicts, but he is not given his due because of his performance on the kinds of tasks that would be modeled in IQ tests. Then there are mental processing tasks in martial arts and sometimes in sports (think of Michael Jordan in "the zone") that are expressly not matters of discursive thought. The whole training is to put the discursive thought processes out of gear.  How you could measure that with an IQ test I'll never know.l
:: I am not trying to define "intelligence", the point is it is unsufficiently defined so there is no justification for an excessively conclusive presentation in the current version of this article. zen master T 08:39, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestive word choices 

message: *"Similar clustering" is not caveated or cited to who claims that, which would be the "research" itself.
*Most sentences in wikipedia articles that begin with "Critics..." do not end with "...on both sides".
*No where does the "critical view" directly mention the fact the entire research field and its methodologies are fundamentally disputed by critics. 
*The following is an obvious mistatement of critics view "...and fear the sociopolitical ramifications", there are no ramifications if nothing is proven, critics actually fear the acceptance of bad science and tainted research.
*Where is the justification and citation for this statement: "The conclusion that some racial groups have lower intelligence...", it needs to be attributed to an individual researcher or group, as in: "Researcher X concludes that some racial groups have lower intelligence...". But then isn't it redundant for that sentence to continue after saying "conlusion that some racial groups have lower intelligence" sentence" "and the hypothesis that a genetic component is involved..."? It is a hypothesis not a conclusion that "some racial groups" have lower "intelligence", nothing has been concluded, and everything stated in the article needs attribution of who stated it.  I think other scientists should study the possible negative effects on future test results after receiving a low "IQ" test result. Perhaps IQ testing has no scientific basis and is just a means of controlling the population through expectation. The authors of the current version of this article are seemingly masters at the psychological effect of language and ambiguation.
*Why are proponents and advocates of this "race and intelligence" article and research the ones that also have created, edited and characterized the IQ test controversy and race and intelligence controversy articles? It seems they have duplicitously crafted a very one sided presumptive message by eliminating or mischaracterizing the critical view and sources from even the "controversy" articles. 
*Only a small percentage of people have ever taken an "IQ" test, how could they be justification for any sort of group based political decisions?
zen master T 00:11, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other disputed points 

message: I would hope that you start an article on Nutrition and Intelligence. Working through a parallel problem might be very helpful. P0M 02:42, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: As stated above a series of "X and intelligence" articles misses numerous points. This subject should be drastically reformatted around where the disputed and controversial points begin, which is precisely IQ test results controversy. The possible effects of nutrition on "intelligence" should be covered in nutrition and need not utilize a dichotomy for presentation. zen master T 08:39, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intro bias comments 

message: Regarding our earlier discussion of culture only vs predominantly environmental, I came across this article by NYU philosopher Ned Block via GNXP, in which he argues against the conception that there is any group genetic variance in IQ:
:Herrnstein and Murray are "resolutely agnostic" about whether bad environment or genetic endowment is more responsible for the lower IQs of Blacks. But they indicate no agnosticism at all about whether part of the IQ difference between Blacks and Whites is genetic; and given their way of thinking about the matter, this means that they are not at all agnostic about some Black genetic inferiority" (his emphases).
--Nectar 06:17, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Example of 0% genetic variance argument 

message: "Race and the two most important IQ genes NQO2 and DCDC2" (Dec 21, 2005).  (Added to the article by anon.) This is an unpublished letter by Volkmar Weiss, a member of the International Academy of Science.  His Intelligence paper "The Advent of a Molecular Genetics of General Intelligence," (1995) is further down the page. 
Excerpt:
:At our current state of knowledge, the genes DCDC2 and NQO2 have the highest probability to be correlated with general intelligence (IQ) ... The allele frequency of the A allele rs2274305 of the dyslexia-gene DCDC2 is about 0.28 among Eurasians and 0.99 among Yorubas from Nigeria, about 0.80 among African Americans (known to be admixed with some white genes), see  .  ... 
:The allele frequency of the C allele rs2756081 of NQO2 is about 0.25 among Eurasians (0.41 in Tokyo in a sample, which is not in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium) and 0.00 among Yorubas from Nigeria, about 0.02 among African Americans, see  and . ... 
:If we align the genetic code of Homo sapiens and the chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes, in both species NQO2 is coded by 231 amino acids. However, at the position 47 of rs2756081, see   ,  [Eurasians with an above average IQ are coding LF or LL (leucine), rather than FF (phenylalanine), which both Eurasians with a below 100 IQ and Blacks are coding, and which is also coded for by chimps and a number of other mammals].
--Nectar 12:22, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I feel an edit war coming. Is this information reliable? --Scandum 15:46, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: No, it's not (I posted it here when I removed it from the article, posted by anon); unless any of these claims were simply observations of verifiably known data, they're merely unpublished arguments.--Nectar 22:56, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comparative genetic analysis from Volkmar Weiss 

message: The article states:
"These highly succesful minorities differ significantly in IQ subtest profiles. Ashkenazi Jews, for example, demonstrate very high verbal IQ's (120's) but average visuospatial IQ's (100-105), whereas East Asians demonstrate average verbal IQ's (90's-100's) but high visuospatial IQ's (105-115)."
Where did you get the verbal and visuospatial IQ's from? This needs a citation. (The Jewish figures might come form a book by the notorious anti-Semite Kevin MacDonald, but his figures--117-118 overall, 127 verbal IQ--are not widely accepted.
:These figures were added to the article by an anon.  Anybody know offhand a good source for the subtest profiles?--Nectar 08:05, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Asian and Ashkenazim IQ strengths

message: That "Hispanic" would better be described as Amerindian/Mestizos - as Hispanic is more a linguistic and cultural category --Someone 1/18 ,06'
:For a similar reason to that discussed at Talk:Race#Why_is_.22Hispanic.22_there.3F. "Hispanic" and "Latino" are the terms used in the studies being described, so that's what's used here. This is because such studies use self-identified race/ethnicity, and few people describe themselves as "Amerindian/Mestizos". Personally, I too would prefer if the researchers classified people by their biogeographic ancestry (i.e., Amerindian) instead of the fuzzier racial/ethinic labels. --Rikurzhen 20:34, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why is "Hispanic" there