Talk:Race and intelligence (explanations)/Archive 1

message: there are now like 5 different table entries about brain size. one is sufficient, else this defeats the purpose of having a table where each topic is summarized in a row.  also note this is the explanations article, not the average differences article. --Rikurzhen 09:01, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Could we simplify it into Rushton's racialist arguments of splitting/differing environments tens of thousands of years ago creating different brain sizes, with the primarily environmental POV simply stating that Rushton's data is incorrectly aggregated, and that sufficient controls for such data have not been implemented in any studies?  There seem to be a lot of entries in the "comparisons" section which are not in fact explanations, but rather citations supporting one explanation over another. --JereKrischel 10:05, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Putting like things into single rows is the right idea. --Rikurzhen 17:45, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  brain size 

message: I'll give you my opinion, blunt as it is: it's humongous, it's ugly to read (especially with all those *****editor's notes*****) and it falls into the same tarpit the original article used to: a tit-for-tat battle of arguments on either side, each trying to find an angle to refute the opposing side's argument. In short, it doesn't report on a debate, it is a debate in and of itself. Let's try to find the strongest arguments on each side, and not launch into ad infinitum, ad nauseum refutations. I'd start by moving the table here so we can discuss it, as it looks supremely unencyclopedic as it is on the article page. The smaller table JK has introduced, to sum up the positions, I think is fine and should stay. I don't have time to do it this morning, but I may try my hand at some editing later one today.--Ramdrake 14:13, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The editors notes were added with the hope that they would guide JK to put material into existing rows rather than creating new ones. As I tried to point out about we have something like 5 different rows discussing whether brain size differs by race -- all in slightly different permutations. There's no need to use the talk page as a base for editing. This article is unlikely to be read by more than a handful of people -- I note the rate at which typos get fixed in this and other articles. --Rikurzhen 17:43, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: About the comparison table

message: it's OR. (1) I recognize 2 of the 4 categories listed. i know of no reference to support the division of opinions in this field along racialist/nonracialist lines except as those terms are used synonmyously with the terms herediatarian/nonhereditarian. thus, combining them creates two categories that appear to be essentially depopulated. (2) i can only assume it was created by logical extrapolation from some implied definitions of these terms. thus, assuming no sources were directly consulted, it's plainly OR. --Rikurzhen 17:43, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not OR.  There are clearly two axes of thought here, and they are unfairly conflated by the pro-racialist POV which wants to consider any genetic basis of intelligence as proof that racial differences have a genetic basis.  There are clearly scientists (http://www.loni.ucla.edu/~thompson/IQ/NRN2004_IQ.html) who accept genetic components to intelligence, but dispute the utility of "race" (In reviewing the neurobiological bases of intelligence it is not necessary,on scientific grounds,to consider race. Most of the variance in intelligence is within racial groups not between them9,and the causes of individual differences are relatively tractable with available methods,whereas the causes of racial differences are not). It seems POV pushing to assert that any hereditarian position (that is to say, those who believe there is a genetic basis for intelligence differences) must be supportive of the racialist position.  --JereKrischel 20:53, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That claim is fine in itself but misses the point. The article is about explanations for race differences in IQ, not overall differences in IQ. Hereditarian vs environmentalist are terms which apply at many levels, but the relevant level is race differences in intelligence. Claims of the form "it seems like POV pushing" require you to establish that there exists published opinions about there being a two-axis split on the topic of race differences. That some people who accept a genetic cause of individual differences think race differences could be environmental does not establish such a two-factor account. The vast majority of "environmentalists" about race differences are "hereditarian" about individual differences because the herediatarian account of individual differences is by far the majority view (as per the intro sentence which we have not yet resolved). Lastly, on the specific point of Thompson and Gray (2004) a neurobiologist can not be expected to have an informed opinion about the significance of human races except by relying on their evaluations of the informed opinions of others. --Rikurzhen 21:27, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Then, by the very same token, a psychologist (such as Rushton or Lynn) cannot be expected to have an  informed opinion about the significance of human races except by relying on their evaluations of the informed opinions of others. Therefore, when an anthropologist like Lieberman says that Rushton's partition of races is wrong, it should be an extremely strong critical argument, no?--Ramdrake 22:06, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That certainly doesn't address the main part of my point and so I think we should not get distracted, but Lieberman has one view and geneticists like Risch have another. I'm a geneticist and I happen to think Risch is more right than Lieberman. Please help by thinking about the "hereditarian" vs "racialist" claims being made by JK. --Rikurzhen 22:37, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

text: No no no. It falls on you to provide citations to support your two axis model. You appear to be misunderstanding Thompson -- he's not making a skeptical claim about race but rather commenting on the ease with which the cause of race differences can be discovered, and saying that it's possible to investigate individual differences w/o bring up race. However, this is a distraction from the main point. Here's the point: the term hereditarian is an answer to two different questions. The question of interest is race difference. Another question is individual differences. Flynn, afaik, recognizes that individual differneces are substantially heritable. He believes that race differences are not. I don't know where you are getting a defintion for "racialist". I suspect you mean people believe that racial labels are informative about biogeography or such. In that case, Flynn may be a racialist also -- not sure about that. --Rikurzhen 22:37, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've provided citations, including the citation you provided yourself showing scientists who dispute the utility of race as a categorization, but see a high degree of genetic component to intelligence.  You continue to conflate anyone who has a hereditarian position with one who supports or believes in the utility of race.  You are conflating two different questions - "Is intelligence genetically determined?" and "Are intelligence differences between groups genetically determined?".  A non-racialist hereditarian may agree with the first question, but not with the second.  To list those hereditarian arguments as support for explaining race differences in IQ is clearly invalid. --JereKrischel 22:41, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Reread my entry, which i've been updating. i'll give you some time to come to grips with this problem and find a citation for you two-axis model and/or remove it. --Rikurzhen 22:42, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Again, please explain how you are going to represent the hereditarian/non-racialist POV, and I'll be more than happy to entertain whatever breakdown you'd like to present.  If there is a better way to describe the various explanations, without improperly conflating the questions of "Is intelligence genetically determined?" and "Are intelligence differences between groups genetically determined?", I'm more than glad to hear of it. --JereKrischel 03:27, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

text: That is categorically untrue, Rikurzhen.  A primary critique of the work of Rushton by Lieberman is such unwarranted conflations of data. --JereKrischel 03:33, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Whatever point you're trying to make is not at all clear to me. (My reference???) The apportionment of variance between and within groups is Lewontin's (1972) argument against the validity of race as a category, etc. What's the connection of that to claims about "aggregation" -- a research methodology which is apparently synonymous for "meta-analysis"? --Rikurzhen 03:40, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You brought up this article, which states: In reviewing the neurobiological bases of intelligence it is not necessary,on scientific grounds,to consider race. Most of the variance in intelligence is within racial groups not between them9,and the causes of individual differences are relatively tractable with available methods,whereas the causes of racial differences are not..  Your reference is arguing against the validity of race as a category.  And insofar as the detailed arguments, a major critique of the conclusions of racialist-hereditarians is their poor use of data, as described in detail by folk such as Lieberman. --03:44, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

text: You're ignoring the first part of the quote: In reviewing the neurobiological bases of intelligence it is not necessary,on scientific grounds,to consider race.  The causes of racial differences are not tractable because race is not a good proxy for every gene which contributes to intelligence. --JereKrischel 04:12, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: about the small table

message: one problem that this article tends to run into is changes in opinion. we must watch publication dates. if a paper was published in the 90s, there's a risk that the author has since changed his/her mind. for example, here's a paper by Jensen challenging Rushton about brain sizes from 1993: . (assuming I understand this paper) it would anachronistic to cite Jensen as being opposed to Rushton as he appears to have changed his mind since this time. --Rikurzhen 18:06, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  watch publication dates 

message: jk, you're duplicating entries again. read the table in full before adding new material. --Rikurzhen 22:45, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sorry, but I think you're presenting an unbalanced, OR presentation of the arguments between the racialist-hereditarian POV and the primarily-environmental POV.  You are conflating any evidence of genetic linkage to intelligence as support for the racialist-hereditarian POV, and deliberately avoiding the primary critiques of the racialist-hereditarian POV (dubious data, and the futility of race as a proxy for all or most of the genes which control intelligence).  --JereKrischel 03:25, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "dubious data, and the futility of race as a proxy for all or most of the genes which control intelligence" -- take care to be precise and citation based in your thinking and writing. the "dubious data" claim is aimed at Rushton's life history matrix, not at for example IQ differences between U.S. black and whites, which has been studied extensively. the "race as a proxy for all or most of the genes which control intelligence" is an unusual way to describe the criticism of race, which is usually made from a cline/cluster POV. how makes this kind of claim as you have stated it? --Rikurzhen 03:28, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The dubious assertion is the implication that a B-W difference is due to group genetic differences.  This is a primary fault of your citations used in support of the racialist-hereditarian POV. --JereKrischel 03:46, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Isn't "the racialist-hereditarian POV" identical to the view that "B-W difference is due to group genetic differences"? Rushton's life history matrix is criticized as being based on dubious sources. But Rushton's theory is a small part of the set of arguments ususally presented for the hereditarian view. For example, The Bell Curve omits mention of it in the chapter on race differences. --Rikurzhen 03:50, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, the racialist-hereditarian POV is the position that group genetic differences are the primary reason for IQ differences between groups.  The hereditarian view can include those who believe that there is a large genetic component to IQ, but do not believe that race categorizations are useful.  --JereKrischel 04:09, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  making a mess 

message: jk, you know it's not appropriate to remove my disputed tags. you're comments have grown incoherent to me. later --Rikurzhen 03:58, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You asked for a citation showing the axes and positions I stated exist.  I've done that.  Your dispute is not with me, it's with the sources I've cited. --JereKrischel 04:02, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Why then, did you mark Assertions of Black-White-East Asian differences are based on invalid "aggregation" of data. as dubious?  The citation (Lieberman's "How "Caucasoids" Got Such Big Crania and Why They Shrank") directly supports that text.  See the "Abusing Anthropological Research" section. --JereKrischel 09:10, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's in the section about IQ differences, but the Lieberman paper is about brain size differences. --Rikurzhen 01:54, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  disputed tag 

message: the dubious tag is a sentence-level dispute tag. it is a meta-tag, meant to indicate an editorial dispute, not a tag to mark facts which are disputed in the research literature. for example, you've marked several NPOV-format sentences with the dubious tag, but this can only mean that you think the citation does not support the text. i doubt that was your intended meaning. --Rikurzhen 08:04, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Why then, did you mark Assertions of Black-White-East Asian differences are based on invalid "aggregation" of data. as dubious?  The citation (Lieberman's "How "Caucasoids" Got Such Big Crania and Why They Shrank") directly supports that text.  See the "Abusing Anthropological Research" section. --JereKrischel 09:10, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's in the section about IQ differences, but the Lieberman paper is about brain size differences. --Rikurzhen 01:54, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  dubious tag 

message: We simply cannot turn this article into a tit-for-tat meta-analysis, original research paper on the evidence for and against the pro-hereditarian position.  Although arguably well cited, much more appropriate for a wiki like gnxpwiki.com than wikipedia.org.  Fails NPOV on both undue weight, as well as an inappropriate characterization of the contrary view. --JereKrischel 10:00, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Large table straw man

message: Considering this article is protected, shouldn't it have a tag to warn editors and users?  - Joshdboz 00:53, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I was wondering that too... where is the tag? futurebird 04:14, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What was the conflict here about in the first place? I was not a player in it... futurebird 21:45, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: this edit. JK deleted a substantial portion of the article. that debate extended to here and here. --W.R.N. 22:16, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It was a case of disagreement as to what NPOV means.  I'm quite adamant that putting a table pitting "genetic" vs. "environmental" is conflating opinions, and WRN is quite adamant that that is the only reasonable way of looking at the issue.  I'm really not sure how we move forward on this, since WRN has rejected any and all compromises I've suggested, and hasn't offered any of his own, although we've both spent pages and pages advocating for our rationales.  --JereKrischel 23:35, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Protection 

message: I think that we should move the material in research to this article. Of course we can't do that since this article is locked.
futurebird 07:00, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge from "research"

message: Wikipedia pages should be protected only in extreme circumstances like vandalism or egregious edit wars.  This page was protected for six days, more than enough time for people acting in good faith to resolve their dispute.  I have unprotected it.  If you are still in conflict, follow my advice (two sections above). Slrubenstein   |  Talk 12:40, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not unprotected....futurebird 15:22, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  unprotecting 

message: no settlement has been reached about the edit that locked the article. --W.R.N. 22:16, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think just about everyone else thought that the compromise proposed above was fair. Are you the gatekeeper here? futurebird 00:05, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. What are you referring to? --W.R.N. 00:19, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you talking about this: "return the full table without column-headings, and work on how to organize the material together". That's actually a fine idea. The idea of a "research" subarticle is, IMO, a bad idea. But if we "return the full table without column-headings, and work on how to organize the material together" I think that would be great. Based on the notion that that's what we're doing, I've 2nded your request for unprotection. --W.R.N. 00:19, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I never had a stance on the whole problem with that table. We can work it out later. There will be no "edit wars" I just think we should move on so we can put things in the right place. So I think we agree on this. I think JK wanted no headings, so he can make that edit, we'll let the table linger for the time being and maybe some others will come in and help us make up our minds about it. But It's annoying that we can't just move in the new material and start making it look good. futurebird 00:42, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  unprotection 

message: these tags mark individual sentence or other small regions of an article for correction. this is typically done when the correction isn't obvious. --W.R.N. 05:45, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  tags