Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 40

message: is 65.13.98.41 vandalizing? it's uncited material. --W. D. Hamilton 23:13, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, it should be cited, or removed. --JereKrischel 00:18, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  65.13.98.41 

message: How about we just delete the Pioneer Fund subsection entirely, merge all its content into the Pioneer Fund article, and write a new concluding paragraph.  Maybe start with:
On the other side, the Pioneer Fund has often been criticized for bias while funding "most American and British race scientists" .   Prominent race science critic Ulric Neisser states that the fund's contribution has overall been "a weak plus".
Simple fact is, Pioneer Fund may or may not be biased now, not really sure, but any power they might have can only be to governments not funding contraversial research which might get diffrent (more objective) results.  And that story fits much better with Pinkers quote about stuff being surpressed.  JeffBurdges 20:54, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There has been strong consensus to put this section in this article as a strong indication of the problems riddling race and intelligence studies. I don't think the section should be removed; I'd even dare say it's a very bad idea.--Ramdrake 22:39, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sertonly not suggesting ignoring the Pioneer Fund!  Just eliminating the subsection break and leaving more to that article's introduction, which is much better than this subection.  I was trying to ask what else should be included here.  Linda Gottfredson, SPLC, NAACP, and Neisser all seem directly relevant.  But most of the middle paragraph can be folded into the Pioneer Fund's main article.  So maybe it can be reduced to 2/3rds or 3/4ths its current length.  Well maybe I'll try to rewrite it sometime.  JeffBurdges 07:10, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pioner Fund 

message: So if one has a small brain he is incapable of becoming a physicist or mechanical engineer? Are there any documented accounts of inventors or scientists that may have had smaller than average brains? There are a few African Americans who were philosophers I remember, but they may have had some genetic material from Europeans that increased brain size. If their IQ were measured today, what would their score be? --Apathy 14:50, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe Einstein had a below average sized brain. The lower IQ measured is on average however, so people with large brains can have low IQs and visa versa since brain size isn't the only factor that influences intelligence. --Zero g 20:43, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Einstein did have a below average sized brain, but apparently, his brain was much more neuron-dense than the average brain. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 129.97.242.58 (talk) 03:18, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Is it impossible for someone with a smaller brain to truly excel in engineering ? Apathy 09:11, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intelligent people in history with small brains? 

message: I believe this image used in the article is incorrect, although I haven't looked up the source because I no longer have access to a science direct account (but maybe it's wrong too).  One should be able to differentiate along the y-axis and get a bell curve characteristic to an IQ distribution, but instead you would get an inverted bell curve.  In other words, there shouldn't be a large spike of population with IQ's on the fringe, that should be in the middle.  Perhaps this curve is correct but the labels and units on x- and y-axes have been flipped, although I don't know how that could have actually happened if this plot was actually graphed.  Perhaps someone was trying to eyeball it and drew the curves in.Ajnosek 22:39, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure that IQ is relevant to the article topic, but that is not your query. Are you differentiating with respect to the IQ parameter? If so, the maximum value of the derivative occurs at IQ=100, as you would expect. What am I missing? --Walter Siegmund (talk) 01:51, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

text: This is simply a plot of the Excel NORMINV function -- the inverse normal. --W. D. Hamilton 02:10, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

text: It's a *cumulative* total.  The spike at the end isn't an increase in frequency, it's showing the asymptotic curve as you get to the top of the distribution. --03:07, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Average gaps among races

message: Average gaps among races - - removing irrelevant mention of other characterisitics besides intelligence
* Nectar previously made a compelling case that we should note that cognitive ability is not the only psychological variable that shows race differences.
::irrelevant.  We're not here to argue the case for race and intelligence differences based on original research, and bring in information we feel might be suggestive to support one side or the other.  Reverted delete. --JereKrischel 02:07, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Connecting tangential data is arguably original research.  It would be equivalent to posting research regarding the tremendous height gains by the Japanese post WWII as evidence that certain racial differences thought to be constant were in fact quite variable.  --JereKrischel 02:07, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  1 

message: U.S. Black-White gap - - explicitly noting conclusions are not findings of fact)
* Who says that achievement tests narrowed during the 1990s?
* Charles Murray claims that -- does anyone disagree? If not, inline citation is unnecessary.
* "There is disagreement about whether the results of IQ tests show a narrowing of the IQ gap." - You removed b/c of the agreement between Murray and Flynn in the debate about children up to the 70s, but they don't agree about what has happened to adults (and thus to the scores of people for most of their lives), and they don't agree about the net shrinking at present for all ages. This is a big disagreement.
* " found". "found" is the right word here. Flynn agrees that that's what they found and he also agrees that their finding is true (see his 2006 rebuttal paper).
:Murray explicitly drew trend lines that were arbitrary (see his powerpoint), and included.  There is hardly universal agreement that the 90s present a clear trending.  We should also be more specific in the note "1990s to 2005", otherwise, there is room for interpretation there (Murray's decision on when the 1990s started, for example). --JereKrischel 02:16, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think given the fact that the trend lines "during the 1990s" are ambiguous, we should either specifically state a year range for which things narrowed/widened, or make clear that there is some ambiguity as to where the trend line is.  It also seems to be important which age group is being discussed, as they have distinctly different data points and trends. --JereKrischel 03:04, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The term "achievement gap" specifics a narrow range of ages and kinds of tests -- school age and tests that focus on school-learned material. We can reexamine the relevant review papers, but Murray and Flynn (in the debate) are not talking about these kinds of tests. The Gottfredson/Nisbett papers discuss achievement tests. The NAEP is the premier achievement test along with the SAT and GRE. You can see the trendlines yourself here for the NAEP. --W. D. Hamilton 04:18, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I saw those trend lines, and it seems like the global warming data - depending on exactly what subset of the data you look at, you can claim a trend one way or the other...at the very least, we should specify the exact start and end range being claimed for a trend, rather than just "the 1990s". --JereKrischel 05:02, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe Gottfredson merely referred to decades in her review paper. I don't see the ambiguity that you claim exists in the NAEP data. In zero of the six charts does the BW gap shrink from 1990 to 1999. In 2/6 of the Hispanic-White gap there is shrinking of a couple points. --W. D. Hamilton 16:37, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe in all if not most of the charts, the year with the biggest gap is not 1999, so an arbitrary choice of year within the 1990s could lead the trend line one way or another.  It's probably better to be specific with the year here. --JereKrischel 18:18, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Nothing we do here can get a more specific number/time than what's in the papers. AFAIK, all that's mentioned is the time frame of decades. In the 90s means "during" the 90s -- probably a linear regression of gap against time stratified by decades. --W. D. Hamilton 18:35, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  2 

message: Environmental explanations - - "partly-genetic" probably poor wording, since it doesn't denote the amount of genetic contribution with any specificity
* as a term of art, "partly" is more precise than "significantly". "partly" implies a range like 20-80% heritability to a behavioral geneticist (an effect size of more or less is essentially nothing or all). "significantly" implies that an effect is statistically significant, which is an even larger range depending on sample size.
Can we find a more appropriate layman's term?  Or perhaps mention the 20-80%?  And doesn't heritability not imply genetic causality? --JereKrischel 02:23, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In most publications the proponents of the "partly genetic" view claim to be agnositc about the exact size of the gap. I believe we cite Reynolds on 20% being a lower bound. I'll think on it, but we're obliged to use the most commonly used terms in the literature. --W. D. Hamilton 04:21, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've explicitly cited the figure you've posited as a general range (20-80%)...I think this helps differentiate between specific references better (for example, when someone argues against "culture-only", and they really mean 0% genetic/100% environment, rather than simply <20% genetic.  If "partly-genetic" is as much of a commonly used term (for both the pro-hereditarian and the anti-hereditarian POV) as you state, I have no objection to using it with explicit labels.  I'd appreciate further citations from anti-hereditarian sources using the same term - all too often, I see loaded terms in this series of articles that hew to the Rushton/Jensen camp bias. --JereKrischel 04:59, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Herrnstein and Murray in The Bell Curve use r= .4 - .8 and state that the trend is more towards .8 IIRC --70.91.235.10 03:14, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  4 

message: Accusations of bias - - pinker quote seems out of place - removed. Similarly, as per earlier edits, Pioneer Fund section is referenced, so factual dispute not clear, replacing with POV-section
* The Pinker quote is a spot on example of the accusation that conclusions are biased by fear of human nature. He wrote a book on the subject, and has more recently written several articles saying that fear of R&I is a problem and that people need to find a way to deal with the topic honestly.
:Moved to separate subsection, "Complaints of persecution".  Seems like a better separation there. --JereKrischel 02:39, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No more time, but this is not correct. Fear of an adamantite human nature is the key cause. Persecution is merely on of the effect, along with denial and biased interpretation. --W. D. Hamilton 04:38, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The topic being discussed are, "Accusations of bias".  Pinker seems to be complaining about persecution - although only from the pro-hereditarian POV as a defense against accusations of bias (by implying that accusers are violent, censor others and improperly insult people).  It seems that there is probably good evidence that both sides have been maltreated - certainly Pinker incorrectly conflates the bad behavior of some towards others with something inherent in their position. --JereKrischel 04:46, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I suspect you're misreading Pinker, but I'll have to find the time to reread the original source to comment further. Obviously you should have read it as well. --W. D. Hamilton 04:52, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Interesting, I had no idea.  I thought the section was specifically about accusations of bias directed against social scientists who promoted the racialist position - Pinker's statement seemed incongruous to the section heading.  Maybe better section titles will help. --JereKrischel 17:56, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  6