Any suggestions about how to improve this section are welcome. Since the only specific thing we agreed on during mediation was that the article should have a section about this, without agreeing on anything about its structure, I’m not at all particular about how this section is worded or what sources should be used. --[[User:Captain Occam|Captain Occam]] ([[User talk:Captain Occam|talk]]) 09:45, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
Any suggestions about how to improve this section are welcome. Since the only specific thing we agreed on during mediation was that the article should have a section about this, without agreeing on anything about its structure, I’m not at all particular about how this section is worded or what sources should be used. --[[User:Captain Occam|Captain Occam]] ([[User talk:Captain Occam|talk]]) 09:45, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
:''I think it’s time for us to begin discussing the last major change to this article that we agreed on during mediation''. This was not agreed to in mediation. The content you present here appears to be mostly OR and SYNTH. As mentioned before during meditation, you seem to be applying the logical fallacy that correlation implies correlation as the basis for most of this SYNTH. [[User:Aprock|A.Prock]] ([[User talk:Aprock|talk]]) 12:28, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
Race and intelligence was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
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Is there really a scientific consensus that there is no evidence for a genetic link between race and intelligence?
Yes, and for a number of reasons. Primarily:
No evidence for such a connection has ever been published. A statement signed by 143 senior human population geneticists states categorically that genetics research in no way supports the view that "recent natural selection has led to worldwide differences in I.Q. test results". (See this,this, and this for context.)
Even if we take ancestral population groups to be proxies for race, most subject-matter experts agree that cognitive differences between such such groups are unlikely to exist. A group of prominent geneticists explain why here.
Isn't it true that different races have different average IQ test scores?
On average and in certain contexts, yes, though these differences have fluctuated and in many cases steadily decreased over time. Crucially, the existence of such average differences today does not mean what racialists have asserted that it means (i.e. that races can be ranked according to their genetic predisposition for intelligence). Most IQ test data comes from North America and Europe, where non-White individuals represent ethnic minorities and often carry systemic burdens which are known to affect test performance. Studies which purport to compare the IQ averages of various nations are considered methodologically dubious and extremely unreliable. Further, important discoveries in the past several decades, such as the Flynn effect and the steady narrowing of the gap between low-scoring and high-scoring groups, as well as the ways in which disparities such as access to prenatal care and early childhood education affect IQ, have led to an understanding that environmental factors are sufficient to account for observed between-group differences.
And isn't IQ a measure of intelligence?
Not exactly. IQ tests are designed to measure intelligence, but it is widely acknowledged that they measure only a very limited range of an individual's cognitive capacity. They do not measure mental adaptability or creativity, for example. You can read more about the limitations of IQ measurements here. These caveats need to be kept in mind when extrapolating from IQ measurements to statements about intelligence. But even if we were to take IQ to be a measure of intelligence, there would still be no good reason to assert a genetic link between race and intelligence (for all the reasons stated elsewhere in this FAQ).
Isn't there research showing that there are genetic differences between races?
Yes and no. A geneticist could analyze a DNA sample and then in many cases make an accurate statement about that person's race, but no single gene or group of genes has ever been found that defines a person's race. Such variations make up a minute fraction of the total genome, less even than the amount of genetic material that varies from one individual to the next. It's also important to keep in mind that racial classifications are socially constructed, in the sense that how a person is classified racially depends on perceptions, racial definitions, and customs in their society and can often change when they travel to a different country or when social conventions change over time (see here for more details).
So how can different races look different, without having different genes?
They do have some different genes, but the genes that vary between any two given races will not necessarily vary between two other races. Race is defined phenotypically, not genotypically, which means it's defined by observable traits. When a geneticist looks at the genetic differences between two races, there are differences in the genes that regulate those traits, and that's it. So comparing Africans to Europeans will show differences in genes that regulate skin color, hair texture, nose and lip shape, and other observable traits. But the rest of the genetic code will be essentially the same. In fact, there is much less genetic material that regulates the traits used to define the races than there is that regulates traits that vary from person to person. In other words, if you compare the genomes of two individuals within the same race, the results will likely differ more from each other than a comparison of the average genomes of two races. If you've ever heard people saying that the races "are more alike than two random people" or words to that effect, this is what they were referring to.
Why do people insist that race is "biologically meaningless"?
Mostly because it is. As explained in the answer to the previous question, race isn't defined by genetics. Race is nothing but an arbitrary list of traits, because race is defined by observable features. The list isn't even consistent from one comparison to another. We distinguish between African and European people on the basis of skin color, but what about Middle Eastern, Asian, and Native American people? They all have more or less the same skin color. We distinguish African and Asian people from European people by the shape of some of their facial features, but what about Native American and Middle Eastern people? They have the same features as the European people, or close enough to engender confusion when skin color is not discernible. Australian Aborigines share numerous traits with African people and are frequently considered "Black" along with them, yet they are descended from an ancestral Asian population and have been a distinct cultural and ethnic group for fifty thousand years. These standards of division are arbitrary and capricious; the one drop rule shows that visible differences were not even respected at the time they were still in use.
But IQ is at least somewhat heritable. Doesn't that mean that observed differences in IQ test performance between ancestral population groups must have a genetic component?
This is a common misconception, sometimes termed the "hereditarian fallacy". [5] In fact, the heritability of differences between individuals and families within a given population group tells us nothing about the heritability of differences between population groups. [6][7] As geneticist and neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell explains:
We need to get away from thinking about intelligence as if it were a trait like milk yield in a herd of cattle, controlled by a small, persistent and dedicated bunch of genetic variants that can be selectively bred into animals from one generation to the next. It is quite the opposite – thousands of variants affect intelligence, they are constantly changing, and they affect other traits. It is not impossible for natural selection to produce populations with differences in intelligence, but these factors make it highly unlikely.
To end up with systematic genetic differences in intelligence between large, ancient populations, the selective forces driving those differences would need to have been enormous. What’s more, those forces would have to have acted across entire continents, with wildly different environments, and have been persistent over tens of thousands of years of tremendous cultural change. Such a scenario is not just speculative – I would argue it is inherently and deeply implausible.
The bottom line is this. While genetic variation may help to explain why one person is more intelligent than another, there are unlikely to be stable and systematic genetic differences that make one population more intelligent than the next. [8]
What about all the psychometricians who claim there's a genetic link?
The short answer is: they're not geneticists. The longer answer is that there remains a well-documented problem of scientific racism, which has infiltrated psychometry (see e.g. [9] and [10]). Psychometry is a field where people who advocate scientific racism can push racist ideas without being constantly contradicted by the very work they're doing. And when their data did contradict their racist views, many prominent advocates of scientific racism simply falsified their work or came up with creative ways to explain away the problems. See such figures as Cyril Burt, J. Phillipe Rushton, Richard Lynn, and Hans Eysenck, who are best known in the scientific community today for the poor methodological quality of their work, their strong advocacy for a genetic link between race and intelligence, and in some cases getting away with blatant fraud for many years.
Isn't it a conspiracy theory to claim that psychometricians do this?
No, it's science. As a group of scholars including biological anthropologistsAgustín Fuentes of Princeton and Jonathan M. Marks of the University of North Carolina explain: "while it is true that most researchers in the area of human genetics and human biological diversity no longer allocate significant resources and time to the race/IQ discussion, and that moral concerns may play an important role in these decisions, an equally fundamental reason why researchers do not engage with the thesis is that empirical evidence shows that the whole idea itself is unintelligible and wrong-headed". These authors compare proponents of a genetic link between race and IQ to creationists, vaccine skeptics, and climate change deniers. [11] At the same time, researchers who choose to pursue this line of inquiry have in no way been hindered from doing so, as is made clear by this article: [12]. It's just that all the evidence they find points to environmental rather than genetic causes for observed differences in average IQ-test performance between racial groups.
What about the surveys which say that most "intelligence experts" believe in some degree of genetic linkage between race and IQ?
These surveys are almost invariably conducted by advocates of scientific racism, and respondents to these surveys are also almost exclusively members of groups that promote scientific racism. In short, they are not representative samples of mainstream scientific opinion.
These surveys tend to have very low participation rates, and often consist of fewer than 100 respondents.
Many of the surveys suffer from methodological flaws, such as using leading questions. This leads to an increase in responses from those who agree, and a decrease from those who disagree.
Generally speaking, the better the methodology of the survey, the lower agreement it shows with the claim of a genetic link between race and intelligence.
Even the most poorly structured surveys, conducted among members of groups that are dominated by advocates for scientific racism, show much doubt and difference of opinion among respondents.
The vast majority of respondents have absolutely no qualifications to speak on genetics.
Is there really no evidence at all for a genetic link between race and intelligence?
No evidence for such a link has ever been presented in the scientific community. Much data has been claimed to be evidence by advocates of scientific racism, but each of these claims has been universally rejected by geneticists. Statistical arguments claiming to detect the signal of such a difference in polygenic scores have been refuted as fundamentally methodologically flawed (see e.g. [13]), and neither genetics nor neuroscience are anywhere near the point where a mechanistic explanation could even be meaningfully proposed (see e.g. [14]). This is why the question of a genetic link between race and intelligence is largely considered pseudoscience; it is assumed to exist primarily by advocates of scientific racism, and in these cases the belief is based on nothing but preconceived notions about race.
What is the current state of the science on a link between intelligence and race?
Please see the article itself for an outline of the scientific consensus.
What is the basis for Wikipedia's consensus on how to treat the material?
Wikipedia editors have considered this topic in detail and over an extended period. In short, mainstream science treats the claim that genetics explains the observable differences in IQ between races as a fringe theory, so we use our own guidelines on how to treat such material when editing our articles on the subject. Please refer to the following past discussions:
I say dump it, as it's awkward and not very realistic. Instead:
As with many variables in social science (e.g., sex, age, marital status, etc), race cannot be randomly assigned to research subjects. All race and IQ data are therefore correlational in nature and do not permit causal inferences. Researchers instead use statistical techniques and other types of control to infer whether or not a third variable (e.g., income or education) can "explain" the race gap on IQ scores. -Bpesta22 (talk) 22:31, 25 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No worries on deleting the "In theory" section. But can't cite Loehlin for something that is not there. So, I just deleted whole thing. The more that we can edit out extraneous material, especially material not correctly cited to a specific source, the better. No objection if someone wants to use Rowe (2005). David.Kane (talk) 23:17, 25 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The IQ distribution curve for American Whites and for US-resident Blacks can be approximated by these normal distribution functions:
WIQ = exp{−(x−103)²/537.92} / √(2π)
BIQ = exp{−(x−85)²/307.52} / √(2π)
The averages (103 for American Whites, 85 for US-resident Blacks) are from "Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability," by J. Philippe Rushton and Arthur R. Jensen, published in Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 2005, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 235-294. The standard deviations in IQ, which are 16.4 for Whites and 12.4 for Blacks, are from a 1963 study by Kennedy, Van De Riet, and White.
The fraction of each race that has an IQ above a specified minimum can be found by integrating the appropriate function from the minimum IQ to about IQ 300, after where, for all practical purposes, there is no further accumulation of area under the curve. It's interesting to notice how the ratio, of the fraction of Whites to the fraction of Blacks exceeding various minimum IQs, changes as the minimum is increased.
Minimum IQ
Whites passing
Blacks passing
W/B ratio
100
0.57257228
0.11320135
5.1
110
0.33475184
0.02189324
15.3
120
0.14996457
0.00238194
63.0
130
0.04984674
0.00014224
350.4
140
0.01203226
0.00000459
2619.5
Only one US-resident Black in nine has an IQ above 100, whereas about 57.3% of American Whites do. In the United States, Whites outnumber Blacks by a ratio of slightly more than six, so, on the average, there will be about 30 qualified Whites for each qualified Black for jobs having a required minimum IQ of 100.
For intellectually demanding jobs requiring a minimum IQ of 140 for satisfactory performance, there will be 2620 qualified Whites for each qualified Black, if the populations of Whites and Blacks in the pool of persons available to be hired are equal. There will be about 16000 qualified Whites for each qualified Black, on the average in the United States, for jobs having a required minimum IQ of 140.
On the very low end of the IQ distribution, the higher standard deviation for American Whites causes a leftward catch-up. There is no significant gap between these two races for the per capita rates of idiocy. The racial gaps in IQ appear toward the middle of the distributions and become ever-larger in proportion as higher IQ ranges are considered. Jenab6 (talk) 18:35, 2 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Mikemike's reverting me
I changed the sentence in the section on IQ outside of the US to "Richard Lynn and others" because the sentence's sources - those footnotes at the end - mention Lynn. Now Mikemikev accuses me of changign it to sneak in some "fringe" claim? You are accusing me of making the edit to push a point of view? I consider this a personal attack. How dare you accuse me of sneaking in some claim about Fringey whatever. Revert me using an attack my integrity again you little turd and I will take it to AN/I. You don't like my edit? Take it to this talk page before you screw around with things you do not understand.
NPOV states that we should attribute views, especially when controversial. I am not claiming that any view is fringe, but the section of the article itself says that this is a controversial area. So policy requires us to attribute views when possible. I attributed this view to lynn because he wrote the book cited in the same sentence. You want to add a line saying that "All psychometricians think this" Mikemikev? Well, go find a reliable source from a significant author or professional organization that says so. The add the source and then you can add the attribution.
But stop trying to violate Wikipedia policy. Wikipedia presents views, not truths. And the views we present have to be verifiable. This particular view is verified by reference to a book by Lynn. All that I am doing here is what I did in the History of the R&I controversy article. Go ask Mathsci and Captain Occam. I partially reverted an edit Mathsci made, and restored an attribution Captain Occan had placed in there. That is all I am doing here. And you have the audacity to accuse me of POV pushing, when you are just an NPOV-pushing SPA? Slrubenstein | Talk15:54, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The central problem is that, by allowing/encouraging extensive edits without pre-discussion in Talk, we are headed down the road to madness. Am I the only one that sees that? You, I, mikemev, others were able to thrash out our differences in the History and Assumptions section in Talk, resulting in, at least a few days, of stability for those sections. We should go back to doing things that way. With regard to this specific point, I don't agree with Mikemikev's accusation, but I see no reason to delete the reference to Mackintosh. If an excellent secondary source asserts that "X is true," and no other secondary source denies that "X is true", then you do not need to write: "Richard Lynn believes X." David.Kane (talk) 16:12, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The reason I deleted the other reference was because it was referring to IQ differences discussed in the previous section, not this section. It is also important not to take quotes out of context. Mackintosh has a view, and it is accurately represented in this section. Lynn has a view, and it is accurately represented in this section. Nothing in the section says that Wikipedia takes Lynn's side, or mackintosh's side - which is how it should be. Slrubenstein | Talk16:46, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Please correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that standard Wikipedia practice in the use of secondary sources (like Mackintosh) is that, if a secondary source says "X is true" --- and no secondary source disputes that X is true --- then we should write the article like "X is true." We should not write "Author of secondary source and others claim that X is true." David.Kane (talk) 16:49, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Not quite. It may just be that no one has had time or bothered to challenge a way-out claim. Slrubenstein is probably more of an expert on NPOV than anyone else here, so it's worth asking him though. Stephen B Streater (talk) 17:00, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) Buddy (meaning David, although Stephen can be my buddy too!), I am afraid you are wrong. Wikipedia is most defintiely not about "truth," ever. it is about verifiable views, not truth. But perhaps you misread what i wrote above. mackintosh is referring to IQ differences between Blacks and Whites in the US. Mathsci reverted Captain Occam several times because of SYNTH violations, and Captain Occam protested that Mathsci did not esxplain the SYNTH error. But I just explained it. Mackintosh makes a claim about IQ differences between whites and blacks in the US. Then this reference is put next to a reference to a book about IQ differences in other countries, and suddenly you think Mackintosh is a secondary source describing some "truth" that there are IQ differences between races worldwide. That is SYNTH!!!!!!!!!!! You cannot combine two sources that say different things and then present YOUR (or Captain Occam's, or Mikemikev's) conclusions as if they are "truth." This is a violation of each of Wikipedia's core content policies: NPOV because you are presenting a view as truth; V because although you provide the citation you are not attributing the view to the person whose view it is, and NOR, because of SYNTH. You've hit the trifecta. Congratulations, but I am undoing your re-revert.
And I repeat: the section presents Lynn's views, and they present Mackintosh's views, on the subject of IQ scores outside of the US, and that is just as it should be.Slrubenstein | Talk17:06, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think we need to re-read Mackintosh because I think the source probably doesn't support the text (in that section). If so, this is a much simpler problem of checking the source. OTOH, we should probably try to read further to see if anyone else has made any generalizations about this question. --DJ (talk) 17:11, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"Mackintosh makes a claim about IQ differences between whites and blacks in the US." No. That is wrong. I am holding a copy of Mackintosh in my hands and pages 148 to 150 are not restricted to the US. He provided a table of similar results for Britain, for starters, and makes reference to "North American blacks" as well as "European prejudice." He notes, correctly, that the vast majority of the work has been done in the US, but that the result is not limited to one country. David.Kane (talk) 17:35, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Without commenting on the content aspect of this, I'd like to point out that I think Slrubenstein seriously needs to make more of an effort to avoid personal attacks against other users. Referring to another editor as "you little turd" is a pretty obvious violation of WP:NPA. I brought up this problem from Slrubenstein at AN/I a few weeks ago, and several other editors there agreed that administrators should hold themselves to a higher standard of behavior than this. Slrubenstein, the fact that you think Mikemikev's edits were erroneous isn't an excuse for this sort of name-calling. --Captain Occam (talk) 17:14, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It is clear that Mackintosh is not talking about third world countries or Africa which is the main focus of this section (which at one point was called "IQ in Africa"). The arguments that IQ data normally used in these studies would not apply to third world countries makes it pretty clear that we are not talking about England. So as far as I am concerned my point stands. Mackintosh 150 is not referring to the Lynn book that is refered to in that sentence, or to the data from the lynn book used in that paragraph. SYNTH, SYNTH, SYNTH. I am not the first person to raise these concerns, of presenting one POV as if (to use David Kane's words) it is the "truth." In addition to Mathsci, Mustaffa and Muntuwandi have raised NPOV concerns. NPOV is non-negotiable and I will defend it without compromise until I either get tired of Wikipedia, or am banned. Slrubenstein | Talk18:09, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There is a third option - that you help educate editors so that they understand the policy ie they spread the word themselves and you can work on other aspects of articles. IMO, it's one of the hardest to internalise, though SYNTH is also a natural inclination. And please don't be rude to people - we're all on the same side, ultimately. Stephen B Streater (talk) 19:41, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The current revision states "Racial differences in IQ scores are observed around the world. A commonly-cited review by Richard Lynn lists IQ scores for East Asians (105), Europeans (99), Inuit (91), Southeast Asians and Amerindians (87 each), Pacific Islanders (85), South Asians/North Africans (84), Non-Bushmen sub-Saharan Africans (67), Australian Aborigines (62) and Bushmen (54)". This statement implies that these test scores are reliable and uncontroversial for all groups. Furthermore, are some of these groups referred to as "races". Are Southeast Asians, North Africans and Bushmen referred to as races.
I believe Lynn's publication is cited frequently, not because it is accurate, but because it is possibly the only study that has attempted to compile global IQ data. There are likely to be others, but they are probably less well known. Unless Lynn's data is replicated multiple times by independent studies, and secondary sources attest to this, Lynn's data should not be considered factual and should be attributed to Lynn as suggested by Slrubenstein.Unsigned comments by Muntuwandi
I agree that many these "global IQ scores" of Lynn are not accepted in the academic world; in fact the contrary seems to be the case, according to the book reviews, at the moment one of the only ways to gauge academic reaction. (Side comment: his coauthor Tatu Vanhanen, father of the current Finnish prime minister Matti Vanhanen, has got into trouble in Finland over some of this material.)
Returning to Mackintosh. David.Kane seems to be quoting quite selectively. Mackintosh fairly and squarely addresses the problems of measurement of intelligence in underdeveloped countries and communities untouched by industrialisation. As he says on pages 180-181:
Finally, it is important to remember that most of the discussion of ethnic group differences in IQ has concerned different groups living in Britain or the USA. Even these comparisons are fraught with problems: as numerous commentators have argued, many of these groups have probably created different sub-cultures, and probably differ in their access to the culture of the white majority. Differences in their test scores may, therefore, reflect differences in their values, attitudes, and beliefs. When we turn to comparisons between different nationalities, North American whites against
Australian aborigines or illiterate peasants in sub-Saharan Africa, these problems surely become insuperable. It is not just that, as I have argued, we do not properly know how to translate a vocabulary or information test into a foreign language. We have no grounds for assuming that the modes of thought or reasoning, that we take for granted as evidence of intelligence in Western industrial societies, will be the same as those to be found in an illiterate peasant society. The concept of intelligence is, in part, a social or cultural construct, as Sternberg amongst others has insisted. Mary Smith may be more intelligent than her brother John, but the way in which this difference manifests itself would probably be quite different if they
lived in the Kalahari desert as hunter-gatherers, or were Amazonian Indians, rather than middle class Americans.
He then goes on to amplify this for another page. Thes statements do not support what David.Kane is claiming. The same points of view are expressed in the CUP book edited by Berry et al. Lynn was going out on a limb it seems. Mathsci (talk) 15:13, 27 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That belongs under debate assumptions. Nobody questions Lynn's IQ data. You're setting up a straw man: A) These are Lynn's IQ figures. B) Lynn is unreliable because of X, Y, Z. But the IQ data is solid. There may be some small nitpicks and errors, but it's collated from many independent studies, agreeing with each other with a 0.95 correlation. Do you really think that if it was possible to prove these figures wrong it wouldn't have been done by now? Face it, these are the IQ scores for the nations. Whether or not those IQ scores are appropriate is a different question. Mathsci's Mackintosh quote above is irrelevant. mikemikev (talk) 16:31, 27 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That's not correct. At least two book reviews have queried these figures. The review of Mackintosh and the review of Thomas Volken [15]. What evidence do you have that any serious academic has accepted these figures? Has somebody written that somewhere or is it something you imagine to be true, despite the negative book reviews and the articles of Wichert et al? The books mostly seem to be cited by a small circle of hereditarians or the occasional critic. Do you have other sources showing that they have been widely accepted? Mathsci (talk) 01:04, 28 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As I understand it, very little to none of the IQ data is Lynn's. In that sense it's correct to say that no one questions the data. However, there are lots of questions about Lynn's apparent cherry picking of IQ data. Thus when Lynn presents data, it's perfectly reasonable to question where he got it, why included some, but not other data, and how he "normalized" it. Refer to the work of Wicherts for more detail. A.Prock (talk) 06:08, 28 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That is perfectly correct. All of the data was compiled from previous studies. The reviews make it clear that some of the data was chosen selectively. Some countries in Africa had no data available, so an estimate was made based on neighbouring countries, Sometimes the samples were small - I vaguely remember isolated villages in Kenya - possibly too small and unrepresentative to compute a meaningful average. Since Wicherts et al did an exhaustive literature survey for sub-Saharan African countries fairly recently, I agree that that's the place to look for at least one informed view. Mathsci (talk) 07:49, 28 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It seems like we have a consensus - Mathsci and AProck, can you review the section and make sure that it reflects this consensus? Length is an issue, but I deleted some material Mathsci originallyput in. I thought ti was redundant but please make sure I did not cut anything really important. Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk15:46, 28 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Reviewing that section, The section is full of internal contradictions, and places Lynn's flawed analysis as the main content. Reading some of the reviews of Lynn's work makes it clear that there are enough methodological problems to make the conclusions very tenuous at best, and racist at worst. I would suggest replacing it with a discussion of some of the main problems with comparing IQ scores across cultures. It's important to remember that this is article is about Race and IQ, not culture and IQ. When comparing the IQ performance of Blacks in Africa vs Whites in the US, the performance difference may be much more due to radical cultural differences, not racial difference. A.Prock (talk) 18:28, 28 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The national IQs are estimates based on educational achievement within countries (standardized test scores, mostly). In most cases, the IQs were estimated directly (test scores were available for the country). In fewer cases, Lynn estimated them based on IQs for neighboring countries. The indirect estimates are indeed sloppier (contain more error) but are not invalid in the psychometric sense (I'd argue that have predictive and construct validity).
At least one recent paper, for example, shows that national IQ estimates predict religious beliefs and certain outcomes related to health:
It might be more proper to call these values educational achievement and not IQ, but one could also argue these are basically the same thing at the aggregate level. -Bpesta22 (talk) 02:55, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
@Aprock - A refactoring might be possible. The US data on European, African, East Asian, Latino and Native Americans (including Alaska Natives) can be covered in the US context. That leaves one small and one big debate. The small debate is global IQ variation in industrial countries. The big debate is sub-Saharan African IQ scores. --DJ (talk) 04:59, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There seems to be an agreement here that this section needs to be improved, but nobody’s making an effort at actually improving it. DJ, would you like to take a shot at this yourself? --Captain Occam (talk) 10:13, 30 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the section is in something of a local NPOV maxima, and improving it would require considerable effort to get it to a new maxima. I'd like to see more discussion first. --DJ (talk) 16:37, 1 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Eyferth study
One of the things that we agreed on during mediation was that when we discuss the Eyferth study in this article, we ought to mention the most common criticism of it, which is that the parents of the children in this study weren’t a representative sample of IQ distribution among blacks and whites because they were selected for IQ when they joined the army. (During World War II, the army wouldn’t accept people with an IQs below a certain level because they were too difficult to train; I think their cutoff line was at 85.) Now that the article is providing more information about the Eyferth study, I think it ought to mention this criticism of it also. Does anyone mind if I edit the article to add this? --Captain Occam (talk) 12:32, 1 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest creating a separate article for the study, but the title "Leistungern verscheidener Gruppen von Besatzungskindern in Hamburg-Wechsler Intelligenztest für Kinder (HAWIK)" doesnt lend itself to being an article now. Probably Eyferth study is enough. The citation for that criticism is Loehein et al (1975), which is reiterated by Hunt and Carlson (2007): "In their excellent review of findings on racial/ethnic differences up to the mid 1970s, Loehlin, Lindzey, and Spuhler (1975, p. 126) describe a study by Eyferth (1961) of the IQs of German children who had been born to German women and either African American, French African, or White U.S. soldiers. The Black and White children had equivalent IQs. Loehlin et al. point out that in order for the study to be interpretable we would have to know the IQs of Black and White soldiers who consorted with German women during the post-World War II occupation. These scores would not necessarily have been the same as the IQ scores of all Black and White soldiers serving at the time.". --DJ (talk) 16:16, 1 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I was intending to cite the criticism to Jensen 1998, since in that book he specifically mentions the fact that the soldiers had been selected for IQ. (Perhaps Loehlin mentions this also; if he does then I guess it would be fine to cite this to him rather than to Jensen.)
I'm not sure if I agree that the Eyferth study is notable enough to deserve its own article here, but as long as it's part of this article, do you agree that this criticism of it ought to be included? --Captain Occam (talk) 17:12, 1 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I recommend editing the entire section in talk space first. If you're going to add interpretation of Eyferth, add it for the other studies as well. If consensus is reached on the talk page, only then commit the changes to the main article. This will permit a bold re-edit in the face of the existing local NPOV maxima :) --DJ (talk) 17:41, 1 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like ImperfectlyInformed added the information about criticism of the Eyferth study himself. Thanks for adding this, II. What would you think of adding some additional information about the the Moore and Tizard studies also? --Captain Occam (talk) 01:40, 2 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If I recall correctly the tags were placed because of concerns the article was biased in favour of the hereditarian viewpoint, and the factual accuracy concerns have to do with the article accepting the assumptions of the hereditarian position (that race and IQ has a biological basis) without question. I don't think those issues have been resolved yet, although we did come a bit of way towards it.·Maunus·ƛ·03:37, 3 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Okay. On the latter point, my understanding is that the Nisbett and Flynn (to point to two examples) each believe that race and IQ are individually related to biology but that as an empirical matter genetic differences are not the cause of racial differences in IQ. Thus, the distinction should be at two levels of analysis. There's the position exemplified by Rose vs Ceci at one level of analysis, and then for example Ceci vs Jensen at the other level of analysis. Most of the article is about the Ceci vs Jensen analysis, which makes sense because the Rose vs Ceci debate doesn't go very deep. --DJ (talk) 03:47, 3 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I Can see that some of the problem stems from the fact that those who reject the validity of even looking for a correlation between the two categories already on the level of assuptions - this makes the arguments "not go very deep". Those who engage in "deep" discussion are those who acknowledge some of the points e.g. validity of race or some degree of heredibilioty of iq. But the other positions also exist and should be included. There are also those who argue that the research should be entirely avoided because it is inherently unethical. I wrote a section trying to include those points of view as well as some of the historical context (eugenics generally lost its appeal post wwII )that makes a lot of people uneasy about the research. David Kane then rewrote it - removing a lot of the material I found to be important, and now even David Kane's version (it had great quotes by Rose and Sternberg) which to me was acompromise that could be accepted (although reluctantly) is gone from the article. That leaves me with the concerns I had in the first place. Here[16] is a dif showing what I wrote. David Kane's version is at his talk opage I think.·Maunus·ƛ·04:06, 3 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm too tired to analyze the details, but in the broad outline I think your content should be added back. Let me attempt to summarize the distinction one more time to be sure we're thinking similarly. First, there's the question of whether this investigation is ethical or not. Second, if you consider the question "how much do genetic factors contribute to race differences in intelligence?" there's a view that that's not a well formed question. Then, third, there's are those that accept that the topic is ethical to study and well formed, but which disagree on the empirical answer to the question "how much do genetic factors contribute to race differences in intelligence?". Does that sound right? --DJ (talk) 04:11, 3 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I think that it would help very much if those three main types of exceptions to the hereditarian viewpoint were at least represented in the article - the weighting can be discussed.·Maunus·ƛ·04:17, 3 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Useful quote from Hunt and Carlson (2007):
The investigation of racial differences in intelligence is probably the most controversial topic in the study of individual differences. Contemporary proponents can be found for each of the following positions:
a. There are differences in intelligence between races that are due in substantial part to genetically determined differences in brain structure and/or function (Rushton, 1995; Rushton &Jensen, 2005a).
b. Differences in cognitive competencies between races exist and are of social origin (Ogbu, 2002; Sowell, 2005).
c. Differences in test scores that are used to argue for differences in intelligence between races represent the inappropriate use of tests in different groups (Ogbu, 2002; Sternberg, Grigorenko, & Kidd, 2005).
d. There is no such thing as race; it is a term motivated by social concerns and not a scientific concept (Fish, 2004; Smedley &Smedley, 2005).
That looks very good to me. Now, ideally, each of those viewpoints should receive due weight in the article, but for now merely including them would be a step in the right direction.·Maunus·ƛ·04:30, 3 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Not that we need to discuss it now, but it's my understanding that the (a) vs (b) debate is getting what would otherwise be undue-relative-to-head-count coverage here is largely because there are other articles where (c) and (d) are covered in detail. To the immediate fix, do we want to explicitly use that formulation from H&C(2007)? Race_and_intelligence#Debate_assumptions_and_methodology touches on this but in a less direct fashion, which tends to diffuse the point. --DJ (talk) 04:35, 3 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Other minor POVs
Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve, says that the BW IQ difference is "intractable" regardless of its etiology (Murray 2005).
Peter Singer (1993), author Practical Ethics, says that it is irrelevant whether BW IQ differences have a partly genetic etiology in regard to our ethical obligation to one another: "what would be the implications of genetically based differences in IQ between different races? I believe that the implications of this supposition are less drastic than they are often supposed to be and give no comfort to genuine racists"; "Equal status does not depend on intelligence"; "the genetic hypothesis does not imply that we should reduce our efforts to overcome other causes of inequality between people". --DJ (talk) 04:51, 3 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The "significance" section
I think it’s time for us to begin discussing the last major change to this article that we agreed on during mediation, but haven’t actually made to it yet. We agreed during mediation that the article should have a section discussing the social and economic effects associated with the difference in average IQ between races, but weren’t able to work out any of the details regarding its actual structure. Ludwigs2 (the mediator) intended for us to resolve its structure as part of the mediation after we’d finished the first draft of the article, but the mediation case ended up closing before we got a chance to do this. We’ve definitely finished more than just a first draft of the article, though, so I think at this point it’s time for us to figure out what structure the significance section should have.
Here’s my proposal. This is heavily based on this section from January’s version of the article, but I’ve gotten rid of the large tables and some of the text, both in order to prevent it from overwhelming the rest of the article and also in order to avoid some content that looks like WP:SYNTH to me. Some of the content from January’s version is cited to sources that only discuss the differing representation of racial groups in certain professions, without specifically discussing the relationship between that and IQ, but I think I’ve mostly gotten rid of these problems.
The appearance of a large practical importance for intelligence makes some scholars claim that the source and meaning of the IQ gap is a pressing social concern.[1] The IQ gap is reflected by gaps in the academic, economic, and social factors correlated with IQ.[2][3] However, some dispute the general importance of the role of IQ for real-world outcomes, especially for differences in accumulated wealth and general economic inequality in a nation. (See "Practical importance of IQ".)
The effects of differences in mean IQ between groups (regardless if the cause is social or biological) are amplified by two statistical characteristics of IQ. First, there seem to be minimum statistical thresholds of IQ for many socially valued outcomes (for example, high school graduation and college admission). Second, because of the shape of the normal distribution, only about 16% of the population is at least one standard deviation above the mean. Thus, although the IQ distributions for Blacks and Whites are largely overlapping, different IQ thresholds can have a significant impact on the proportion of Blacks and Whites above and below a particular cut-off.
In The Bell Curve, Murray and Herrnstein conclude that when Blacks and Whites are compared while adjusting for IQ, the difference in many social and economic variables shrinks or disappears. For example, controlling for IQ shrinks the income gap from thousands to a few hundred dollars, cuts differential poverty by about three-quarters and unemployment differences by half. At a given IQ level, the odds of having a college degree and working in a high-level occupation are higher for blacks than for whites.[4] Studies outside of The Bell Curve that have produced similar results are Nyborg and Jensen (2001)[5] and Kanazawa (2005).[6] Another study by Bowles and Gintis concluded that wealth, race and schooling are important to the inheritance of economic status, but IQ is not a major contributor. Since race, schooling and IQ are all correlated, the exact causal relationship between them is difficult to determine.[7]
Between nations
Several studies have found that average IQ scores of nations correlates significantly with a number of other factors including average health, average income, infant mortality and crime.[8][9][10][11] In Richard Lynn’s IQ and the Wealth of Nations, Lynn proposes that differences in the intelligence of their populations is the primary cause of these differences in societal factors. Lynn’s book has been sharply criticized by other researchers who recognize the correlation between these factors and IQ, but disagree with Lynn as to the causal relationship between them.[12]
Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel argues that historical differences in economic and technological development for different areas can be explained by differences in geography (which affects factors like population density and spread of new technology) and differences in available crops and domesticatable animals.[13] It is also possible that these environmental differences may operate in part by selecting for higher levels of IQ.[14][15] Voight et al. (2006) state that "a number of recent studies have detected more signals of adaptation in non-African populations than in Africans, and some of those studies have conjectured that non-Africans might have experienced greater pressures to adapt to new environments than Africans have."[16][17][18][19][20]
For high-achieving minorities
The book World on Fire notes the existence in many nations of minorities that have created and control a disproportionate share of the economy, a market-dominant minority. Examples include Chinese in Southeast Asia; Whites, Indians, Lebanese and Igbo people of Western Africa; Whites in Latin America; and Jews in pre-World War II Europe, modern America, and modern Russia. These minorities are often resented and sometimes persecuted by the less successful majority. Examining the over-representation of certain minority groups in high-paying professions in the United States, Nathanial Wehl has concluded that this is a consequence of their above-average IQ.[21][22] Cochran and Harpending have reached the same conclusion about Ashkenazi Jews, which make up on 3% of the United States population but have won 27% of its Nobel prizes, which these authors attribute to them having an average IQ somewhere between one-half and one standard deviation above the White average.[23] (See "Ashkenazi intelligence".)
Some studies have shown significant variation in IQ subtest profiles between groups. In one analysis of IQ studies on Ashkenazi Jews, for example, high verbal and mathematical scores, but average or below average visuospatial scores were found.[24] In a separate study, East Asians demonstrated high visuospatial scores, but average or slightly below average verbal scores.[25][26] The professions in which these populations tend to be over-represented differ, and some believe the difference is directly related to IQ subtest score patterns asserted to exist.[27] The high visiuospatial/average to below average verbal pattern of subtest scores has also been asserted to exist in fully assimilated third-generation Asian Americans, as well as in the Inuit and Native Americans (both of Asian origin).[4]
References
^Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi: 10.1037/0003-066x.59.1.7 , please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi= 10.1037/0003-066x.59.1.7 instead.: [1] "Sub-group differences in performance on high-stakes tests represent one of American society's most pressing social problems, and mechanisms for reducing or eliminating differences are of enormous interest" (p.11).
^Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi: 10.1016/S0160-2896(97)90017-9, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi= 10.1016/S0160-2896(97)90017-9 instead.
^Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi: 10.1016/S0160-2896(97)90014-3, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi= 10.1016/S0160-2896(97)90014-3 instead.[2]
^ abHernstein, Richard J. (1994). The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0-02-914673-9. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
^Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi: 10.1016/S0160-2896(00)00042-8, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi= 10.1016/S0160-2896(00)00042-8 instead.
^Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi: 10.1016/j.joep.2004.05.001 , please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi= 10.1016/j.joep.2004.05.001 instead.
^Bowles, S. and Gintis, H. (2002). "The inheritance of inequality"(PDF). Journal of Economic Perspectives. 16 (3): 3–30. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Richard Nisbett argues in his 2004 The Geography of Thought that some of these regional differences shaped lasting cultural traits, such as the collectivism required by East Asian rice irrigation, compared with the individualism of ancient Greek herding, maritime mercantilism, and money crops wine and olive oil (pp. 34-35).
^Wade, Nicholas (2006). Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors. New York: Penguin Press. ISBN 1-59420-079-3.
^Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040072, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi= 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040072 instead.
^Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi: 10.1093/molbev/msg092, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi= 10.1093/molbev/msg092 instead.
^Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0020286, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi= 10.1371/journal.pbio.0020286 instead.
^Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi: 10.1093/molbev/msh192, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi= 10.1093/molbev/msh192 instead.
^Attention: This template ({{cite pmid}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by PMID 15356276, please use {{cite journal}} with |pmid= 15356276 instead.
^Attention: This template ({{cite pmid}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by PMID 16251465, please use {{cite journal}} with |pmid= 16251465 instead.)
^Weyl, Nathaniel (1969). "Some comparative performance indexes of American ethnic minorities". Mankind Quarterly. 9: 106–128. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |month= (help)
^Weyl, Nathaniel (1989). The Geography of American Achievement. Washington, D.C.: Scott-Townsend. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |coauthors= and |month= (help)
^Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi: 10.1017/S0021932005027069, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi= 10.1017/S0021932005027069 instead., p. 4
^Mackintosh, N. J. (1998). IQ and human intelligence. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-852368-8. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |coauthors= and |month= (help), p.178)
Any suggestions about how to improve this section are welcome. Since the only specific thing we agreed on during mediation was that the article should have a section about this, without agreeing on anything about its structure, I’m not at all particular about how this section is worded or what sources should be used. --Captain Occam (talk) 09:45, 7 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think it’s time for us to begin discussing the last major change to this article that we agreed on during mediation. This was not agreed to in mediation. The content you present here appears to be mostly OR and SYNTH. As mentioned before during meditation, you seem to be applying the logical fallacy that correlation implies correlation as the basis for most of this SYNTH. A.Prock (talk) 12:28, 7 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
