Talk:Race and intelligence (Public controversy)

not an experiment

this is not an experiment. rather, it is a collaborative writing effort between a group of relatively slow writers. more text is coming soon... --Rikurzhen 03:39, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

A change

I changed the portion representing Gottfredson; she is a sociologist and hardly compares to Sternberg’s views on the matter. Sternberg is an expert on IQ, and the portion in question does not clearly state this. In fact, it implied the opposite….

WP examples

I pulled the starting material for this article from the example of Global warming controversy. --Rikurzhen 03:49, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

a list of examples --Rikurzhen 21:58, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

• science
  • Global warming and Global warming controversy
  • Evolution and Creation-evolution controversy
  • Psychiatry and Anti-psychiatry
  • Vaccine and Vaccine controversy
  • Autism and Controversies in autism
• culture
  • Fahrenheit 9/11 and Fahrenheit 9/11 controversy
  • Scientology and Scientology controversy
• history
  • Moon landing and Apollo moon landing hoax accusations
  • The Holocaust and Holocaust denial

sources

• The IQ Controversy, the Media and Public Policy by Mark Snyderman, Stanley Rothman

Is EncBib a source?

And we use a tertiary source? The articles about Race in Encyclopeda Britannica would be a good source for what-we-could-call the anthropology POV. Here, just to give you a taster, is the first paragraph of one of the sections:

The scientific debate over “race”

Although their numbers are dwindling, some scientists continue to believe that it is possible to divide Homo sapiens into discrete populations called races. They believe that the physical differences manifest in wide geographic regions are more than superficial; they reflect innate intellectual, moral, emotional, and other behavioral differences among human groups. They deny that social circumstances and the cultural realities of racism have any affect on behaviour or the performance of children and adults on IQ tests.

It goes on like that. A veritable goldmine of well-presented viewpoints held by anthropologists and a large section of academia. Unfortuntately, EncBib is poorly sourced, I would prefer to be able to point to the primary and secondary sources that the author (Audrey Smedley, author of Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview) uses for her overview. But maybe we could use something like that for the overview of public opinion and media portrayal? (We still need any source for what the unwashed masses think.)

What I'm not sure about is if a tertiary source like WP should write about another tertiary source like EB. I think not. Arbor 13:29, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Our own race article should have something to describe the anthropologists view(s). Slrubinstein and I were pretty thorough with that article. --Rikurzhen 13:33, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

btw, if we're looking for an example of a straw man applied to IQ researchers, that's a good one. --Rikurzhen 14:10, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

Gould criticism

Here's what we have about Gould:

has been accused of "scholarly malfeasance," (Rushton (1996)), tainting his research with a Marxist bias (Gasper (2002), and presenting misleading statistics.[3]

We cannot refer to Gasper for "accusing Gould of marxist bias", which is what we are doing here, at least implicitly. If anything, Gasper extols Gould for his marxist bias, in any case we are misrepresenting his views. From the top of my head, Pinker has something in Blank Slate that we might use instead, but I need to check. Arbor 10:08, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

I'll look for some: --Rikurzhen 17:01, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

• A 1982 review of MMoM in Nature said it sounded like a "Radio Moscow" broadcast.
• A book review of MMoM in American Journal of Psychology by Lloyd Humphreys pp. 407-415. (1982?) gives us "Marxism" and "Marxist" in a section called "Gould's biases". It is definitely not flattery: "Gould is not himself an objective scientist".

divergence of text

i'm fixing text divergence and as I get the two versions put together I'm deleting the second version. see the last few comments at Talk:Race_and_intelligence#Summary_style_-_Race_and_intelligence_controversy for more details. --Rikurzhen 08:02, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

we still need to reconcile the "Accusations of systematic misrepresentations and the Pioneer Fund" text, which seems to have been rearranged a lot after the split. --Rikurzhen 08:05, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

I was the one who cleaned up that section (when it was at race and intelligence). The largest difference between the two versions is that the second (the older version) discusses the Pioneer Fund before discussing the broader issue, accusations of systematic representation. I also cleaned up[1] the presentation of the criticism of the fund. For example, critics often present the distributed film as a nazi film, when it was more accurately a film promoting eugenics (popular at the time in most developed nations), produced by the early (pre-war) Nazi party. I'm deleting the old version, as the revisions weren't contested when they were made. (Please revert if there are still concerns) --Nectarflowed ^T 15:06, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

I think this is fine. The first (and newer) version is clearly superior and has a much broader perspective. In this form, parts of the argument might warrant inclusion on the Race and intelligence page itself, which might be concordant with the wishes expressed by Ultramarine on the talk page of R&I. I would prefer it to appear in the 3-paragraph summary of this page, but Ultramarine seems to be strongly opposed to that for reasons I still fail to comprehend. I am confident we can work it out sooner or later. For now, thank you for getting this editing problem out of the world. Arbor 15:13, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Systematic misrepresentations

Now we can focus on the sources for that.

• The footnote called "Rusthon" points to

  Joseph L Graves, "What a tangled web he weaves: Race, reproductive strategies and Rushton's life history theory," Anthropological Theory 2, no. 2 (2002): 131–54; Leonard Lieberman, "How 'Caucasoids' got such big crania and why they shrank. From Morton to Rushton.," Current Anthropology 42, no. 1 (February 2001): 69–95; Zack Cernovsky, "On the similarities of American blacks and whites: A reply to J.P. Rushton," Journal of Black Studies 25 (1995): 672.

All all three necessary? Which one includes the porn and Penthouse references? Is this really a good summary of the scholarly malfeasance that Rushton is criticised for? I would prefer just a single references, instead of 3 that say the same.

• Ditto for Gould. I would like a single reference that criticises Gould. Should be easy enough. The Gasper (2002) reference I already discounted (see above), and the "Goosed-up graphics" is also not so good, since it attacks an argument that doesn't really have anything to do with Gould's position qua race and intelligence research.
• The "Pioneer Film" footnote has not reference at all and is just dangling in the air. Arbor 15:33, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Race and intelligence controversy?

The title is pov and factually incorrect. There are many other controversies in other articles, like in Race and intelligence (Culture-only or partially-genetic explanation) Ultramarine 16:07, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Until you deleted most of the content which discussed it, we talked about that controversy as well. An article title should be a singular noun. Certainly there is more than one controversial thing about the creation-evolution controversy. The concept of a controversy article is a well establish precedent. What exactly are you objecting to? --Rikurzhen 16:19, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

As noted, there are other controversies in other articles in this area. The title should be changed, maybe to Race and intelligence public controversy. Ultramarine 16:22, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

I weakly support Ultramarine's suggestion. Race and intelligence (public controversy) or Public controversy over race and intelligence are fine by me. That would make it clear that the scientific controversy is something else. (Also, the section heading in Race and intelligence is Public controversy. . Arbor 16:36, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

[[edit conflict] So you don't dispute the content of the article (essentially) or the need for an article on this subject (approximately)? At first blush that sounds very reasonable to me. It seems very much like the point I was trying to get across to Jokestress that there needs to be a distinction between exactly what is controversial and who is on what side of the debate. I'll probably be busy most of the day. Hopefully someone else will chime in. [arbor seems to be thinking what i'm thinking] --Rikurzhen 16:37, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

No. But as noted earlier, the systematic and very large scale funding of one view from a questionable source has implications larger than just public controversy. Ultramarine 16:51, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Okay... I really do need to go... then move that section from here to a sub-section of the background article and see if we can fix the referencing problems Arbor mentioned. Also, let's change the title on this article. There may be objections from Jokestress, who seems to think that the public controversy is the heart of this topic rather than the research results. --Rikurzhen 16:57, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

Based on my limited knowledge of this topic, the attempt to do scientific research on correlations between "race" and "intelligence," especially based on psychometric and hereditarian hypotheses, IS the controversy. Further, that is not the only controversy. Even among those researchers who forge ahead despite the overarching issues argue about several things, such as definiting "race," defining "intelligence," the validity of IQ as a measure of intelligence, the reasons IQ scores might differ among groups, and whether any meaningful interpretation can be limned from the existing data.

So maybe race and intelligence controversies (my recommendation, has precedent on WP) can expand on the "main" page's summary of these issues. I am not keen on this public/scientific split of the controversies. Presenting any data needs to be done with the acknowledgement of the issues raised. Each article must be a stand-alone, meaning that if a read read only that article, there would at least be a link to more info on the central issues. Jokestress 06:52, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

I think Ultramarine's point, which is not unreasonable IMHO, is that there is already an entire sub-article dedicated to the between group heritability question (or controversy if you prefer), so repeating that here would be redundant. That still leaves quite a bit of controversy to be discussed here, and most of that controversy is aimed for public consumption. You are probably right that the genetics question is the most controversial, but that is in part because people confuse heritability with maleability. They are logically distinct considerations. Indeed, what WP is currently missing is a robust discussion of the maleability of IQ, which we could mention somewhere in this article series. --Rikurzhen 07:18, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

[Edit conflict with Rik] Jokestress, thank you for answering this. I am still not sure if your reply is actionable. Rik and myself were fine with Race and intelligence controversy, but Ultramarine very strongly disagrees. You seem to agree with Rik and me on this particular question, but otherwise seem to be closer to Ultramarine in how you want this topic presented. Frankly, I am at a loss as to what to do. Neither Rik nor I seem to care very much about this, but for Ultra and yourself this seems to be the very heart of the matter. I fear any decision that I make can be misconstrued as Bad Faith by either of you, so I urge you to be absurdly concrete about your recommendation. I have absolutely nothing against an article called Race and intelligence controversies that chronicles all the controversies about race and intelligence (political, epistemological, scientific, etc.), and which could be linked from each and every R&I-related article, however prominently you would like. Indeed I have been lobbying for it for a long time and thought that Race and intelligence controversy would be that article. But Ultra doesn't like that idea at all, thinking that the title itself is POV and factually incorrect. It seems we need a concrete and actionable suggestion to get us out of this situation. I propose to change this (current) article's title to Race and intelligence (public controversy) (or any meaningful permutation or pluralisation of these terms), and keep the scientific debate (including its main controversy) out of this. This is not what I wanted (and I also fear it isn't what Jokestress wants), but I can see the merits of the idea. Arbor 07:36, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

I support something like the last suggestion. However, the article now contains things like moral objections that is not necessarily part of a "public controversy". A suggestion may be, "Race and intelligence research (public and moral controversy). This still means that most of "Test bias" should be somehere else, probably in the article about a genetics component or not. It can of course be briefly mentioned here. Ultramarine 14:59, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

More quotes

I am not very fond of our habit to turn these articles into long lists of quotes. (I think it's lazy and I would rather we write original, well-attributed prose. Quotation are for Wikiquote.) However, while following one of Nectar's links, I came across this, which seems to be to be a fairly concise reflection of an important point in the public debate.

In an Oct. 30, 1994 article in the Sunday Telegraph called “Race and IQ: Never Has a Knife Been Put in More Smoothly,” he writes of intelligence studies:

“That these are important questions, and scientifically worthy subjects for research, I cannot deny. Nevertheless, they are so distasteful, so certain to give such deep offense to so many, that people who choose to pursue them–among all the equally important subjects demanding attention–can only be disturbingly insensitive. . . .” “. . . I still feel that the people involved in this research are pretty nasty pieces of work whom I would not wish to know. And the timing is so particularly cruel, smothering black pride forever, just as it is beginning to breathe freely.”

“In the old days, theorists of racial superiority or inferiority positively glorified in their insensitivity; made no attempt to cushion the cruelties of their conclusions–sterlization for the inferior. Their American successors are much more concerned and sophisticated, more gentle, caring, and squeamish. ‘It hurts us more than it hurts you’ is the new motif. Never has a knife been put in more smoothly, leaving so little blood on the blade. Crude they are most certainly not: only creepy.”

Maybe we want to use part of this. (As I said, I would prefer us to write prose to describe viewpoints, rather than quote people. It's not encyclopaedic. However, on a page describing public controversy, maybe some soundbites are OK.) Arbor 08:01, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

The term I see most often for the sentiment this author describes is "calculated compassion." The quote is a bit long, but the issue it raises will need to be addressed. Way down my laundry list, though. Jokestress 08:38, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Just to categorize, this appears to be an instance of the position that looking for genetic causes of these differences is socially unethical.--Nectarflowed ^T 09:15, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

How do we use Wikiquote? It might be worthwhile. I've noticed links in some articles. --Rikurzhen 07:32, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

IQ experts?

Is there any reason to not call the 52 signatories of the WSJ statement IQ experts? Gottfredson did not use that phrase, but rather a more lengthy description based around the word "expert". Other terms used were "leaders", etc. [2] --Rikurzhen 22:53, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

Liberalism

The findings of intelligence research are a challenge to liberalism (in the classical laissez-faire capitalism sense, not in the “limp-wristed, tax-spending socialist” sense used currently in the US), because they undermine the its basic moral axiom, viz that the only reason for failure in a completely free society is laziness (and hence the system is morally good because it is fair in providing all actors with the same options). This criticism is concordant with the conclusion of Rawls, but I have never seen him state it in terms of IQ (or group differences therein). Whom can we attribute this viewpoint to, besides myself? Arbor 08:00, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

I've read a lot of Gottfredson's sociology writings, and she talks about the trade off between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome quite a bit. Murray specifically mentions that IQ differences are a perfect stepping point for a Rawlian conclusion if one were so inclined -- Murray is a libertarian (i.e. classical liberal). This argument sounds famaliar, so you should be able to find it from authors such as these. --Rikurzhen 08:21, September 12, 2005 (UTC)

BTW... this is precisely the reason that I think that Rawls must have a point over Nozik. --Rikurzhen 08:23, September 12, 2005 (UTC)