Talk:History of the race and intelligence controversy

Making the article more complete and balanced

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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How about we add this one to the intro:

Nonetheless, in recent years scientists have found thousands of the SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) associated with educational attainment (a close proxy for IQ) in what are known as genome-wide association studies. It is now clear that at least some of the genetic variants that contribute to higher intelligence are not evenly distributed across races. This does not necessarily imply that race differences in IQ are genetic.

Piffer replicated his replicated his results using more SNPs and published them on psych. We can add the caveat at the end if it makes you guys feel better.

93.149.193.190 (talk) 17:47, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

No, for all the same reasons laid out last time. - MrOllie (talk) 17:54, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Do you have any objections against Psych as a journal?

Let me remind you that: All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic.

And: This policy is non-negotiable, and the principles upon which it is based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, nor by editor consensus.

Even if you ALL agreed this info should be censored, it should still be on Wikipedia.

93.149.193.190 (talk) 17:57, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

References

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Letting people check for themselves

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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How about we add it like this:

Nonetheless, in recent years scientists have found thousands of the SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) associated with educational attainment (a close proxy for IQ) in what are known as genome-wide association studies. It is now possible to check whether these genetic variants are evenly distributed across races in publicly available databases. 5.171.96.57 (talk) 19:04, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

References

Disagree, as these are still very tenuous findings and we already know that race maps very poorly onto SNPs. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 21:10, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

What findings? the genome wide significant associations with EA or the fact that you can check their incidence by race in a publicly available database? 5.171.96.116 (talk) 01:11, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

That's not how Wikipedia works. We depend on reliable mainstream secondary sources to evaluate primary sources. We don't present statements sourced to primary sources, such as a technical database, and "let people check for themselves". NightHeron (talk) 02:02, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. None of those sources have anything to say about the history of the race and intelligence controversy. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 02:06, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

I agree with the points made by User:Shibbolethink and User:NightHeron. Also, much is not understood about these SNPs and their effects accross (and even within) groups. For instance, many of the SNPs have been found to be less predictive of educational attainment in groups of African descent than in groups of European descent. (As I have written before) It is in doubt that all of the alleles/combinations thereof predictive of educational attainment in Europeans will necessarily be equally so in distant populations such as Africans (who may also have their own EA alleles less found in Europeans). (As European, and increasingly Asian, populations have been significantly more sampled and studied than African populations in this regard.). (Even in groups of European descent, the amount of variance they influence is small, not yet well understood, and possibly/sonetimes overestimated.)

From: https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/biopolitical-times/genes-success-not-exactly

"In some studies this is what is suggested, and it is mentioned that genes that seem to influence educational attainment in groups of European descent have significantly less predictive power for African Americans. First, our within-family analyses suggest that GWAS estimates may overstate the causal effect sizes ... Without controls for this bias, it is therefore inappropriate to interpret the polygenic score for educational attainment as a measure of genetic endowment. Second, we found that our score for educational attainment has much lower predictive power in a sample of African-American individuals than in a sample of individuals with an European ancestry ..."

Thus making an addition such as that proposed above would also seem to be unjustified and misleading. What can be meaningfully "checked" or concluded is hardly apparent for a non-specialist reader from raw data and primary sources, and should instead, if presented, be sourced from a reliable secondary source(s). Also, since none of the proposed sources mention both race and intelligence, such an addition here would be a fairly clear case of WP:Synthesis. Skllagyook (talk) 02:22, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Ok, how about for now we add the first sentence like this:

In recent years scientists have found thousands of the SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) associated with educational attainment (a close proxy for IQ) in what are known as genome-wide association studies. Collectively, these SNPs account for about 10% of the variance in educational attainment in European populations.

And then we add:

Whether these SNPs are evenly distributed across races and the significance of said findings remains controversial.

References

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Adding the latest genetic research

How about adding it like this?

In recent years scientists have found thousands of the SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) associated with educational attainment (a close proxy for IQ) in what are known as genome-wide association studies. Collectively, these SNPs account for about 10% of the variance in educational attainment in European populations. The distribution of these genetic variants across races is consistent with the environmental explanation for observed racial differences in IQ scores. 93.149.193.190 (talk) 17:07, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

References

• 93.149.193.190 was blocked for edit-warring on this article on 15 September 2021. As a result the article was semi-protected for one year by User:EdJohnston. There have been persistent copy-cat attempts by IPs from Milan to add to the lede variants of a proposed new paragraph (e.g. just above). None of these proposals have gained consensus from regular editors. Might it therefore not be a reasonable idea to semi-protect this talk page for a brief period (one month?), as EdJohnston previously suggested on WP:ANI?[1] Mathsci (talk) 17:53, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

  Yes I would agree with semi protection. When there are attempts to IP hop or repeatedly use different IPs to introduce the same content against consensus on the talk page, I think it is warranted for a short period. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 18:00, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

  @Mathsci I would recommend WP:RFPP. They may do nothing but it's at least worth a try... — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 22:24, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

  Done. Mathsci (talk) 23:44, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

  Thanks to El_C for responding to the semi-protection request and logging it so promptly. Mathsci (talk) 07:09, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Whats wrong with that paragraph guys. I would have thought you would love it. 93.149.193.190 (talk) 18:20, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

As explained, this proposal is synthesis/original research, which is against Wikipedia policy. Skllagyook (talk) 23:02, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

It is neither and you know it. Both articles are published in reputable scientific journals. The paragraph says exactly what the articles say. The only reason you do not want the content to be included is because, even though the article says they do not, the polygenic scores in fact DO support a genetic component to the gap. And you hate the idea that people might actually check and realise what these polygenic scores mean. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.147.71.31 (talk) 21:41, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Ideas? 5.88.141.195 (talk) 18:20, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Section on free speech and free academic discourse

IP-hopping troll. See this. Generalrelative (talk) 15:03, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
How about we include a section on the free speech and academic discourse surrounding this issue. The firing of Noah Carl and Stephen Hsu, the stripping of honours of James Watson, the attempts to fire Amy Wax and JP Rushton, the physical violence against Charles Murray in Middlebury College, and the fact that Sam Harris said to Ezra Klein that he has scientists whose names would be well known to him, who have stellar reputations, who agree with him, and who are terrified of speaking out. Let me know and I will write the paragraph and get the references. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2800:484:877C:94F0:50F5:133D:B6CD:D3A6 (talk) 06:02, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Reversion

Hi, does anyone know why my contribition was deleted? 98.153.62.223 (talk) 01:51, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

My bad. I jumped the gun in assuming this edit was Fq90 (a long-term abuser who has been evading their block to push a pro-fringe POV and trying to use mentions of polygenic scores to shoehorn that POV into R&I articles). Apologies to 98.153.62.223. That doesn't appear to have been your intent at all. However the edit copies verbatim from the R&I FAQ, so would need to be attributed in the edit summary (e.g. "content copied from Race and intelligence FAQ"). A much more minor point is that I'm not sure whether the content in question is necessary, but that can be discussed. Again, sorry for the false accusation. Generalrelative (talk) 02:06, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Anyone who is curious –– and not yet familiar –– can start here and work their way down the page through subsequent threads. Generalrelative (talk) 02:11, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

I see, I was wondering what the Fq90 was. The reason I came to the article is because I teach genetics and evolution and this year two black students in a row have come to me with these polygenic scores asking about how to interpret them. It looks like the latest iteration of the usual racist pseudoscience peddling we are all familiar with. I do not work in this area specifically but as a biologist, I think linkage disequilibrium is a good part of the explanation, unfortunately, I did not find any published work making that case, although I thought the article cited in the Q&A was pretty good. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.153.62.223 (talk) 02:16, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Bird 2021 is indeed a good paper. And hearing more about what brought you here makes me want to apologize once again. For reference, this is what that long-term abuser posted on my user talk page just the other day (referencing polygenic scores): [2]. But that doesn't excuse me for jumping the gun like that. To save you some time, here's how I explained why discussion of that paper doesn't belong in the Race and intelligence article in one of those past discussions I linked above:

The reason is that it's not clear that the views this study refutes are notable for inclusion in the article. If there were multiple reliable independent sources like this refuting those views then the situation would be different. The recent history is that an overtly racist IP argued for adding it after their more direct strategy of POV-pushing failed. It seems they figured they could use this study as a Trojan horse to justify presenting hereditarian arguments in more detail or something of that nature. Regardless, the basic issue is that this study does not appear to be DUE for inclusion when the views it refutes have so far not been considered to be. Further, if it were to be included, it would need to be presented in much more detail than the OP has done in order to avoid facile misreading. And it's not at all clear that such a detailed presentation would be DUE.

Anyway, I'm open to being persuaded but that's the background. "DUE" in that quote refers to our core policy of presenting views in relation to WP:DUE weight. Cheers, Generalrelative (talk) 02:27, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome! I am very sorry about that creep. It is obvious from just a cursory reading of their posts that they do not know the first thing about genetics. This is precisely the problem in this area, racists jump on data they do not have the qualifications to interpret and impose their pre-existing biases on it. I think we should be prepared to set the scientific record straight, and I am afraid we are not doing enough to counter the spread of this pseudoscience. I have not seen more peer-reviewed papers specifically addressing educational attainment. However, there is a lot of literature on why polygenic score comparisons between different ancestral populations are invalid. Maybe we can include these as well.98.153.62.223 (talk) 03:12, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

These are all really helpful explainers on polygenic scores! They may be useful if we need to further substantiate the R&I FAQ at some point, or in our main article polygenic scores (the second one is cited several times there but the others are not). However, when it comes to this article, we'd be running up against another one of Wikipedia's core policies, "no original research," which means we can't cite articles that do not mention intelligence or I.Q. to make claims about intelligence or I.Q. We have to leave that kind of synthetic argumentation to scholars publishing out there in the world, and only once those publications are published can we report on what they say. The specific part of that policy that's relevant here is called WP:SYNTH. So if you're interested in applying the insights from those papers to the topic of race and intelligence, I would suggest trying to get something published, ideally in a high-quality peer-reviewed journal (as a rule of thumb, never add a ref you've written yourself but you can always bring it to other editors' attention on the talk page). Obviously publications like that take a ton of time and effort, but that really is what's required. Generalrelative (talk) 03:44, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi, sorry I thought your last reversion was a mistake, since all of the articles are about race and intelligence. Could you please be more specific as to what claims in my last contribution are not in the sources?98.153.62.223 (talk) 01:00, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

I reverted that, the content is objectively not synthesis. GeneralRelative should read the articles cited, they are all about Race and Intelligence.70.113.252.247 (talk) 02:14, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, I made an effort to find articles specifically on race and intelligence because I found out why those black kids were asking me about those polygenic scores, it turns out an anonymous facebook user was posting them in a campus debate group and using them to promote racist pseudoscience. I was glad to see that actual scientists have already comprehensively rebutted this in the peer-reviewed literature.98.153.62.223 (talk) 03:27, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Please read WP:BRD and wait until after a consensus about this has been reached here before reinserting disputed content. Thanks. NightHeron (talk) 09:37, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

If the disputed content is rewritten so that it directly represents the sources (that is, if the WP:SYNTH issue is resolved), then a second task is to make the text accessible to readers. Please see WP:MTAU. Perusing the proposed text, I see the terms genome-wide, genetic loci, population structure, assortative mating, population substructure, and polygenic. I'd wager that most Wikipedia readers who do not have specialized training in genetics or related fields would have no clear understanding of what any of those terms mean. Those terms can and should be translated into commonly understood English. NightHeron (talk) 11:37, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. IP 98.153.62.223: I am not categorically opposed to including content broadly similar to what you're seeking to add, but I think we need to carefully unpack what each of these sources is claiming and how it relates to the topic of race and intelligence. As is stands, I see only two of the sources you've mentioned as being transparently germane to the topic. The first, Bird et al. [3], has already been discussed. My views on that one should be clear. The second, [4], is more dodgy, notably because one of the co-authors is a notorious (around here) racist pseudoscience promoter. See [5]. That doesn't mean it can never be considered DUE for inclusion, but the bar is certainly higher. The other four sources you've cited appear to me to represent SYNTH because they are not about the topic of this Wikipedia page, i.e. purported group-level differences in intelligence intelligence between racial groups. One [6] discusses how polygenic scores may be useful when assessing propensity for intelligence among individual African Americans, a group which had previously been poorly represented in such studies, but which does not discuss the idea of purported group-level differences between races. Another source [7] discusses polygenic scores in relation to intelligence but does not discuss race at all. A third [8] mentions the word "intelligence" in conjunction with educational attainment but does not make any positive claims about how the two concepts may be related, and indeed, in the bit you quote from they are talking about the latter rather than the former. Finally, the Nature article you've cited does not mention intelligence at all. So it's not at all clear to me how these sources add up to a non-synthetic argument about the topic of this Wikipedia page which is DUE for inclusion in the encyclopedia. I hope that makes sense. Generalrelative (talk) 12:06, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

[4] & [5] Oh, ok, I did not know the authors of the paper, I just assumed it to be reliable because it came from Cambridge University press. This paper though does not make any racist claims, just the opposite. Perhaps the author is changing his mind on account of new evidence.

[6] I think you are just splitting hairs with this one, this one is precisely about differences in educational attainment polygenic score predictive power between blacks and whites. It is clearly about race and intelligence

[7] does discuss race, they just call it ancestry, see the quote I provided:

Given that greater than 70% of GWAS participants are of European descent (Need and Goldstein 2009; Popejoy and Fullerton 2016; N. A. Rosenberg et al. 2010), the implications of this problem of portability are that PGS for EA and IQ are more likely to misidentify the outcomes of individuals of non-European ancestry who were historically and are currently disadvantaged in American classrooms.

[8] When you said:

mentions the word "intelligence" in conjunction with educational attainment

did you mean to say “race” rather than “intelligence”? I think you may have a typo there as in the literature “intelligence” and “educational attainment” are used interchangeably. EA is what is known as an instrumental variable for intelligence, as intelligence cannot be directly measured.

If you did mean race, did you read the article or just the abstract? The article is all about race and intelligence.

The Nature article does mention intelligence, it just calls it cognitive performance, and has this to say about how it relates to race and racism:

In our analysis of possible relationships between average phenotypes for worldwide populations and average polygenic scores for those populations, we chose to examine height because it is easily measured and because factors affecting height (e.g., nutrition) are also relatively easily quantified. In contrast, research on other variables such as weight, smoking status, psychological symptoms, and cognitive performance requires more careful control for environmental confounders (including variables like social status), which are often correlated with ancestry and therefore may also be correlated with global principal components and polygenic scores (as currently calculated). This means that confounding of environmental and genetic effects is likely. For example, social experiences such as being subjected to racism are prime candidates for confounding in genetic studies.98.153.62.223 (talk) 14:22, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

I agree with 98.153.62.223 all of the articles are clearly about race and intelligence. There is no synthesis here. Regarding the issue of technical language, that is why I included their links to their respective articles 70.113.252.247 (talk) 15:20, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

I agree with both the IPs. Racist pseudoscientists have been twaddling about this since at least 2014… watch this one from 40:35 [9]. We cannot allow them to continue to have a monopoly on this data. The content seems very well written to me, and clearly it is not SYNTH. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.17.88.210 (talk) 16:01, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

IP: 98.153.62.223: To answer in brief, yes I did read each of them, quite carefully; no I did not mean to write "race" instead of "intelligence"; and no, you cannot simply assume that when authors speak about "educational attainment" they mean "intelligence" (that is quite a leap). Generalrelative (talk) 16:24, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

I do not think it is "quite a leap" I think this is, like 98.153.62.223 woudl say, hair splitting. The word education is used 56 times in this article. While we are here splitting hairs hate mongering groups are misusing this data to spread their poison, and people who come to this article leave with no ammo to counter it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.17.88.210 (talk) 19:39, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

I share your concerns, but Wikipedia is not in the business of supplying ammo. See e.g. WP:RGW. And of course one person's "splitting hairs" is another person's, ya know, stating their case. I will be very happy to collaborate with you to find text that does convey these arguments in a way that is consistent with policy if we can find a way to do so. And if we can, I'd be even more happy to add it to the main article Race and intelligence, where more eyes will see it. But we cannot play fast and loose with policy in order to right great wrongs, and we must certainly not treat public discourse as a battlefield –– even if that's how it feels sometimes. Generalrelative (talk) 23:14, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

It is indeed a huge leap to say that we can substitute intelligence for educational attainment in wikivoice. That would mean that anyone with a PhD is necessarily "more intelligent" than someone with a Masters, anyone with a high school diploma is necessarily "more intelligent" than someone whose formal education was cut short, and so on. There's no consensus, either among the general public, among Wikipedia editors, or among scholars that intelligence means the same thing as educational attainment. NightHeron (talk) 20:28, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

No it would not mean that that would mean that anyone with a PhD is necessarily "more intelligent" than someone with a Masters, anyone with a high school diploma is necessarily "more intelligent" than someone whose formal education was cut short, and so on, because this is a correlation, not a one to one correspondence. You do not need to think everyone who smokes will get lung cancer to acknowledge that there is a correlation between somking and lung cancer. And no one is arguing that EA and intelligence are the same thing. All I am saying is that scientific papers have to deal with quantifiable phenomena. There is no single number you can give to assess a person's intelligence. You can however, give a single number saying how many years of education they have, and that gives you some idea how intelligent they are in certain areas. Since we are only commenting on this article now, are we satisfied that the others are not synthesis? 98.153.62.223 (talk) 22:57, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Educational attainment correlates with a lot of things, for example parental income. But we could not in wikivoice make a statement about parental income sourced to an article that talks about educational attainment and doesn't mention parental income.

You mention smoking. I think that, at least in the US, educational attainment also correlates with non-smoking. So would we make a statement about non-smoking sourced to an article about educational attainment? NightHeron (talk) 02:02, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

are we satisfied that the others are not synthesis? No. See my comment above of 12:06, 7 October. Generalrelative (talk) 23:11, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

WP:BLOCKEVASION removed. Generalrelative (talk) 23:46, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

I agree, there is no reason this article should ignore the last decade of genetic research over editors who claim a piece of content is SYNTH when it clearly is not. 70.113.252.247 (talk) 23:28, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

This isn't a vote, and edit warring by new editors like this in an area that is under sanctions (as well as a very frequent target of sockpuppet edits by long term abusers of Wikipedia) is a terrible idea. MrOllie (talk) 23:34, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

If it is not a vote, how is consensus established then? I am sorry some abuser agrees with us that we should add this, but that is no reason for not adding it, Hitler was against smoking I believe, but that does not mean smoking is good. 70.113.252.247 (talk) 23:36, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

You can read about that at WP:CONSENSUS. This article recently came off of a 1 year protection. Since IP edit warring has resumed, I have requested that protection be restored. - MrOllie (talk) 23:38, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks MrOllie. Unfortunately it seems like that may be necessary. Generalrelative (talk) 23:48, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Could you at least explain in light of what I said in response to Generalrelative, why the content is synthesis, I am sorry but I genuinely do not understand, Generalrelative says "The other four sources you've cited appear to me to represent SYNTH because they are not about the topic of this Wikipedia page", but I think I have shown clearly that they are.98.153.62.223 (talk) 23:50, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

You are pretty obviously combining multiple sources to make points that no individual source makes explicitly, that is synthesis. MrOllie (talk) 23:57, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

IP 98.153.62.223: I agree with MrOllie. You simply haven't convinced me that my objections were off base. That said, I really do want to collaborate with you on this. I meant what I said on your talk page that I think you could be a very valuable contributor to this project. But there is a learning curve here. We all run into it once we start to get involved with topics we're passionately connected to. I strongly encourage you to register an account and to continue to contribute in areas relevant to your expertise. Generalrelative (talk) 00:00, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

MrOllie: Would you please state the point he is making that is not explicitly in the sources?

Generalrelative: Why is MrOllie claiming the problem is that he makes a point not in the sources, do you agree with that or do you stand by your claim that the problem is that the sources are not about the topic of this Wikipedia page? You made several false statements to back up that claim, 98.153.62.223 provided exact quotes were the articles discuss the topic of this Wikipedia page explicitly. Are you telling us not to believe our lying eyes? 72.17.88.210 (talk) 01:54, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

It's the same problem. One way to tell that synthesis is occurring is that the citations are not about the same thing. - MrOllie (talk) 02:06, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Precisely. Generalrelative (talk) 02:19, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

It is not the same problem. I take it since you did not provide an example of any points made in the content that are not explicitly in the sources, that you granted that the claims are in the sources, you just agree with Generalrelative that the problem is that the sources are not about race and intelligence. Correct? if not do provide the point you think is not in the sources. 72.17.88.210 (talk) 02:23, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

No, but have fun arguing with that straw man. MrOllie (talk) 02:25, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Give us the claim(s) not in the articles then. 72.17.88.210 (talk) 02:29, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

FYI IP 98.153.62.223 has opened up a discussion on this matter at NORN. Let's see if others feel like weighing in. Generalrelative (talk) 02:31, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

References