Talk:Race and intelligence

Intro too long

The intro is too long IMHO. Ben Finn (talk) 10:39, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

I agree. As well as too much beating around the bush. SageRad (talk) 14:27, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Wikivoice is semi-endorsing racial differences in intelligence

The opening para is currently:

The connection between race and intelligence has been a subject of debate in both popular science and academic research since the inception of IQ testing in the early 20th century. The debate concerns the interpretation of research findings that test takers identifying as "White" tend on average to score higher than test takers of African ancestry on IQ tests, and subsequent findings that test takers of East Asian background tend to score higher than whites. It is still not resolved what relation, if any, there is between group differences in IQ and race.

To my read, this leaves the question completely open. "It is still not resolved..." I find this troubling. I find it troubling especially in light of the way that many topics that may have validity are so often strongly argues for Wikivoice to represent as "bogus" or "quackery" or "fad diet" or "fringe" etc.... and yet this one in particular is left as an open question? I'll be keeping an eye on this page and thinking more about it. SageRad (talk) 12:14, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

The causes of group differences is an open question. A few think they are wholly environmental in origin, most think they are some mix between genetic and environmental. See e.g. this 2016 survey of experts in the field, cf. also the older survey from 1988. --Deleet (talk) 12:43, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

:Well feel free to show us where the question was resolved. Presumably "all humans are exactly the same" is something we can just assume. Consistent patterns of cognitive difference are caused by the mysterious forces of racism, which is the only force known to increase with distance. Genes don't exist.

Sadly in science we don't just make up feel good stories. My Happy Safe Space (talk) 09:19, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Thankfully snarky bullshit doesn't hold weight in Wikipedia. SageRad (talk) 11:27, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

:::Nor do we throw out theories because editors find them "troubling". Please work on your argument. My Happy Safe Space (talk) 12:06, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

The article is troubling to me because it presents the idea with too much credence. Please work on your civility. I'm not here to debate "the scientific question" with you. I'm here to work on the article as a text that must express verifiable claims supported by reliable sources. Currently, as an editor, i see an article that presents this "fringe" idea that intelligence is racially determined in too friendly a light for the dignity of Wikivoice in light of the policies of Verifiability and Neutral Point of View. Here is a good recent article that i would like to integrate. Perhaps it will give an idea of the ways that the implications of the ideas in this article could be more firmly troubled, more clearly in the first paragraph as well as in the body. SageRad (talk) 12:16, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

:::::I think the popular idea that everybody is exactly the same and that we can't estimate cognitive ability or describe human variation and correlate them is fringe in academia. I know that hurts people's precious feelings. Would you like to extract some scholarly references from your magazine? I notice Turkheimer was referenced. My Happy Safe Space (talk) 12:26, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

This is not a forum for your opinions. You seem to show an agenda and a bias here from your comment above. The comment on "people's precious feelings" shows a hostility in regard to the topic area on your part by my estimation. And your encapsulation of "the popular idea that everybody is exactly the same" as the counterpoint to the topic of this article is a pure strawman fabrication, a well-known rhetorical fallacy. This feels like an unduly contentious dialog here and i do not think it will result in betterment of the article. I'll proceed to edit without consulting you first. SageRad (talk) 12:51, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

:::::::Many people have biases. For example some people find the idea of racial genetic differences "troubling". Feel free to edit the article. I suggest using something better than a popular magazine though. My Happy Safe Space (talk) 13:17, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

While it would be nice to ignore the fact that statistics exist which have caused much debate, the problem is that Wikipedia has the idea that that which is given as fact in reliable scholarly sources is generally accorded o be "reliably sourced." "Race and Intelligence" is and has been an area of some substantial controversy, but simply deleting one of the primary factors in the controversy does not excise the factor from existence. Best practice is to follow policy, and present statements of fact as given in the proper sources as fact, and positions in controversies with the weight accorded those positions in proper sources. Should Wikipedia change the policies? If so, then change them. Until them, we follow them. Collect (talk) 13:56, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Collect, whom are you addressing in your above comment with the edit summary "stick to policies and not to personal attacks"? If it's me, then answer me as to what you think is a "personal attack"? If you are addressing me, then know that i full well understand the policies and goals of Wikipedia. In that light i presented my trouble with the current state of the article. If you're addressing me, i have made absolutely no intimation about not following policies, so i don't need this sort of upbraiding and lecture. SageRad (talk) 14:26, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

My post as written above, stands. If you disagree with the post, tell me why. I find a number of editors seems to attack those who do not know the truth, but I suggest that the only way to proceed is to determine what matters of fact must be presented in the article in a neutral fashion. If you disagree, please tell me which policy I miscomprehend. Collect (talk) 21:25, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

I totally respect and love the policies of Wikipedia. My question was only because it seemed you were implying that i was doing something wrong, so i asked you to be explicit. Your words seemed to imply that i need teaching about policies and to be told not to engage in personal attack, which i do not believe i was doing anyway. Anyway, we seem to be talking past one another or something. I will leave this now as it's not relevant to the article content. SageRad (talk) 21:37, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

::You said the article was at odds with some magazine you looked at. Feel free to make sourced suggestions other than filling the talk page with how triggered you are. My Happy Safe Space (talk) 14:35, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Feel free to be civil or go away. "Some magazine" is a source i recommended. As an editor, i stated my concern that the article is too much promoting an idea that is to me the very definition of a "fringe conspiracy theory" that exists because it supports the racial prejudices of some people, and that this article needs a lot of care and love in respect to NPOV. Please cease your hostilities. From comments here and at other articles in the last hour, you see to have gained a chip on your shoulder against me and i do not welcome active hostility. Your comments are pretty clearly uncivil and mean, thereby violating a core policy of Wikipedia. We are not here to snark at each other, but to discuss and improve content. Snark and insinuations and insults are counterproductive and disruptive to good editing. I'm sure you know that. So please control yourself. SageRad (talk) 14:57, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Struck through (and deleted the last post as there was no reply) posts by CU confirmed sock of Tiny Dancer 48 who was almost certainly Mikemikev. Doug Weller talk 15:33, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Interesting. Thank you, kind sir. SageRad (talk) 15:59, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Wikivoice is semi-endorsing racial differences in intelligence, part 2

To return to SageRad's original question:

"It is still not resolved what relation, if any, there is between group differences in IQ and race."

This is about a measurable thing which, according to empirical evidence, may be either zero or not, but in any case so close to zero that nobody can conclusively tell both apart. In other words, the null hypothesis has not been refuted. Usually, such cases are described as "no evidence for such an effect". This wording is logically equivalent to "It is still not resolved" but it makes the logic of such a research situation clearer. Examples are easily found:

• Astrology: "no evidence has been found to support any of the premises or purported effects"
• Dowsing: "there is no scientific evidence that it is any more effective than random chance"

So I suggest to change the sentence into something like "No evidence for a relation between group differences in IQ and race has been found despite an intensive search for it." --Hob Gadling (talk) 11:20, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

That's a stupid sentence. There are enormous amounts of evidence[1] for the relation between race and IQ. What is under dispute are the causes of these differences.--Victor Chmara (talk) 12:30, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

There are mountains of evidence of statistical associations between IQ scores and race, whether self-identified or not. Roth (2001) is perhaps the most recent academic review of the US differences for White, Black and Hispanic groups, but there are lots of data for other groups too. For instance, here's a 2016 paper on differences between political divisions of Russia that found a relationship with percent ethnic Russians. Here's a 2015 paper on Turkish political divisions which found a negative relationship between percent Kurds and cognitive ability (PISA). These are both aggregate-level studies, but one can easily find studies using individual-level data too from pretty much any country which has a diverse population. Here's a study from 2013 on the difference in IQ between Westerns and non-Westerns in Denmark which was about 13 IQ (disclaimer: my paper). This is based on data from the Danish military draft test. --Deleet (talk) 12:39, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

It is still not resolved what relation, if any, there is between group differences in IQ and race.

The above sentence makes little sense and seems counterfactual. In other words, there is raw data. The question is the interpretation. The important aspect is that group differences in IQ test scores does not mean that there are group differences in intelligence. The sentence above doesn't add to the opening paragraph and seems to only muddy it. SageRad (talk) 13:09, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps:

There in no generally agreed reason for the statistical differences in average IQs for various groups which have been shown, or whether there is any genetic cause or other specific causes of those differences.

would cover the problems clearly? Noting that IQ != "intelligence" therefore need not appear in the single sentence. Collect (talk) 13:40, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Sources that refutes the fringe premise of racial difference in intelligence

Here is a source that refutes the premise that there are inherent racial differences in intelligence. This source is over one year old and is not cited in this article yet. Black Brain, White Brain: Is Intelligence Skin Deep? by Gavin Evans. This source refutes, for instance, the Nicholas Wade articles. We need to integrate this source and its content in the article. To quote Evans:

And yet the widespread combination of misplaced faith in the immutability of IQ and misplaced faith in the ability of genes to determine behaviour has allowed their claims to fester away, unchallenged in the public arena. The problem in not challenging these bad ideas promptly and vigorously goes way beyond their flawed science. If the public and its opinion makers come to accept notions like Wade’s – such as that Africans are, by nature, none-too-bright tribalists – we’ll be in danger of returning to the dangerous mentality that formed the ballast for colonialism and slavery.

Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker:

An I.Q., in other words, measures not so much how smart we are as how modern we are.

this New York Times opinion piece by Richard Nisbett.

the evidence heavily favors the view that race differences in I.Q. are environmental in origin, not genetic

Supported by these sources and others like them, i have removed two sentences from the lede that said nothing specific but were weasely in that they mislead the reader to think that the question is still entirely open, whereas reliable review sources seem to say that environmental factors and mismeasure of intelligence by IQ or other tests do or probably do in fact explain the whole effect. My edits are here and here. Please discuss adequately before reverting. SageRad (talk) 04:15, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Those are terrible sources: a blog post, an article by a journalist famous for his gullibility and innumeracy, and an opinion piece by a psychologist whose views on this topic have been described as having "virtually no chance of being true" in what is the best textbook on human intelligence (Earl Hunt's Human Intelligence, p. 434). An article like this should be based on reliable, scholarly secondary sources, not some random websites and opinion pieces.--Victor Chmara (talk) 12:02, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Victor above. These sources are not reliable, especially not for this topic. Nisbett does write on this topic, but does not conduct research on it. He agrees the differences are real, but argues that they are environmental in origin. See e.g.:

• Nisbett, R. E., Aronson, J., Blair, C., Dickens, W., Flynn, J., Halpern, D. F., & Turkheimer, E. (2012). Group differences in IQ are best understood as environmental in origin.
• Nisbett, R. E. (2016). Think BIG, bigger… and smaller. On Poverty and Learning: Readings from Educational Leadership (EL Essentials), 94.
• Nisbett, R. E. (2009). Intelligence and how to get it: Why schools and cultures count. WW Norton & Company. Appendix B The Case for a Purely Environmental Basis for Black/White Differences in IQ.

--Deleet (talk) 12:29, 1 October 2016 (UTC) (Could not figure out how to indent a list.)

I mentioned a book called Black Brain, White Brain: Is Intelligence Skin Deep?, an article in the New York Times by a researcher who's studied the topic, and a piece in The New Yorker by Gladwell who was recipient of the American Sociological Association's first Award for Excellence in the Reporting of Social Issues and a best-selling author on social issues. And you call these "terrible sources" and "some random websites and opinion pieces"? Are you serious? What's a good source in your eyes? SageRad (talk) 13:09, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

The book is written by a journalist who is also an anti-racism political activist according to his Amazon description. Gladwell, another journalist, is known to have poor reliability for his claims (e.g.). If you want to claim such things, you should use academic literature, preferably popular review articles. We have already given you such sources. APA's statement on IQ is a choice widely used on Wikipedia and also mentions the usual findings on race and IQ scores: Blacks about 15 IQ below Whites, Hispanics perhaps 7 IQ below, Asians somewhat higher perhaps 5 IQ above Whites. --Deleet (talk) 16:37, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Like I said, we should use scholarly secondary sources. There's a huge scientific literature by academic experts on this topic, so why on earth would we rely on blog posts, newspaper or magazine articles, or a book by some journalist? The sources cited by Deleet above are OK, but they represent just one viewpoint which must be contrasted with others. While I don't think WP:MEDRS should be slavishly followed in psychology articles like this, it's a good guideline here, too:

Ideal sources for biomedical information include: review articles (especially systematic reviews) published in reputable medical journals; academic and professional books written by experts in the relevant fields and from respected publishers; and guidelines or position statements from national or international expert bodies. Primary sources should generally not be used for medical content – as such sources often include unreliable or preliminary information, for example early in vitro results which don't hold in later clinical trials.

[...]

The popular press is generally not a reliable source for scientific and medical information in articles. Most medical news articles fail to discuss important issues such as evidence quality,[24] costs, and risks versus benefits,[25] and news articles too often convey wrong or misleading information about health care.[26] Articles in newspapers and popular magazines generally lack the context to judge experimental results. They tend to overemphasize the certainty of any result, for instance, presenting a new and experimental treatment as "the cure" for a disease or an every-day substance as "the cause" of a disease. Newspapers and magazines may also publish articles about scientific results before those results have been published in a peer-reviewed journal or reproduced by other experimenters. Such articles may be based uncritically on a press release, which can be a biased source even when issued by an academic medical center.[27] News articles also tend neither to report adequately on the scientific methodology and the experimental error, nor to express risk in meaningful terms. For Wikipedia's purposes, articles in the popular press are generally considered independent, primary sources.

--Victor Chmara (talk) 13:40, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

This is not a biomedical topic per se by the standards which that policy guideline applies them. Are we going to have to go to the reliable sources noticeboard? And if you really want to get down to it, this is a friend's promise and therefore parity would apply to sources that debunk incorrect ideas.SageRad (talk) 14:39, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

My perspective is that "[w]hen available, academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources", as per WP:RS. Other sources are not per se forbidden as long as WP:MEDRS is not applied, but I just see no reason to not use only scholarly sources written by academic experts here given that plenty of such sources are available on this topic. For the reasons stated in WP:MEDRS, academic sources are preferable to popular ones. What is the compelling reason to not follow this sensible guideline here if the goal is to write the best possible article?--Victor Chmara (talk) 15:03, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Please give the actual text about Nisbett if you would from Hunt p 434. Is your contention that the premise that there are genetic differences in intelligence among racial groups is an open question then? Is your contention that they're is NOT a general consensus that it's a false premise? That's what I seem to be getting here. Anyway, MEDRS is not a requirement and I think the sources I name are reasonably reliable and suitable for this article as sources and for further reading. Sure let's include other sources as well but not exclude these. And if there is a consensus as reported in these sources then we don't present a false "balance" as if they're all equal. We present one a fringe and the other as reliable and accepted. SageRad (talk) 17:00, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Hunt's point is simply that it is extremely unlikely that genotypic intelligence would be distributed exactly identically across populations, which is what Nisbett has claimed. Hunt notes that the real debate for most researchers is about the exact nature and size of the genetic and environmental factors causing differences between groups, not their existence:

Rushton and Jensen (and Lynn) are correct in saying that the 100% environmental hypothesis [of racial differences in IQ] cannot be maintained. Nisbett's extreme statement has virtually no chance of being true. However, the 100% environmental hypothesis is something of a stalking horse. Many researchers who are primarily interested in environmental differences associated with racial and ethnic differences in intelligence would not be at all perturbed by an ironclad demonstration that, say, 3% of the gap is due to genetic differences. The real issue is over the identity and size of genetic and environmental influences on group differences in intelligence, not the existence of either one.

Some indication on the prevalence of various views on the topic among experts is available from this recent survey[2]:

Experts were surveyed about the importance of culture, genes, education (quantity and quality), wealth, health, geography, climate, politics, modernization, sampling error, test knowledge, discrimination, test bias, and migration. The importance of these factors was evaluated for diverse countries, regions, and groups including Finland, East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Europe, the Arabian-Muslim world, Latin America, Israel, Jews in the West, Roma (gypsies), and Muslim immigrants. Education was rated by N = 71 experts as the most important cause of international ability differences. Genes were rated as the second most relevant factor but also had the highest variability in ratings. Culture, health, wealth, modernization, and politics were the next most important factors, whereas other factors such as geography, climate, test bias, and sampling error were less important.

Nisbett has written at length about these issues in his scholarly publications, which are already cited numerous times in this article, so there's no need to cite a popular article by him. What Gladwell writes about is already included in the article using better sources, so no need to use him, either. Evans is some journalist making silly arguments. Given that he's not an expert and not cited by others, he must be excluded based the principle that if a view is held by an extremely small minority, it does not belong on Wikipedia.

If you want to contribute to this article, please read at least the main scholarly sources, such as the APA task force's classic Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns[3], where where the existence of racial/ethnic gaps is acknowledged but their causes are deemed mostly unknown.--Victor Chmara (talk) 17:49, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for providing the relevant text from Hunt. SageRad (talk) 18:12, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

To parse some of the above... someone would like to dismiss totally the Gavin Evans book saying that he's "a journalist who is also an anti-racism political activist" as if that makes his book unreliable, whereas the Amazon bio says "Gavin Evans was born in London but grew up in South Africa where he became involved in the anti-apartheid campaign while working as a journalist and completing degrees in economic history, law and a PhD in politics. He returned to London 22 years ago and teaches at Birkbeck College while writing for several UK newspapers. This is his fifth book." That does not make his book unreliable. That makes him a human being who has followed his interests and written a book on a topic of interest. You may also note the widely favorable reception of his book among scholars and others. Why did it take two go-rounds to get you to note that it's a book, not a blog too? Anyway... SageRad (talk) 20:46, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Regarding Nisbett, it seems the argument made above, via the quote by Hunt, is that Nisbett is wrong because it's not viable to say that absolutely none of variability in testing results across groups comes from genetics. That's a pretty obvious strawman argument because Nisbett to my knowledge doesn't generally claim that there is absolutely no effect of genetics on testing results across groups. In other words, making a falsely extreme claim attributed to someone and then knocking it down is the definition of strawman fallacy. Here is a report from the APA that says:

After analyzing decades of intelligence research, Nisbett maintains that past studies give too much credit to heritability's role in intelligence. Culture, social class and education, he argues, matter more, and explain racial gaps in IQ.

And further, Nisbett's own words in this interview:

Genetics influences IQ. People with genes for high IQ pass them on to their children. Their children will be smarter than other children on average. The question is: How much of the variation in IQ in a given population is accounted for by genes? Estimates have run as high as 80 percent. This is not the same thing as saying that your IQ is 80 percent determined by genes. That's quite wrong. In any case, a number of errors of the kind I detail in my book have resulted in estimates of heritability that are too high.

I hope this suffices to eliminate that opposition to using Nisbett as a reliable source based on this argument from authority of the Hunt textbook. SageRad (talk) 20:52, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

I can't figure out what you are trying to argue for. Wikipedia is not a forum. Discussing the merits of mixed vs. purely environmental models is not really something for a talk page. What changes to the article are you proposing and why? I don't really care about Evans and since he's not an expert on this topic, his writings should have little bearing on the content of the article. Nisbett, as mentioned, is closer to being a relevant expert. He doesn't conduct research on this topic as far as I can tell, but he does sometimes write about it in scholarly outlets (see earlier examples). I think for the purposes of Wikipedia, he counts as a relevant expert. The APA writing you are citing above is not a report at all, it's an interview in APA's Magazine (Monitor on Psychology) where Nisbett is talking about behavioral genetics, a field to which he has not contributed any primary research as far as I know (I looked over his publications since 2000 on his Scholar profile). Nisbett, however, is often published in the popular media talking about group differences and behavioral genetics (e.g. in New York Times in relationship to the the Watson-controversy). --Deleet (talk) 17:43, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

The article should clearly state that group differences in results on tests are not largely due to genetics. I only discussed Nisbett in light of OR objection to using Nisbett via Hunt above. SageRad (talk) 18:28, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

There is no expert consensus that group are not largely due to genetics. As you can see in the surveys, experts are fairly divided on the issue. As such, Wikipedia should reflect this and not state that differences either are or are not due largely to genetics. Deleet (talk) 15:03, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

This is an interesting question. I think it needs more elucidation. There are sources that do say group differences in results on tests are not largely due to genetics. However, there are other sources that say they are due to genetics. And then we have the survey paper linked in a comment above which is an interesting meta-type of source. That source is not classified as a review article by PubMed, but it does claim to be a survey of experts in the field. That source not being a review article, we must use it carefully if at all. We must also avoid doing original research based on the results of that article.
To use a parallel, suppose we had a paper that states that 97% of climate scientists think global warming is real. From that could we as editors claim that global warming is real? I don't think so. We would need a relevant review source to make that transform and make the claim directly. Suppose on the other hand we had a paper that said that 50% of scientists say that global warming is not real or anthropogenic. In that case, could we as editors not experts claim in Wikivoice that there is no consensus about climate change among scientists? Or would that be WP:OR? I think it would be the latter. I think that such a thing actually did happen within climate change denialism, as well, so it's not a totally nonsense example. The kicker there was that those scientists were not climate scientists and many were not even recognized as scientists or were really fringy weird people. So, we could look at that survey paper and state its results, but not infer from its results about whether or not there is a consensus. We'd need another review-level article to interpret for us, not to do it ourselves as Wikipedia editors who are explicitly not experts on the subject and cannot do WP:OR or WP:SYN. SageRad (talk) 19:40, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I don't see any relevance of whether PubMed classifies a paper as a review or not. PubMed is for medicine and this is not medicine. As you have been told, there is a prior survey from 1988 similar to the new 2013 one which found similar results. There are no other surveys of this field, not even ones using irrelevant people as they did for climate science. I know this because I know many if not most of the researchers in the field and I've been following it intensely for years. With regards to Heiner Rindermann, he sits on the editorial board of the Intelligence journal, so he is not a fringe person. You can also see that the editorial board includes Richard Lynn, Gerhard Meisenberg and Jan te Nijenhuis, all of which have published work related to the genetics of group differences. On the other hand, Richard Nisbett does not sit there -- that's because he doesn't actually do much or any research in this field, yet people cite his extreme claim of 0% genetics. Robert Sternberg is not there either, but is also commonly cited. Linda Gottfredson, another prominent researcher in this area is not there. Not because she isn't prominent enough, she just received the Lifetime achievement award of the International Society for Intelligence Research. Arthur Jensen, Phil Rushton and Earl B. Hunt all sat on the editorial board too until they died. Jensen had an entire special edition devoted to him in 1998. Richard Lynn had one in the sister journal PAID in 2012. Rushton one in 2013. Hans Eysenck just had one more at the 100 year mark of his birth. Jensen was a good friend of Douglas Detterman, the founder of the journal. So you see, people publishing in favor of genetic explanations are not fringe at all, they are right there on the editorial board of the most prominent journal for this type of research -- exactly as expected based on the survey. Their opinions stray from the mainstream (academic) view, but not from their co-researchers. Needless to say, Evans is a nobody has never published any research on this topic, just his pop science book. Jelte Wicherts, Wendy Johnson and Earl Hunt all published papers critical of genetic causes of group differences and all sit/sat on the editorial board. But none of them has any made any claim of 0% genetics nor claimed that most of their colleagues think that. Deleet (talk) 02:42, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

I see you have focused on this topic and know a lot about the field. It is very fascinating and is open to many ways of seeing it, differing perspectives. Whether or not it's a review matters in terms of the quality of the source. A primary study is peer-reviewed but a review article takes it to another level, where it's a review of the relevant literature by experts. WP:MEDRS relates to biomedical claims. I'm not sure if this is one. But let's use common sense and best possible sourcing anyway. It's interesting to note the Mainstream Science on Intelligence ad that ran in the Wall Street Journal as well in 1994, in terms of who signed and who did not, and why, and even why that ad was created in the first place.
Would you please give me a source on what you say is Nisbett's "claim of 0% genetics"? I don't see that from Nisbett in my brief survey. I see him saying that intelligence is not "largely genetic". SageRad (talk) 14:38, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

For Nisbett's claim, see Appendix B to his 2009 book cited by me above titled "The Case for a Purely Environmental Basis for Black/White Differences in IQ". Nisbett also made the claim in his 2005 commentary piece to Rushton and Jensen's review article "On the contrary, the evidence most relevant to the question indicates that the genetic contribution to the Black–White IQ gap is nil."(in the abstract). He may have made it in other places, I haven't read all his writings on this topic. His claim about 'largely genetic' concerns the within group heritability, not the between group heritability. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Deleet (talk • contribs) 23:58, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

studying brain region differences is more important, East Asians are more inhibited due to a more well functioning either bigger cingulum (cingulate cortex). We have to analyze functionality. Also different races sometimes not only have they brain part differences, but there is a small statistical difference on the subparts of a region. The smaller a difference is, the least the statistical significance, thus we shouldn't metaphysically claim ideas based on pure fantasy . We need more analytical data. Some people claim science is nazi. This isn't true. We simply have to be very analytical and to reveal actual data and also mention their statistical significance also if they cause a statistical behavioural change. That isn't nazi. Random comments might be perceived as racistic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:587:4102:CF00:1963:F284:B24D:197C (talk) 03:27, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

Banned user EvergreenFir (talk) 17:33, 18 October 2016 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Black Brain, White Brain: Is Intelligence Skin Deep? proves conclusively we are all 100% identical using science. Checkmate racists. We should use this source. Precious Feelings (talk) 09:27, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

(A banned user rather overstates the value of the book presented as a source) Alas you overstate "proof." The author is trained in economics, and has no biology expertise at all. He was specifically an "anti-apartheid activist" which seems more his background than any hard science background. Google books finds no reviews in any of the "usual places", and the book is not a peer-reviewed thesis. We need actual scientific sources if we are to treat this topic rationally. Collect (talk) 16:02, 18 October 2016 (UTC)Collect (talk) 19:28, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Use of the word "Negro"

I note that following political correctness in the US the article never uses the word. Instead it uses euphemisms that are vague and misleading. Southern Indians, Australian Aboriginals and Polinesians are all "Black", but not the same all being out of Africa etc. Many Arabs living in America are from Africa, but again that is not what is meant by African Americans (I presume).

It seems sensible to use racial words when talking about race. But if we cannot use the word Negro, then maybe some well define term. Maybe SSAs for sub-Sahara Africans? Tuntable (talk) 00:15, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

It's good to be precise. So yeah, sub-Saharan Africans where appropriate, or Bantu Africans versus San bushmen. "Black" and "Negro" are ambiguous. Are the San Negro? 82.153.102.52 (talk) 08:36, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

60,000 years is a long time

That is some 3,000 generations since we left Africa. Both populations will have evolved to some extent over all that time. But it would seem amazing if after all that time there was no difference in the most critical of human traits, intelligence. Not necessarily better or worse, but different.

Some discussion of this, and why, would be an excellent addition. My guess is that the populations actually inter bred to some extent, with an exception being the Australian Aboriginals. But that is just a guess.Tuntable (talk) 00:30, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

The Most Recent Common Ancestor of all humans may have been as recent as 3000 years ago. Humans sure are fucking around a lot... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 00:29, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Even if this is true (which I rather doubt, given that there are uncontacted peoples in several continents), it does not imply any common genes in the human population: After 100 generations, a single MRCA probably did not pass any of his genes to a now-living descendant since the genes are "diluted" by a factor of 2 each generation.--Roentgenium111 (talk) 10:51, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Genetic

It's mostly genetic. You can look at the fact that babies adopted by a family of another race grow up to exhibit IQs expected of their own race, and that even when controlling for socioeconomic status there's a 10 point difference between the average IQs of blacks and whites.

Source: https://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jensen30years.pdf

Benjamin (talk) 01:18, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

This should be titled RACE and IQ .... not RACE and INTELLIGENCE

This should be titled RACE and IQ .... not RACE and INTELLIGENCE. The author(s) conflate IQ and Intelligence, while intelligence is a broader concept, and a social construct that is not bound by modern psychometric definitions.