Hello, Nemoscis, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Ian and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.

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If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 01:20, 8 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Racial differences could be caused by anything that correlates with race. This includes both genetic and environmental factors. "Racial" is not synonymous with "genetic". The controversy is not about the EXISTENCE of the racial gaps that Jensen studied but about the causes of those gaps, so it's wrong to say that "race-based differences in intelligence" are alleged. Here's how this topic is viewed by experts in the field:

Members of all racial-ethnic groups can be found at every IQ level. The bell curves of different groups overlap considerably, but groups often differ in where their members tend to cluster along the IQ line. The bell curves for some groups (Jews and East Asians) are centered somewhat higher than for whites in general. Other groups (blacks and Hispanics) are centered somewhat lower than non-Hispanic whites.

[...]

There is no definitive answer to why IQ bell curves differ across racial-ethnic groups. The reasons for these IQ differences between groups may be markedly different from the reasons for why individuals differ among themselves within any particular group (whites or blacks or Asians). In fact, it is wrong to assume, as many do, that the reason why some individuals in a population have high IQs but others have low IQs must be the same reason why some populations contain more such high (or low) IQ individuals than others. Most experts believe that environment is important in pushing the bell curves apart, but that genetics could be involved too. (source)

--Victor Chmara (talk) 13:23, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize for not replying initially. I didn't read the article from your citation. However, I aassert that Linda Gottfredson isn't a credible source. Most of her work is, in my opinion, biased toward arguing for genetic differences in intelligence between ancestral groups while attempting to minimize the possibility or full exploration of environmental causes. I've read other articles of hers and even though it is peer reviewed, that doesn't mean her work is universally agreed upon in the scientific community, ergo her words shouldn't be used as representative of the field (she has frequently sparred with others in the field such as Eric Turkheimer and James Flynn.) Race is, as you've pointed out, an ill-defined word, and though it is true that some don't associate race with genes, some do, which muddies the waters of your argument in that the spirit of Wikipedia attempts to be unbiased for all readers. For if some believe a word means one thing and others believe it means something else, then the use of an entirely other word or phrase is warranted in the name of pedantry. Nevertheless, perhaps my initial explanation for my objection was flawed. I wasn't attempting to say the racial differences of IQ scores are alleged, but that the existence of such differences between races are only allegedly "based" on race itself.

For instance, if there is no genetic component, then the differences between races are not racially based, they're environmentally based. I have to admit my own bias towards that latter viewpoint, but understand that enough other people within the field still assert otherwise to indicate there is not yet a definitive conclusion. Though it is important to note that there was once a time when nearly 100% of people believed the Earth was at the center of the Universe, and today some still believe people never landed on the moon, so I want to acknowledge group agreement isn't a requirement for veracity. To get back to the point, I didn't and don't like the word "based" as I think it has connotations of implying the quality is inherent to races. The phrasing has since been changed, but the word based is still there. If I had replied sooner I would have suggested using "present between/across" as an alternative because it does better to explicitly demonstrate that the difference may not necessarily immutable over time. Something along the lines of "differences in intelligence present across races."

Best, Nemoscis (talk) 00:47, 27 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]