Race and intelligence

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This is a serious and considered qtuestion as to whether this article should exist at all on Wikipedia.

The article Race and intelligence appears to be a notable subject because it is contentious and many people do talk about it. Indeed many people talk about this article. Nevertheless the notable aspects of the debate are twofold and are synthesised in this article to produce a debate on a contentious subject where all the information can be found elsewhere.

The two notable subjects are Race and genetics and the Heritability of IQ. Both those are notable subjects, but "race and intelligence" is a synthesis of the two. Because it is controversial it has WP:UNDUE visibility. It seems unlikely that anyone would argue that an article about "Race and prostate cancer" nor even "race and sickle cell disease" are notable articles, because although it is known that certain human populations have higher instances of these diseases, that fact is adequately covered in articles on the diseases themselves or asides elsewhere. Moreover in those two cases, the link between genetics and the disease is known and understood. In the case of intelligence, there is simply no evidence of a genetic link between race and intelligence. The very existence of this article appears to take sides on the issue - making a question out of an issue that is a non question. See for instance, Stop talking about race and IQ.

The article itself is written as bi-pole argument between two extremes, and all editors of the page appear to be broadly in agreement that this is not correct (even though they are not in agreement as to what to do about it). There have been recent edit wars as some want to remove clearly WP:UNDUE material at once, and other editors believe that would leave the page unbalanced and WP:POV and argue a complete rewrite is necessary instead. Editors from both sides of the debate have mooted deletion of the page as a possible solution as per this talk section. In view of the highly problematic article structure, which contains a lot of WP:UNDUE weight on just two extremes of the debate, there is no salvageable or mergeable content and WP:TNT is called for.

An objection to the above argument may be that the above is true, and yet there is a notable disagreement as demonstrated by the Rushton and Jensen material in the article, and that this gives the article notability. However there is heavy WP:UNDUE here, and we already have an article that discusses the debate, which is "Scientific Racism". See particularly section Scientific racism#Interbellum to World War II and on to the end of the article. This fully covers, and in a much more balanced manner, the notability aspect of the debate. That is, it discusses that there is a debate, and describes what it is.

Redirects are WP:CHEAP so I believe deletion and a redirect to Heritability of IQ would be the best solution here, or else a redirect to either Scientific racism or Race and genetics. A disambiguation page would also be a suitable solution. Sirfurboy (talk) 06:44, 3 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. Sirfurboy (talk) 06:44, 3 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. Sirfurboy (talk) 06:44, 3 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@NightHeron: What if we just changed the title to remove any indication that race and intelligence are related? Mgasparin (talk) 22:01, 3 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Mgasparin: Although the title is bad, it's only a symptom of a deeper problem, which is non-compliance with WP:NPOV and WP:FRINGE. Rather than thinking up a new title and then putting a lot of effort, with long contentious debates, into a total rewrite, it would be better to redirect Race and intelligence to one of the other articles covering the same subject, as suggested below by David Gerard. NightHeron (talk) 23:50, 3 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I get that. My suggestion was based on a desire to save the article given the amount of work that has been put into it over many years. Mgasparin (talk) 01:01, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
No, the title is "Race and Intelligence". That does *not* suggest causality. It's just putting the words together, and connecting them with the word "and". --Toomim (talk) 01:37, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The reason I'm not voting either way yet is that I think the WP:TNT argument might be compelling. (I'm not sure yet.) Virtually everyone agrees that the article has major problems, but we haven't been able to agree on a course of action to address them. Instead of trying to get a consensus to update the article one section at a time, a simpler solution might be to just delete it and start over from scratch. I need to think about this for a while. 2600:1004:B168:C80E:5DF3:894E:7AC0:5C79 (talk) 15:01, 3 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the comment and for considering carefully. I reviewed the previous discussions but the thing we must always remember in deletion discussions is that deletion is not a vote. It is the arguments that are made that are important. You can have 10 "delete per noms" and one good "keep" based on policy and the result is keep (or vice versa of course). Thus those previous deletion discussions are relevant only inasmuch as the points made then are pertinent and point to policy based reasons to keep. I reviewed all the keep comments in that AfD and they all boil down to "subject is notable" or "nomination does not make sense". It is for you to judge whether my nomination makes more sense, but you will see I have addressed notability in the nomination. The subject is notable for mention in an article, but I don't think it is notable for this article. Scientific Racism covers this, and as long as it does so adequately, this article is not required. It does not add anything because we already have a place for all the notable information. Once again, thanks for taking time to comment. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 15:45, 3 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. After reading the discussion below, I've concluded that the article should be kept. None of the deletion reasons seem to be well-supported by policy. Peregrine Fisher has already discussed problems with several of these reasons, but I'll address two others:
One of the deletion arguments being presented is that this article is a POV fork of either History of the race and intelligence controversy or Scientific racism. The explanation of POV forks at Wikipedia:Content_forking#Point_of_view_(POV)_forks says that if an alternate version of an article is created with a different viewpoint, "This second article is known as a 'POV fork' of the first". However, the Race and intelligence article predates both the "Scientific racism" article and the "History of the race and intelligence" controversy article. The Race and intelligence article was created in 2002, the Scientific racism article was created in 2004, and the History of the race and intelligence controversy was created in 2010. Therefore, if anything is a POV fork, those articles are POV forks of this one, not the reverse.
The strongest argument anyone has presented for deletion is based on WP:TNT, but this article does not seem like a case where that guideline was meant to apply. The examples that page gives of when deletion is appropriate are copyright violations and examples of paid advocacy, but this article is neither of those. The central problem with this article is that it reads as though the whole thing was written in 2013 (which it may have been; I haven't looked closely enough at its history to determine that). Normally, a problem like that could be fixed by updating the article.
The main reason it's nearly impossible to update this article is that even when there's a consensus on the talk page for a change, there is a small group of users who think it's acceptable to edit war to undo the change if they disapprove of it. But that's a user conduct problem, not a problem with the article itself. Some of those same users are now voting for deletion, which seems very disingenuous. If you're going to prevent the article from being improved, you shouldn't subsequently argue that the inability to improve it is a reason to delete it. 2600:1004:B11C:DD81:9097:4C1A:1A0B:AEA5 (talk) 04:58, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I am naturally disappointed that you have gone with keep here, because I have observed that you have been an involved and knowledgeable editor of this article for some time. In view of the SPA IP hopping going on elsewhere in this thread, it is worth saying that 2600:1004:B1::/38 is the range you have consistently used and there is no suggestion of any misuse of IP anonymity here. Indeed, I noticed that you spoke out against edit warring on the page and I have a great deal of respect for your opinions. It was your own summary (from the article talk page) of the state of the existing article that I used as reference when writing this AfD. On the POVFORK argument, you will notice I never called this article a POVFORK. As you say, this article is the older one. Yet there is a content fork here. It was probably not intentional, but the History of the race and intelligence controversy has developed and matured, and now comprehensively covers the issue, whereas your own summary of this article admits "Until December, the article was mostly structured as a debate between two controversial sources: A 2005 paper by Rushton and Jensen published in Psychology, Public Policy and Law, and Nisbett's 2009 book Intelligence and How to Get It. (Some people don't believe that Nisbett's book is controversial, but see the reviews listed in the Intelligence and How to Get It article, as well as Hunt's comments on Nisbett in his textbook Human Intelligence, "Nisbett's extreme statement has virtually no chance of being true"). This was a slightly strange way for the article to be structured, but it still gave a decent overview of the debate." Your view, as I understand it, is that the article needed rewriting, section by section, from the ground up to make it more balanced. Yet I think we have that rewrite already. It is an article called History of the race and intelligence controversy. That article comprehensively covers this topic so I don't think the proposed rewrite adds anything. Please bear in mind that this is not a partisan view. I took no part in editing the article, and I believe that you, in particular, made some excellent points. I just don't think that this is the article you should be spending your time on. I think you could help improve the other articles we have identified instead. I do hope I can convince you to reverse your !vote, but I trust you will understand I will continue to respect your point of view regardless. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 10:59, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Seems like a good solution, seeing as most of the arguments coming from the "the article is written from a WP:FRINGE" are in fact based around the topic of the article itself and the readers' possible interpretations of said topic. These arguments, in turn, lead to opinions such as that there is no need to mention the fact that IQ differences between ethnic groups exist (which both sides of the debate seem to agree is the scientific consensus) in the lede, which is now problematic for the other side.
Deleting the article and summarising its contents elsewhere will resolve this problem, which seems to be what's causing most of the disagreement on the Race and Intelligence article. However, the contents also need to be summarised adequately; for example, in the article "scientific racism", it is claimed that "a connection between race and intelligence" is "unsupported by available evidence", according to "critics", even though the scientific consensus is that there is good evidence for differences in IQ scores (a valid and reliable measure of intelligence) between self-identified races and ethnicities. As long all the relevant information pertinent to the topic of race and intelligence and notable enough to be mentioned is summarised adequately (which may entail creating a section on race and intelligence on the "scientific racism" article), I see no good reason why the article should be kept, given that it clearly causes more problems than it resolves. O̲L̲D̲S̲T̲O̲N̲E̲J̅A̅M̅E̅S̅ 16:20, 3 February 2020 (UTC) [reply]
Keep Upon further inspection, it would be pretty absurd for the article history of the race and intelligence controversy to exist without the article race and intelligence existing as well. It also seems like most editors' problems here stem from the article's title and not anything to do with the article's body instead. If that is the case, renaming the page would surely be a more efficient solution, especially given that the content of the article is obviously notable enough to be kept. O̲L̲D̲S̲T̲O̲N̲E̲J̅A̅M̅E̅S̅ 23:10, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Oldstone James, but I would note that history of the race and intelligence controversy is talking about all the issues that we are agree are notable regarding the controversy. There is then no reason to rehash the controversy itself on Wikipedia, as that article fully describes it. That is what this article is trying to do too. Wikipedia does not need this article. --Sirfurboy (talk) 23:34, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
In this case, merging the two articles would be the appropriate solution; the reason that I'm confused about why the article "race and intelligence" specifically needs to be deleted is that it is difficult to envision that a concept on its own might not be notable enough but its history would be. O̲L̲D̲S̲T̲O̲N̲E̲J̅A̅M̅E̅S̅ 23:51, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think there is any mergeable content in this article that is not already found in history of the race and intelligence controversy or scientific racism, or indeed The Bell Curve, Heritability of IQ or Race and genetics. That is why deletion makes sense. Thank you again for considering this carefully though. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 11:48, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
If I found one sentence that was worth merging somewhere, would you change your vote? Peregrine Fisher (talk) 16:55, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
For one sentence? No, I would probably just go and add that sentence to one of the other articles. There would need to be substantial mergeable information to merit a merge, and there isn't any, because the information is already in the other articles. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 11:07, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
They are correct per WP:DEL-REASON. Content forks should be deleted unless a suitable merge can be agreed. Rather than attempting to characterise other people's views, you might want to consider what mergeable content exists on this page that is not already found in any of the possible merge targets. I don't think there is any, and editor discussion on the page seemed to agree that the current content is problematic.
In that same discussion, I noticed that you had agreed, when AfD was mooted, that: "If one of you guys would jump through the arbcom hoops, I think that would be great. They might say that your side is correct, and I can remove this page from my watchlist! Peregrine Fisher (talk) 20:15, 1 February 2020 (UTC)". I think you meant AfD rather than arbcom, but I understood that you, along with several other editors, were in agreement that there was a case for deletion, so I am naturally disappointed that this turns out not to be the case. I would just like to re-assure you that I consulted with no one before making this AfD, and I took no sides in the debate, nor did I ever edit the page. I did that in the hope editors on both sides would understand that this was not a partisan nomination, but a serious hard look at whether this article was really serving the purpose of furthering the scope and benefit of the Wikipedia project as a whole and providing material of educational value to the readers. I thought you would be on board with that.-- Sirfurboy (talk) 12:14, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@IntoThinAir: We have other articles that describe the topic in a neutral way. This article is unnecessary and is just a remnant of earlier Wikipedia edit wars. Onetwothreeip (talk) 19:53, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Peregrine Fisher, no, I am saying that it's a POV fork and a coatrack and the superficial referenciness obscures the fact that its primary function appears to be to erect a false balance between racism and science. Guy (help!) 14:17, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Miraclepine: What does "snowy consensus" mean? I am unfamiliar with that term. Thanks. NightHeron (talk) 03:50, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@NightHeron: WP:SNOW says to use common sense and don't follow a process for the sake of it. But do allow discussions to take place if in doubt. AFD is currently 12 delete, 4 keep. ミラP 04:01, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I forgot to mention that the talk page has been edited 23,000+ times! That's another article to take to SR/M. ミラP 15:09, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Then we could just rename the History of the race and intelligence controversy article to Race and intelligence, making it the main article. Onetwothreeip (talk) 05:55, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like we could merge, or rediect, or whatever the heck we want. None of which is deletion. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 06:01, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
No, both History of the race and intelligence controversy and Scientific racism sub-pages are already correctly linked on History_of_the_debate subsection of this page. This is the best way to handle it. My very best wishes (talk) 16:03, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your input, but I note that reference to the fact other pages exist is not a policy reason to retain a page, per WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. The conjunction in the title "a AND b" is a clear indication of a synthesis between two different things, and inasmuch as the synthesis is itself notable, it is already covered in our article covering, in depth, the history of the controversy. Finally, I would say that I fully understand why editors wish to strengthen their votes with qualifiers like strong etc., but if the case for keeping the article really were obvious, it would not need stating. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 08:13, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The word "and" in the title does not indicate a synthesis, let alone a redundant one. Your proposal to delete did not identify "Race" and "Intelligence" as the root topics A and B. Rather, you cite Race and genetics and the Heritability of IQ as the subjects supposedly synthesized, each of which is itself a compound. The subject of "race and intelligence" has to do with race, genetics, inheritance and IQ (among other things) in its own way that is not a simple-minded combination from two or more source articles, or anything that could easily be inferred by someone reading the articles separately. Like it or not, racial intelligence-ology is its own thing, some of which has been pseudoscience and some of which has not. Part of the point of an article on a subject like this is to distingush science from fiction and that is not accomplished by summarily declaring the whole thing an artificial "non-question" as done in this AfD proposal. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 09:45, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
"And" is a conjunction, "of" is a preposition denoting possession. Note also that "Race and genetics" can be recast as "the genetics of race", which you cannot do with "race and intelligence", but let's not get sidetracked on grammar. I said it was indicative, but not a necessary conclusion. The point is, and remains, that other articles on Wikipedia cover everything this article is trying to be. The science, the controversy, even the books (see for instance The Bell Curve). This is just not an article we need. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 11:39, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Half the articles on Wikipedia have all their information covered in some list of other articles. In this specific case, if you were to make an honest list of the other articles needed to cover the material for this one, it would be quite a lot longer than the two you mention, and in one of those two any relevant material is buried under a heap of irrelevant material. This is pure IDONTLIKEIT, not something that makes Wikipedia more useful as a reference.73.149.246.232 (talk) 11:57, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
"Half the articles on Wikipedia..." is WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, not a policy reason to retain. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 12:14, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
That it's a large fraction of WP content is a reason to consider the AfD proposal as special pleading, the special exception being that you don't like this article and are throwing the proverbial everything-at-the-wall polemically in the hope something will stick. The "policy reason to retain" is the same as for any other encyclopedia topic: if something is notable enough to have had lots of academic and popular material written about it, there is a presumption in favor of having an article on that topic (if there are editors are willing to write and update it). 73.149.246.232 (talk) 12:46, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The precise meaning of "race and genetics" is "the co-variation of race and genetics", exactly as the precise meaning of "race and intelligence" is "the co-variation of race and (measures of) intelligence". This seems to make any grammatical argument irrelevant. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 13:55, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
OTHERSTUFF is probably a bit stronger that IDONTLIKEIT. Whoever questioned why an article on "A" is shite, but an article on "History of A" is OK, has an argument I'd like to hear refuted. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 09:03, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Seems fairly straightforward. The existing "History ..." article has (IMO) reasonable subject matter but an infelicitous name, because it was conceived as part of a hierarchy descending from the unworkable and unencyclopedic article at issue here. The "History ..." article seems to be basically a (confusingly titled) history of scientific racism with respect to intelligence. In a hypothetical complete Wikipedia, I imagine the ideal hierarchy would be something like Scientific racism -> History of scientific racism -> History of scientific racism with respect to intelligence [coordinate with histories of scientific racism with respect to sexuality, physical ability, etc., about which there is certainly plenty to be said]. Of course in our actually-existing Wikipedia, such gaps and inconsistencies in the topic hierarchy are par for the course. Whether and how to rename that article is probably a worthy question but I don't think it needs to be addressed here. -- Visviva (talk) 09:23, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
"infelicitous" is one of my favorite words! Felicitous is number uno! What you said seems to support keeping this article, and redirecting it, or splitting it, or combining it. Why exactly are those options wrong? Peregrine Fisher (talk) 09:48, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with filing everything under Scientific Racism is that it is even more POV-loaded and question-begging than what this AfD proposal accuses the current article of doing. For instance, there is no indication that Jensen (or Flynn or any number of others who have published things on this subject) is a racist or ever argued what he did in order to support racism. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 10:08, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Racism Does it exist? Sort of. Leads to a wiki project. We should create a good essay or policy about it. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 10:30, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

NightHeron makes the argument that the mere title of style "A and B" "suggests that there's a causal connection" A and B. I don't know why this makes sense, Wikipedia has many other similarly titled pages: vaccines and autism, religion and sexuality, sexuality and disability, just to pick some random pairs. AndewNguyen (talk) 22:16, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Your mention of Vaccines and autism is quite interesting. The first sentence of the lede of that article reads: Extensive investigation into vaccines and autism has shown that there is no relationship, causal or otherwise, and vaccine ingredients do not cause autism. Although a reader might initially think that the title suggests a causal connection, as soon as they read the first sentence they will be disabused of that notion and be correctly informed. If the article Vaccines and autism were written in a very different way -- suggesting that there's a legitimate debate, and that maybe vaccines do cause autism, that Andrew Wakefield's paper published in Lancet says that they do, etc., etc. -- then that would be analogous to the way Race and intelligence is written. Just substitute Jensen for Wakefield and Harvard Educational Review for Lancet. The problem is not just that the title "Race and intelligence" is likely to be read by readers as suggesting a causal connection. The problem is that once they start reading the article the strong POV legitimizing fringe theories will reinforce the racial supremacist interpretation of the title. NightHeron (talk) 00:18, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your thoughts, and I agree it would be wrong for Wikipedia to delete any mention of psychometric instruments as measures of intelligence, but that is not the subject of this page. Wikipedia has pages on Psychometrics, on IQ and, crucially, on Heritability of IQ. Deletion of this page will not delete that information from Wikipedia (and neither should it). Deletion of the page is not politically motivated. As the nominator, I can assure you my motives are purely about the benefit of the Wikipedia project as a whole, ensuring our coverage is encyclopaedic. If we did not cover the information elsewhere, we would need to keep the page, but no encyclopaedic information will be lost if we delete this page. Thank you again for raising these concerns, and I trust this answer allays them. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 11:49, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The other related articles do not cover the same material, and to the extent there is an overlap, the material corresponding to the contents of this article is strewn haphazardly inside a much longer text. There is a pretty good division between this article and history of the race and intelligence controversy, with none of the history appearing here and a lot less detail on the psychometry appearing there. Relying on Scientific racism would be even more POV than what you accuse this article of being, since there is for example no reason given for the presumption that Jensen was a "scientific racist" (e.g., did fake science to support racist beliefs, had anything against black people, or considered white people superior to them).73.149.246.232 (talk) 00:43, 6 February 2020 (UTC) — 73.149.246.232 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
No, that's not my point. Your presumption that this is independently notable is directly contradicted by the article's current sources. Many of the article's current sources are only relevant in a historical context. We cannot ignore this context, and these sources wouldn't belong in a "clean" article at all. These sources are already much, much better supported at other articles, with proper context. Therefore, their inclusion here is another demonstration that this is a POV fork. Articles must be based on actual sources, not hypothetical ones. Grayfell (talk) 02:50, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Which sources of what age in the article do you have in mind? There should certainly be newer sources added to include more recent work on genetics, as you pointed out. But adding some of the ones most directly relevant to the "race and intelligence" controversy would tend to be exactly the sort of material some people here are suddenly looking for ways to suppress. For example, Plomin and collaborators' construction of polygenic scores that are "the most powerful predictors in the behavioral sciences", https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/418210v1, or Piffer's open-source statistical evidence for recent selection pressure on polygenic scores that predict cognitive ability, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/008011v1).73.149.246.232 (talk) 03:31, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The number of search results does not establish notability. Per WP:MEDREV, it is inappropriate to present the pros and cons of both sides without drawing conclusions; the guideline requires us to either present the conclusions of a secondary-source review or remove the content altogether if no such review is available. –dlthewave ☎ 05:05, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
WP:MEDREV does not apply here because Race (human categorization) does not belong to Medicine (may be to social sciences?). I do not think anyone above reasonably argued the subject is not notable. My very best wishes (talk) 19:13, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Admin required Can we get an SPI or an admin to look at this comment please. This looks like a sock of "Human Taxonomist" AKA perma-blocked user User:Sprayitchyo. this user is clearly this one, and maps to this one, same style, same interests, same IP range, known to be one of Sprayitchio's many IP socks. All IP addresses geolocate to the same city and this subject falls into Sprayitchio's area of interest.  Looks like a duck to me -- Sirfurboy (talk) 14:03, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I seem to be accused of being associated with a group of other users. I'm not them. I began a few edits with the mobile app last year, and do so here and there, like those few at human clustering the other day. There are tens of thousands of IP sequences from this range. It covers all of Ontario, Quebec and other regions. It is not only for people from the greater Toronto area (7 million people), and I'm not from there. This is my mobile carrier. 2605:8D80:648:1B4D:5360:2F1D:EF2F:174C (talk) 21:14, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Doug Weller (talk · contribs) - Sorry Doug, but could I get some advice how to deal with this one please? I presume a checkuser on the IP is not going to yield anything, but should I open an SPI anyway? He is now commenting elsewhere on this AfD too. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 21:43, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
This simply doesn't stand, goes for the contention, too, that race isn't a meaningful category. As IQ is a relevant predictor for a host of outcomes that are decisive for humans, both as individuals and as groups, it stands to reason that the any relation between race and IQ is equally decisive, much unlike the cited prostate cancer or sickle cell disease.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html
How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’, David Reich, March 23, 2018
»So how should we prepare for the likelihood that in the coming years, genetic studies will show that many traits are influenced by genetic variations, and that these traits will differ on average across human populations? It will be impossible — indeed, anti-scientific, foolish and absurd — to deny those differences.«
Who We are and how We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past, David Reich, 2018, p xiv
»When they told their computer—which had no knowledge of population labels—to cluster the individuals into five groups, the results corresponded uncannily well to commonly held intuitions about deep ancestral divisions among humans (West Eurasians, East Asians, Native Americans, New Guineans, and Africans).« tickle me 16:15, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

:::This unsigned comment appears to have been added by User:Tickle me at 04:26, 6 February 2002. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 08:11, 6 February 2020 (UTC) now signed.[reply]

As you quote David Reich, it is worth noting that he is not saying anything about the link between race and intelligence there, nor does he at any point in his book. He does mention sickle cell - see page 222 and following, showing why it has higher prevalence in West African populations. He has an argument about sprinters on page 264 onwards. Understanding that should help clarify the difficulty of simply asserting "because race, therefore race and intelligence" (which is fallacious). -- Sirfurboy (talk) 12:49, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
> This unsigned comment appears
Yes, I signed it now, you may want to delete this for better readability.
He speaks of traits, not diseases. All traits are heritable to a relevant degree depending on the amount of shared genotypes. The discussion here boils down to a rehash of The Blank Slate, according to which environment is decisive, heritability negligeable, and evolution stopped for humans with the advent of culture, at least for any trait that could be of any importance.
> Understanding that should help clarify...
You interpret his words and assume bad faith. tickle me 16:15, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
User:Literaturegeek Thank you for your input, and I agree about your concern that Wikipedia really should cover this subject, but I wonder if you actually read all the arguments (understandably they are getting quite long, so you may have skimmed them). The question is not whether Wikipedia should cover the topic - it should. The question is whether it should cover the topic in this article, given that we already cover the whole controversy with extensive background in History of the race and intelligence controversy, and within the wider context in Scientific racism, and with the science in Heritability of IQ and a full article on Race and genetics, and with articles on the book that this article covers in depth, The Bell Curve. This is just an article that has no niche, but is the magnet for edit wars and controversy, which is not what the Wikipedia project is about. There is no risk that this notable issue will not be fully covered by Wikipedia. I do think you are quite right to raise the concern, but wonder if, in the light of this explanation, you might reconsider your position. Thanks again. — Sirfurboy (talk) 08:53, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your reply, by way of clarification, my keep vote includes and means do not merge as well as do not delete. Those articles you mentioned are all better described as sub articles of the main topic proposed for deletion/merge — I already stated or alluded to this in my above vote and comment. So it makes no sense to delete or merge the main article, which covers all aspects in summary style, of the topic, including social aspects of possible intellectual differences, such as poorer education, research bias, social racial discrimination, and of course the hugely controversial genetic one etc. There is no Wikipedia policy that suggests that controversial articles should be deleted or merged to avoid edit wars; should we delete Donald Trump or merge it into a sub-article, to avoid the drain on the community from the constant content disputes and controversy and drama there? My position remains the same but thank you for bringing your thoughts to me for consideration.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 09:05, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think Scientific racism can be seen as a sub topic of this one. Clearly the other way round. As for History of the race and intelligence controversy, there is a clear strong overlap between these to the point it is clear that we do not need both. So which should go? This article may well be older, but when there is a content fork, it is also relevant which article is in the better state. The content on the history article is fuller, more up to date, broader and more settled. That is simply the more mature article. The only other question is the name. Your analogy to Donald Trump is not entirely comparable because that is a BLP. Take another article about a controversy in another area instead as illustration. 2019 British prorogation controversy describes a political controversy. Suppose we had a second article called History of the 2019 British prorogation controversy, it would appear clear that the two articles are substantially covering the same issues and one should go. Which title is best is moot at this point. Names can be discussed and changed. The question is only, given two articles covering the same material and with almost the same name, which should you keep? Both? The more mature one? So here: what information would you like to see in this article that is not covered by the other? -- Sirfurboy (talk) 17:29, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Clearly the other way round? I disagree that this area of research should fall under scientific racism by default, the reality is that most academics, the vast majority in fact, researching this are not motivated by scientific racism, instead they are highly professional neuropsychologists and similar disciplines trying to make sense of a very challenging and sensitive area of research and they consider other lines of evidence such as discrimination, socio-economic factors etc., alongside genetic factors. Of course there are a tiny minority of researchers who are genuine racists who get exposed as such in the media or exposed in history books. The history article is a detailed summary of the history of the controversy and is clearly a sub article of the race and intelligence article. It is crazy to delete the main article but keep the sub article, it makes little sense.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 08:05, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The article's lede states that "The debate reemerged again in 1969, when Arthur Jensen championed the view that for genetic reasons, African people were less intelligent than white people" but nowhere says that the consensus of academics is, and for a long time has been, that Jensen's white supremacist views are racist nonsense. Wikivoice is used to suggest that there's a real legitimate debate going on about whether Africans are stupid people. Would this statement be in the lede if Wikipedia were being edited primarily by Africans, rather than by citizens of a country whose head of state "referred to Haiti and African nations as 'shithole countries'" (NBC news, 1/12/2018)?
There is a long history of questionable editing of this article. For example, between 2003 and 2006 a single-purpose account User:Quizkajer (which was abandoned in 2007) made 1152 edits to the page. That user was responsible for a large proportion of all edits made during that period and a large proportion of added content.
As a practical matter, it's a Sisyphean task to improve this article, in part because its inflammatory title attracts editors who want to lend credence to fringe theories about genetic superiority of white people. Efforts to remove bias are met with edit-warring and interminable discussions on the talk page, which soon become a time sink. So most editors give up on this article. The presence of this article on Wikipedia contributes nothing positive, and much that is negative. NightHeron (talk) 12:07, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ "Wikipedia wars: inside the fight against far-right editors, vandals and sock puppets".
I would just like to point out that what @NightHeron: calls “Jensen’s white supremacist views” is actually part of Mainstream Science on Intelligence. What NightHeron calls “scientific consensus” is actually anything but consensus. (I’m writing this from anonymous IP precisely to avoid the kind of “white supremacy” smears exhibited above). 2600:387:4:803:0:0:0:26 (talk) 23:10, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Your concerns are important @NightHeron:, but one or more problematic sentences in an article has never been a reason to delete an article. Instead the solution is seeking consensus on the talk page or, if necessary, starting an RfC. As far as white supremacy, I actually thought the controversial IQ research that suggested a difference between racial groups had suggested people of Asian and Jewish descent had the highest IQ and white people were of average intellect (so is the article/topic area not more of an Asian and Jewish superior IQ dispute rather than a white supremacy issue?); but I have only, years ago, skim read that article and read a couple of content disputes on the talk page, and I chose not to get involved as it is outside my knowledge area and I am not overly interested in the subject matter.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 12:59, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Literaturegeek, the issue is not problematic sentences so much as a problematic title, problematic organisation, a problematic premise, problematic history, problematic conflicts with coverage of the same topic from a non-racist perspective in other articles, problematic false balance, and problematic editing literally all the time. Guy (help!) 14:19, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that implies studying correlations between races and average IQ scores is tantamount to scientific racism. It isn't. This is not a subheading of that article. These average discrepancies between groups exist, are discussed by experts in several scientific disciplines, and currently has no consensus as to cause. It is, thus far, only average IQ scores which evidently differ, so maybe the article title could change. 2605:8D80:648:1B4D:5360:2F1D:EF2F:174C (talk) 21:27, 6 February 2020 (UTC)— 2605:8D80:648:1B4D:5360:2F1D:EF2F:174C (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]


Similarly, I reject the idea that this treatment of the matter generates support for 'white supremacy'. This is ludicrous in light of the clearly stated and well-documented findings of the psychometric community in support of the Jewish and East Asian advantage on g. I may reconsider if you folks start gathering evidence for the rising tide of Vietnamese supremacy in the West. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Skunkworks22 (talk • contribs) 22:43, 6 February 2020 (UTC) — Skunkworks22 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]

Isn't it peculiar that two different advocates of keep have disputed my characterization of Jensen's views as "white supremacist," when the excerpt I quoted from the lede of Race and intelligence says that "Arthur Jensen championed the view that for genetic reasons, African people were less intelligent than white people"? How much more explicit can you get? As far as Jews are concerned, it's also peculiar that editors would refer to Jews as a race. As far as I'm aware, Jewish people consider Judaism to be a religion -- no more a race than Catholicism, Buddhism, etc. -- and regard the notion that Jews are a race as offensive and anti-semitic. NightHeron (talk) 00:24, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The hypothesis that genetics play a role in the racial IQ score gap is widely studied in the scholarly community and certainly isn't a "white supremacist" view. The fact that some white supremacists might also hold this view won't change this. And, as for Jews, sorry, your information is wrong. As per Law of Return, any person with any amount of documented Jewish ancestry up to the 3rd generation is eligible for Israeli citizenship, even if that person isn't religious at all or is of a different religion. Besides, even if Jews did not view themselves as an ethnic group (which they do), the fact that they are one has been repeatedly confirmed through genetic testing. O̲L̲D̲S̲T̲O̲N̲E̲J̅A̅M̅E̅S̅ 01:41, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
You're making no sense. The article Law of return says: In 1970, the right of entry and settlement was extended to people with one Jewish grandparent and a person who is married to a Jew. That in no way shows that Jews regard Judaism as a race. And how do you "confirm" an ethnic group through "genetic testing"? Maybe you should look up ethnic in dictionary.com.
Just because some fringe academics write articles in support of white supremacist theories, that doesn't mean that those theories cease being white supremacist. NightHeron (talk) 02:01, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I think Oldstone is speaking about how Ashkenazi Jews form their own population in genetic studies (try a DNA test), and possess a good amount of recent genetic ancestry from the Levant region of the Middle East. Many have always claimed ancestry from the Jews or Israelites in Judea. They're a genetic population in studies, and so are other ethnic groups ('ethnic' and 'population' are used more so as terms instead of 'race'). 2605:8D80:668:39E9:DB8E:11E8:912F:2CD0 (talk) 04:22, 7 February 2020 (UTC)— [[User:2605:8D80:668:39E9:DB8E:11E8:912F:2CD0]|2605:8D80:668:39E9:DB8E:11E8:912F:2CD0]]] ([[User talk:2605:8D80:668:39E9:DB8E:11E8:912F:2CD0]|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/2605:8D80:668:39E9:DB8E:11E8:912F:2CD0]|contribs]]) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
Are you the same IP editor as 2605:8D80:648:1B4D:5360:2F1D:EF2F:174C above, also geolocated to Rogers Communications Canada Inc, Toronto? -- Sirfurboy (talk) 10:12, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
NightHeron, actually your comment claiming Jews are not a race is one of the most anti-Semitic and offensive things someone can say about or to Jews. Although I am not suggesting you are anti Semitic, rather I think you are ill-informed of this subject matter. And Judaism and Jewish ancestry are not the same thing, although they heavily overlap, obviously.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 22:24, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Literaturegeek: If you wish to become at least a little bit informed about issues of Jewish identity before you next express a strong opinion on the subject, that's not hard to do. A 1-minute Google search reveals many places that discuss this intelligently, such as: [1][2], [3]. It's clear from the sources that the consensus view among Jews is that Jews are not a race. Moreover, many Jews consider the notion that Jews are a race to be dangerous, because it is a common view among white supremacists, Holocaust deniers, and other anti-semites. So no, I was not expressing an anti-semitic view when I said that Jews are not a race. Quite the contrary. NightHeron (talk) 15:39, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
From the publication Confronting Anti-Semitism of the Anti-Defamation League: Today, anti-Semitism can be based on hatred against Jews because of their religious beliefs or their group membership (ethnicity), as well as the erroneous belief that Jews are a "race."[4]
I was unaware that this is a "hot topic", do you have any reliable sources that describe an ongoing public debate? –dlthewave ☎ 23:08, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
362 million Ghits. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:33, 7 February 2020 (UTC).[reply]
This isn't a WP:MEDRS quality source, so I wouldn't suggest to cite it in the article itself, but it gives a good overview of the public debate that's existed recently: https://areomagazine.com/2018/04/18/sam-harris-ezra-klein-and-the-politicization-of-science/ 2600:1004:B14D:2F77:A5C5:E4DE:D21D:793A (talk) 01:56, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
This topic is not covered by WP:MEDRS (it is not medical). --AndewNguyen (talk) 03:19, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The articles under discussion and their references list dozens of books and articles from the publication of the Bell Curve in 1994 until today. That's excluding the thousands of sociological studies on achievement gap between groups. Some of the anti-hereditarian researchers like Turkheimer and Nisbett are rather active publishing and blogging about this, e.g. debating with Charles Murray in a series of Vox articles in 2018 (or 2019). Or the popular books by Nicholas Wade and two by Angela Saini, both journalists, all in the last few years. I'm relatively new to Wikipedia editing so maybe someone can say how many examples of what recency would suffice to qualify this topic as WP:N-worthy Notable. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 04:54, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Flyer22 Frozen, well argued. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:51, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
WP:RELAR gives the example: "clearly Joséphine de Beauharnais will contain a significant amount of information also in Napoleon I of France; this does not make it a fork." so this applies to articles with considerable overlap that are not the same subject. The article at History of the race and intelligence controversy is more than a considerable overlap - it is the same subject. It is not just a subsection of Race and intelligence - it is saying everything encyclopaedic that can be said on the subject, except for the specialist subjects of Heritability of IQ, Race and genetics, and The Bell Curve (and even here the history article covers these subjects fully too). The history article is properly a sub article of Scientific racism, not of this article which does not have anything to say that is not covered in these. Also, although Wikipedia is not for cleanup, WP:TNT applies and there is simply nothing in this article that needs keeping. The mature coverage is comprehensive in the history article. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 07:45, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Sirfurboy, what the non-racist investigation and evidence of the differences in intelligence between racial and ethnic groups? That's what belongs principally in this article and not in those others. Jweiss11 (talk) 23:36, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Changing the title to "Group differences in psychometry" would seem to address all those points. The question of how real and precise "race" and "intelligence" are is not actually that important for purposes of the science or the nature/nurture controversy, in the sense that all the different ways of making them precise in particular studies correlate extremely well with each other. To the extent that there are complications, the researchers are usually well aware of that, are trained to be well aware of that, and comment on the difficulties in the published papers which are refereed by people who are well aware of that. The results in mental testing actually are much more replicable than in most fields of psychology and social science. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 05:28, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good to me. There's a discussion on a possible rename at Talk:Race and intelligence#Rename to Race and IQ scores. Do you want to take this idea there? HiLo48 (talk)
As someone who didn't participate in the earlier discussions, I find that insulting. How about you actually tell me what's wrong with my views? HiLo48 (talk) 07:22, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hilo, your reply is unnecessarily combative/uncivil and seems very eccentric. Hrodvarsson made a neutral chilled out opinion that does not mention you but yet your reaction is to take personal offence where you somewhat demandingly instruct him to analyse your viewpoint and refute it. Bizarre. You may want to strike.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 10:17, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hrodvarsson, the 2011 AfD responses all argue for the notability of the subject or that the nominator's rationale was in error. This AfD recognises that the subject is notable and should be covered in Wikipedia, and the arguments are that it is comprehensively covered in a suite of articles, including one on the exact same subject. The argument here is not that we should remove notable information. Thus the 2011 AfD responses are not relevant to this discussion. The question for us to answer is whether having this article adds anything to the Wikipedia project. What is best for Wikipedia and the educational value of our content? If we have comprehensive coverage of the issue, and if that coverage is not coming from this article, then this article is merely preventing readers from finding that information. My proposal was not meant to be partisan. I am not asking us to remove educational information about this debate from the public eye. I honestly believed all sides of this debate would see that the educational benefit of having focused and mature content in all the other articles, visible and available, would be far better than having people land on a page filled with outdated and partisan commentary that, by the acknowledgement of all page editors, is not meeting Wikipedia's educational remit. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 10:30, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
There are many delete !votes that do not acknowledge that the topic is notable, so I felt the need to state the topic is notable. As I said in my comment, I do not think the topic fits neatly into any of the aforementioned articles. For the "History of..." article, it is similar to arguing 'we have an article on "History of China", so why do we need an article on "China"?'. That may not be a completely realistic example, but I believe it illustrates my position. Scientific racism is more of a sub-topic of this article than vice versa, and this article's content is not adequately covered there. (E.g. 20% of the "After 1945" section is simply details on one, primary-sourced Playboy interview with George Lincoln Rockwell.) And in your nomination you mention sickle cell disease, but we do have an article on race and health that covers this. Hrodvarsson (talk) 06:59, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep or rename to "Race and Intelligence controversy" and merge with [[History of the race and intelligence controversy ]] - Since when did controversy become a criteria for deletion? The fact there has been (and continues to be) so much controversy on the subject makes it more notable, not less. I do agree with some of the concerns about the title framing the issue in a wrong way, though. One way of counterbalancing this would be to improve the lead. Another possible solution is to merge with History of the race and intelligence controversy which has some overlapping content. Danski14(talk) 13:21, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Other similar pages do not have such titles. Perhaps the most analogous page in terms of title is vaccines and autism. The page it not mainly about the controversy, but about the findings. I think controversy of the topic could be a stand-alone page and also a subsection, but it is not identical with the topic. The relationship between these two is a matter of ongoing scientific work, not mere historical controversy. --AndewNguyen (talk) 16:35, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As I commented before, much has changed since the last AfD in 2011, because of the increasing use of the Internet to spread conspiracy theories, racism, pseudoscience, and alt-right propaganda. There is now much greater awareness of the dangers from this. Surely the vast majority of Wikipedia editors do not want Wikipedia to be used in this way. The danger is real, because of how widely Wikipedia is used by people who have confidence in its reliability. On average over 1000 people per day view the article Race and intelligence. In the lede they read that there's an academic debate going on about "the view that for genetic reasons, African people were less intelligent than white people." According to WP:FRINGE and WP:GLOBAL, Wikipedia should not give a WP:FALSEBALANCE in presenting fringe theories that disparage Africans (the same would apply to President Trump's belief about African nations being "shithole countries"). But it is difficult -- often impossible -- to get a consensus for removing racist content among the editors who gravitate toward this article. The article accomplishes nothing but to give credence to fringe white supremacist notions and tarnish the reputation of Wikipedia. NightHeron (talk) 12:53, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This is interesting argument. The increased use of the Internet to spread conspiracy theories, racism, pseudoscience, and alt-right propaganda is indeed undeniable. Did our policies also change? No. But this must be a policy-based argument to delete the page. Do this page spread conspiracy theories, racism, etc.? I do not think so. In fact, this page, although on a highly controversial subject, is written much better than a lot of other pages, which indeed may advertise someething or mislead. Thanks to many people who edited in a good faith and improved this page. My very best wishes (talk) 16:31, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Which is quite irrelevant. Wikipedia doesn't need holocaust or genocide. The question is whether this topic meets GNG, that is, being the topic of multiple, independent, published sources of presumed reliability. And it clearly does. Carrite (talk) 05:16, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Important to note: It seems the sudden and dramatic increase in the proportion of keep-votes and keep-comments starting two days ago is a result of off-wiki canvassing. I hope the closing admin takes this into account. NightHeron (talk) 22:27, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Where? Xxanthippe (talk) 23:36, 7 February 2020 (UTC).[reply]
I hope the closing admin ignores the above appeal as it's an attempt to poison the well against those with different opinions on the matter here. Jweiss11 (talk) 23:33, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Please read the comment immediately before mine. I'm not saying anything other than what's obvious. NightHeron (talk) 00:29, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That's super disingenuous. Just 18 days ago, when consensus wasn't going your way, you went out of your way to recruit editors from other pages who might agree with you. Now you're accusing other people of "canvassing" — without evidence — which is what you just did. You have lost my respect. This is blatant politicking. Toomim (talk) 02:05, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I can easily respond to User:Toomim's false accusation against me. On the talk page for Race and intelligence I suggested (more than once) that we get more editors involved by posting notices on related talk pages and WikiProjects. I had learned about the Talk:Race and intelligence discussion from a notice posted on WP:Fringe theories/Noticeboard, and I thought that notices posted on other pages would help get the discussion out of a rut. To the best of my knowledge no one took my suggestion, so (on 31 January, not 18 days ago) I put neutrally worded notices on the talk page for the most closely related article -- Scientific racism -- and on the talk pages of the WikiProjects that listed that article as High-importance or Top-importance. I did not notify any individual users, and did not select WikiProjects other than by obvious relevance to the article. This is compliant with policy. Finally, in my comment here, I was merely calling attention to the information presented in the previous comment by a user who, although leaning toward "keep" in their own opinion, was clearly bothered by off-wiki canvassing in support of "keep." Please read the comment of that user if you haven't already: [6]. NightHeron (talk) 13:01, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Can we please keep this civil. Toomim, you may wish to strike the above that appears to be a personal attack on another editor rather than discussion of the AfD, although I am sure you did not mean it as such. Jweiss11, Nightheron's statement is not actually required. The closing Admin (and I don't envy whoever that is) will take off wiki canvassing into account, and will also take account of other factors (such as whether an inactive account has suddenly popped up just to make a response, or whether an IP#s first edit was to respond here, or whether socks are involved, or whether a response makes an argument or is just a vote - AfD is not a vote). The number of keep or delete votes is irrelevant. What is relevant is the arguments made and the closing admin will take that all into account. We don't need to raise the issue, because that is just what they must do. I wonder, however, whether the size of this AfD and its controversial nature would warrant the closing admin looking for support from peers - maybe admin closure could be carried out by consensus of more than one admin, or even by steward involvement. That will be for the admins to decide. I have faith in the impartiality and fairness of this process. I hope we can all say the same, and thus avoid getting into a meta discussion. Thanks. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 08:03, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
ETA: Additional off wiki canvassing came from a twitter account of one "Nim Chimpsky"[7] (over 3,200 followers), clearly encouraging followers to get involved in what he saw as a vote (he said it was 13-11 for delete at the time of posting so was clearly just counting keep/deletes - he also forgot to count the nominator). He deleted his canvassing tweet of 5 February after the off wiki canvassing was noted here, but it can still be found in the google cache here. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 15:10, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Sirfurboy: The steward part is more justified by the 11k+ revisions part, but an multi-admin close would be interesting because of its potential to set precedent for years to come. ミラP 00:43, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
What is contested, is the format of the current article which is an inherent consequence of the page title "Race and intelligence". "Race" is a disputed concept (to deny this is denying science), and there is wide scholarly consensus that its application to human populations is a social construct. For some, the very notion of categorization into races is already racist (the prevalent view among scholars and laypeople in many European countries). For others, race is part their social self-identification, without any necessary implications of biologizing or even suprematist thinking (the mainstream view in the U.S. public). For a minority, "race" as applied to human populations is an objective biological taxonomic concept. "Race and intelligence" is thus not just "A and B" like "Vaccine and autism"; in the latter, A and B are well-defined concepts, and "Vaccine and autism" is a neutral way to cover the "Vaccine and autism" debate. "Race" however is disputed, and an article working under th title "A and B" is inherently not neutral when A is dipsuted, unless the article primarily adresses the dispute about A itself (cf. Race and genetics). The disputed nature of "race" inevitably leads to problems like WP:synthesis in this article. E.g. comparative IQ-studies that include sub-Saharan countries are not by itself connected to "Race and intelligence", unless you superpose the social construct "race" to the findings of studies that are neutral or agnostic about "race"; doing so is blatant synthesis based on a specific POV abbout the notion of race. This is apparent e.g. in the section "Global variation of IQ scores": the further-hatnote "Nations and intelligence" carries this flaw, as well as the opening statement "A number of studies have compared average IQ scores between the world's nations, finding patterns of difference between continental populations similar to those associated with race". The fact that the rest of the section is about Lynn & Vanhanen (who explicitly subscribe to the notion of racial differences) and their critics, alleviates it, but doesn't cure the inherent flaw.
About Peregrine Fisher's challenge to Sirfurboy ("If I found one sentence that was worth merging somewhere, would you change your vote?"): is Templeton (2001) covered in any other related article? Deleting this article without any mention of Templeton (2001) elsewhere would indeed be counterproductive. –Austronesier (talk) 11:51, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you Austronesier for possibly the most carefully considered comment on this thread, looking at all of the content in such detail. You also raise the first clear example of material on this page that is not found in other articles. The paragraph that references Templeton (2001) in section "Genetics of race and intelligence" is not found in the stated parent article for that section, Race and genetics. It should be, because the article references that page as the main page, so this section should summarise that page. The paragraph should be merged there. It would also deserve a mention in Scientific racism where it is clearly relevant, and I believe those updates should happen regardless of the outcome of this discussion. My view is that the one paragraph is insufficient reason to retain the whole article, but it is definitely information that should be presented to the reader. So thank you again for you clear, informed and balanced contribution. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 16:18, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Someone found a paragraph and you still want to delete. It seems like you want to delete, and don't really care if there's information to be used elsewhere. I know when I want to delete something, I don't care about the particulars myself. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 16:31, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
See my reply to you above. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 16:34, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • There are no any problems with WP:SYNTHESIS whatsoever. This is because such precise subject ("Race and intelligenc") as a whole appears in a large number of RS. Simple Google book search [8] immediately reveals on the first page of the search a couple of books with "Race and Intelligence" in the title of the book. In other words, the connection between the intelligence and race, whatever these terms could mean, was made in multiple RS (not by WP contributors) and the subject has been described in multiple RS as a whole (this is not the case of WP:COATRACK). My very best wishes (talk) 16:43, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Ironically, when I click on that Google search link, the first book that appears is Race and Intelligence: Separating Science From Myth, by Jefferson M. Fish (ed.). This RS does not make a connection between intelligence and race. Quite to the contrary, both concepts "race" and "intelligence" (the latter in the narrow one-dimensional and quantifiable sense) are questioned and deconstructed as ideological concepts of oppression. One summary by the editor is: "Racial categories are developed to serve social ends, including the justification and perpetuation of inequality. IQ testing has been a part of this of this process of stratifying groups." Don't get this wrong, this is no soapboxing for Fish's book, but just a random pick from a "simple Google search" that was supposed to show that the connection between intelligence and race is made in multiple RS: some of the sources in the search do indeed make the connection, others don't. Ok then, you might say: if even J.M. Fish uses the page title "Race and Intelligence", so how could there be an issue with the page title in WP? Fish and his colleagues use a title which at least gives a hint in the second part ("Separating Science From Myth") that they see both concepts and the "connection" between them on the myth side.
As for that censorship red herring: Race (human categorization) is a controversial subject and deserves a WP article, anything else would be censorship. Using the controversial term "race" in a title like Race and intelligence as if it were uncontroversial inherently violates WP:NPOV, and is inherently prone to WP:SYNTHESIS (cf. my examples above).
On a side note, I am surprised to see the high degree of empathy here, visible in the claims by some editors to know what other editors like or dislike. –Austronesier (talk) 20:31, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The "connection" above does not mean causual relation or correlation, but merely that the subject of "Race and intelligence" is notable because it has been discussed as a whole in a large number of RS. Yes, sure, there are numerous RS telling there is no any scientifically provable connection between the intelligens and race, and it is not even entirely clear what the "intelligence" and "race" mean. But these sources do discuss/connect them together as a coherent notable subject, which justify the existence of the page. We simply say what RS say on the subject. My very best wishes (talk) 01:56, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Correct, hence why nobody is suggesting deleting the History of the race and intelligence controversy article. The current Race and intelligence article is not about what the reliable sources say is notable on the subject. Onetwothreeip (talk) 02:31, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • As anyone can see by looking at these pages, the history of the controversy is a sub-subject of the controversy itself (same is true for histories of many other subjects). Of course the content of the "history" page could be merged into this page, but they are both very large. The "scientific racism" is simply a different subject. My very best wishes (talk) 16:15, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    On the contrary, Scientific racism is precisely about the discredited myth that a link exists between race and intelligence. What do you think it's about? Of course the history of the controversy is a sub-subject of the controversy itself, but are you trying to say we should rename this article to Race and intelligence controversy? If so, what sources/topics would belong in it that are not already covered by History of the race and intelligence controversy or Scientific racism? --RexxS (talk) 18:01, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The article isn't about what you are saying the article should be about. That would indicate the article should be deleted and recreated. Onetwothreeip (talk) 02:31, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Improving the article is not manipulating anything, let alone a conspiracy to make deletion likelier. Onetwothreeip (talk) 07:29, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
If you take out all the content that addresses the subject at face value—the very that differentiates it from Scientific racism and History of the race and intelligence controversy—then the delete arguments become stronger. Jweiss11 (talk) 07:34, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The content certainly did not address the subject "at face value". Instead itt entertained the ideas of Philippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen while providing contrary views from Richard Nisbett. Onetwothreeip (talk) 07:39, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Whether it's an improvement is obviously a matter of debate, as indicated by the current AfD conversation and the edit war resulting from the deletions. Improvement or not, it should not be done while the AfD is live by people with a COI. Why edit at all if you hope the article will be deleted soon anyway? Why can't it wait until it is known if the article will be kept or not? This article has been up for 16 years and suddenly when the AfD argument doesn't go your way a flurry of "correlated" COI edits starts. That's abusive regardless of your justification of the individual edits. Someone on my talk page asked me to improve the article, which I would like to do, but I will wait out the AfD process and so should anyone else with COI. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 07:44, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Editing during AfD is permitted and encouraged. I have made edits to the article before this AfD as well. There is no conflict of interest, and you are clearly misunderstanding what a conflict of interest means. Onetwothreeip (talk) 07:51, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I thank the IP editor for raising concerns and for linking to the article talk page where the same IP raised these. I note that Onetwothreeip (talk · contribs) made a full and complete refutation of the concerns on that talk page, and suggest that we don't therefore need to discuss it further here. The article talk page is the appropriate place to discuss editing of the article. The closing admin is now aware of your concerns and can see Onetwothreeip's response. Discussion on this page should concentrate on reasons to delete or retain the page. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 07:57, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It's understandable, and in some ways commendable, to always start replies in an excessively polite style. However, when you presume to referee your own AfD discussion, such as (in this case) jumping in to declare, preposterously or at the least self-interestedly, that a "full and complete refutation" has occurred; or swooping in with Walls Of Text filibustering against dissenting views; and acclaiming supporters (likewise declaring their posts as best-of-thread, unusually penetrating, etc) ---- it creates the impression that you are treating the question as personal property that you "own", and trying to manipulate discussion toward preferred outcomes by means other than direct logical persuasion. I am happy, indeed prefer, to continue any discussion of the WARNING on the talk page, but your repeated pushing and steering of the conversation is POV-pushing no matter how polite in outward form. Sticking to issues, answering objections and remembering that who raises the question doesn't own it would be a lot better and more polite in substance. Sorry for the lecture but it had to be said. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 09:17, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
OK, found: "Mr Ollie", who voted Delete, has attached SPA labels to some posters here, and from comment below he is not the only Delete voter doing this. Apart from whether the designation is correct in my case (it isn't), and I have no idea if it is correct as applied to the other users so labelled, this is clearly another way to manipulate the discussion. The people who want Delete really need to stick to arguments instead of the manipulative and propagandistic FUD about fakenewsCanvassedNaziRussianAltrightFascistRacistIQist trolls.73.149.246.232 (talk) 10:33, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
You can look through the history and find who did it. I asked someone who was doing a similar thing on their talk page if this is an allowed thing, no reply. User_talk:David_Gerard#Is_what_you_did_kosher? Since you can't tell who wrote what and when if they don't sign. They did not respond. Seems shady. Or maybe you can accuse all the people you dislike if you do it a certain way. Not sure. Extreme example would be to create a bot that accuses people and doesn't sign. Doesn't seem right to me. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 10:15, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Peregrine Fisher, you might want to see the deletion discussions on Template talk:Single-purpose account. The AGF concerns about this template have been raised before, but there tends to be a consensus to keep the template. ~~ Alex Noble - talk 10:40, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It's just a note to assist the closing admin, that they might want to check the editor's contributions when weighing arguments. Pretty standard on contentious AFDs. If the closing admin reviews and thinks it was unwarranted they will ignore it, no harm done. - MrOllie (talk) 13:10, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@MrOllie: adding an unsigned derogatory note to another editor's signature is utterly inappropriate and hostile behavior. I've never seen this practice before. I already reverted it once, but its seem that you have restored it. I encourage you to remove or I may be compelled to seek a remedy for this behavioral transgression. Jweiss11 (talk) 16:30, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm surprised you've never seen it, it is fairly common. There's a standard template for it, which you can find at ((Single-purpose account)), If you feel you need to report this somewhere go right ahead. - MrOllie (talk) 16:34, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Why? This page cites a lot of developments even after 2000. Yes, one could merge the content of the "history" page into this page, but they are both very large. The "scientific racism" is simply a related, but different subject. My very best wishes (talk) 16:22, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I checked your link [9], a commentary dated 2019, and it proves my point: the controversy is very much alive, rather than just a history. Other than that, this opinion piece is not good for sourcing. It just scores a few political points like crackdown on illegal immigrants and racism, points I completely agree with author about. My very best wishes (talk) 16:33, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
There have been developments in the History of the race and intelligence controversy since 2000, but they belong in the article dedicated to the history of the race and intelligence controversy, not this one. Scientific racism is the correct article to discuss the discredited notions that intelligence is linked to race.
The controversy is indeed still alive, as there are still many examples (as collected in Saini's book) that demonstrate the ease with which researchers can delude themselves into the sort of thinking that produces the "chopsticks fairy tale".
I'm not suggesting that Saini's book be used as a source here; it's much more appropriate to the history of the controversy article.
You still haven't explained what you think the scope of this article should be. Why not? --RexxS (talk) 17:29, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I do not see any serious problems with current organization of the page [10]. It is obviously different from organization of materians on the "History" page, as it should be different. Therefore, I think that megring these two different pages would be a bad solution (one should be a sub-page of another). I am not an expert in human ethnic groups or intelligence, but more familiar with the subjet of Race (biology)... My very best wishes (talk) 19:15, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Ignoring that the article is poorly sourced, this is absolutely not an "active area" of mainstream academia. Why would this subject make people uncomfortable, When the racialist claims are untrue? Onetwothreeip (talk) 20:09, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment -Thank you for your response, but once again, notability is not the question, as the article content will remain full and comprehensively covered by the suite of related articles including the one that is essentially on the same subject. However you are quite right that deletion would remove the page history from view, and you raise a good point about popularity of the topic, no doubte reflected by in-links to the page URL. The answer to that is to redirect the article. Scientific racism turns out to be the most popular reditrect suggestion above, and Scientific racism can then have a link to History of the race and intelligence controversy as a child link. All incoming links will still work, and a redirect preserves all the edit history. I trust that satisfies your concerns, and that you might agree that "redirect" is a suitable compromise. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 08:34, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Also: if this is a question about whether a fork exists, it is wrong venue for that. Carrite (talk) 05:13, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Thank you for your input. As above, notability is not the issue here as full coverage will remain. Arguments about this article being a troll magnet made by others are not WP:IDONTLIKEIT because again, the content remains in the other articles. The question is over the ability to make something out of this article that is encyclopaedic in view of the failure to do so to date. Finally you are incorrect to say this is the wrong venue to discuss whether a fork exists. The existence of the content fork is a reason for deletion covered in WP:DEL-REASON, specifically point 5. In view of that, perhaps you would consider changing your view to "redirect". -- Sirfurboy (talk) 09:35, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Again I have to ask Would Wikipedia have an article about Gender and Intelligence?   // Timothy :: talk  05:29, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Shoot, I was hoping we didn't have an article on that, so I could create it! Seems like I only ever get to create articles on minor subjects because someone got there before me. Anyways, Sex_differences_in_intelligence exists. Or else you mean something about transgender and intelligence? That would be interesting if their are reliable sources that cover that. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 05:40, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Another good AfD nomination to redirect to Sexism   // Timothy :: talk  05:58, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
TimothyBlue, with regard to the Sex differences in intelligence article, you must be kidding me. We are not going to delete a clearly valid academic topic such as Sex differences in intelligence, which is covered by sources such as this 2010 "Handbook of Gender Research in Psychology: Volume 1: Gender Research in General and Experimental Psychology" source, from Springer Science & Business Media and this 2015 "Learning and Memory: Basic Principles, Processes, and Procedures, Fourth Edition" source, from Psychology Press, because you don't like it. Discussion of sex differences in intelligence cannot simply be chalked up to sexism. There are sexist aspects to the topic, yes, but the literature on the topic is generally clear that most studies find either a very small difference in favor of males or no sex difference with regard to general intelligence. The literature is also consistent in finding a male advantage in mental rotation and assessing horizontality and verticality, and a female advantage in spatial memory. We aren't going to neglect to cover this topic and redirect it to the Sexism article or cover it by only covering a little bit of it at the Sexism article. The only material in that article that is relevant to the Sexism article are reliable sources that tie some of the findings to sexism or gender inequality (such as what is currently in the "Mathematics performance" section). Before I took to sourcing and tweaking that article, it was in dire need of cleanup. After this discussion about that article's overrealiance on primary sources, I overhauled the article so that it is significantly compliant with both WP:MEDRS and WP:SCHOLARSHIP. There is still more sourcing improvement and tweaks to be had. But the suggestion to delete the article? What? You might as well suggest that we delete the Sex differences in emotional intelligence, Sex differences in psychology, Neuroscience of sex differences and Sex differences in crime articles as well. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 07:07, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
That this article is among Wikipedia's top 0.1% of articles by popularity is all the more reason to convert it into a redirect to the superior History of the race and intelligence controversy, which would better serve readers curious about this historical fallacy. The problems with the Race and intelligence article begin with the name, which seems to suggest in Wikipedia's own voice that there is a relationship between race and intelligence. Consider the difference between an article named Graphology and an article named Handwriting slant and intelligence, or the difference between 11:11 (numerology) and 11:11 and major world events. Don't these "x and y" names encourage readers to believe that a meaningful connection between x and y exists? Ewulp (talk) 06:20, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, it seems that much of the argument in favor of deleting this article is motivated by a sort of ideological science denialism. When you have two or more populations of humans that have bred largely independently of one another for thousands of years, the chances that those two groups will have same mean and distribution of cognitive/psychological traits is vanishly small. A similar dynamic is obvious and non-controversial to most people when it comes human psychological traits or any traits when applied any sort of non-human life forms. But the human brain has not been except from the same general forces of evolution. The subject of this article is area an of legitimate scientific investigation. Jweiss11 (talk) 06:31, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
If the problem is that the title seems (to some people) to presumptuously "create" a connection between race and intelligence, then the obvious solution is to rename the page ---- as is under discussion on the talk page and in earlier comments. The history-of-the-controversy article has little overlap with this one other than sharing some of the same cast of characters. It is frustrating to see people keep repeating the false statement that either article subsumes the other. Also, had there been a notorious century-long controversy still in progress surrounding a mysterious correlation between handwriting and intelligence, of course that correlation would be Notable enough to have a WP page. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 06:53, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Pioneer Fund grantees and the occasional "maverick" researcher periodically publish findings that disintegrate quickly when their methodology is examined, in a pattern familiar from ESP research. This looks more like denialism than like controversy. In this article, Ian Tattersall states that human brain power finished evolving long before humans began dispersing from Africa to Asia and Europe. The same article describes a 26.3 point increase in IQ scores of Kenyan children between 1984 and 1998. Remarkable evolution in 14 years, or the result of better nutrition, parental literacy, etc.? Maybe Race and intelligence should be renamed Nutrition & parental literacy and intelligence, as these are a subject of legitimate study. Ewulp (talk) 08:01, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Good, so we can reference/include Tattersall’s views in the article rather than the insanity of deleting the entire article.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 08:29, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It would make much more sense to reference Tattersall in Heritability of IQ rather than try to shoehorn it into a an article that, as described, already assumes its conclusion in the premise of its title. This article can go and we can still comprehensively cover the subject. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 09:48, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]


"Race and intelligence" is a loose way of referring to a more specific subject "group differences in cognitive tests such as IQ". The core content of an article on group differences on IQ-like tests, will therefore be statements of the form "group A and group B differed by amount D on measure M". The most notable such material in the article, and the center of the controversy, is the statement about a one standard deviation black/white IQ gap in the USA.

Race and genetics article has no such comparative data, since it does not contain the word "IQ". The Heritability of IQ article has no such data, since it does not discuss "race". Scientific racism doesn't have it. The closest is history of the race and intelligence controversy which has no direct discussion of the IQ test score gap. It mentions differences in US scores once or twice in passing when quoting other material, buried under a mountain of other historical-political controversy stuff, not relevant to the question of group differences and how to explain them.

The proposal claims "notability synthesis" of this article from other topics, but the topic is directly notable. The references in this and related articles contain numerous secondary sources talking about the group comparisons and reasoning about that data, independent of any controversy. Most textbooks and handbooks on intelligence (as IQ) have a chapter on group differences. Textbook prominence is already sufficient for many topics to appear in WP and R&I has more than that (plus historical notoriety).

If the objection to having this material on WP is simply that publishing the sentence "whites outscore blacks by one Standard Deviation on IQ tests" is unacceptable, being somehow racist or impolite or helping Bad People, that should be stated clearly as it is a censorship policy. If the IQ data are considered OK, but the objection is to any discussion whatsoever of the possibility or probability of a genetic explanation for that data, that too is a censorship policy that should be articulated before it is acted upon. (There is no current basis for such censorship on the grounds of "scientific consensus", which is very much unsettled.)

73.149.246.232 (talk) 08:39, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Please see WP:BLUDGEON, —PaleoNeonate – 09:14, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Shortened. It would not get any shorter, and would fragment the thread more, to add multiple comments rather than a consolidated one. 73.149.246.232 (talk) 10:00, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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