Talk:Race and intelligence

I removed the following from the article:

There has been much speculation and debate (but not much research) on the relationship between race and intelligence. This article intends to report on:

1. the major opinions (attributed to their spokesmen), and
2. the clear and uncontroversial results of research studies

Ironically, section #1 will have to be much bigger than section #2.

I did so for three reasons. First, the first sentence is false; there has been a good deal of research on the relationship between race and intelligence (although many have questioned the quality and validity of this research). Second, the second sentence (this article intends to report on two things) seems unnecessary -- my sense is that all, or virtually all, Wikipedia articles try to delineate what is uncontroversial about a topic, as well as what are the major opinions in any controversy. Third, the third sentence seems unnecessary; I do not see any irony at all that a discussion of debates over race and intelligence would be bigger than a discussion of uncontroversial studies -- indeed, this is exactly what I would expect given the object of inquiry. SR

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There is some evidence to support claim that people who identify themselves as "white" score higher on standard intelligence tests than those who identify themselves as "black" and "Hispanic" in the United States, and this fits a general pattern in which socially dominant groups tend to score higher in IQ tests than socially marginalized groups.

There's no such "general pattern". Some minorities, like Jews and Asians score higher than average. And while you could argue than Jews are in better situation than Blacks, it's hard to claim that in case of Asians. --Taw

A good example of the confusion of heritability is found in the statement of international scholars published in the Wall Street Journal (see web-link above): "If all environments were to become equal for everyone, heritability would rise to 100% because all remaining differences in IQ would necessarily be genetic in origin." This claim is at best misleading and at worst, false. First, it is very hard to conceive of a world in which everyone grows up on the exact same environment; the very fact that people are spatially and temporally dispersed means that no one can be in exactly the same environment (a simple example will illustrate how complex social environments are: a husband and wife may share a house, but they do not live in identical environments because each is married to a different person). Second, even if people grew up in exactly the same environment, not all differences would be genetic in origin. This is because embryonic development involves chance molecular events and random cellular movements that alter the effects of genes. Third, even as far as genetics is involved, heritability is not a measure of phenotypic differences between groups, but rather differnces between genotype and phenotype within a population. Even within a group, if all members of the group grow up in exactly the same environment, it does not mean that heritability is 100%. All Americans (or New Yorkers, or upper-class New Yorkers -- one may define the population in question as narrowly as one likes) may eat exactly the same food, but their adult height will still be a result of both genetics and nutrition. In short, heritability is almost never 100%, and heritability tells us nothing about genetic differences between groups. This is true for height, which has a high degree of heritability; it is all the more true for intelligence. This is true for other reasons besides ones involving "heritability," as Gould goes on to discuss.

Their statement is 100% true and you politically-correct pseudioscientists think that you may be "smart" without ever studying biology. Basic fact of population genetics is that if X and Y influence Z, the bigger is the diversity of X, the bigger is it's influence on Z. So among genetically similar population, IQ depends most on environmental differences, while among enviromentally uniform population, it depends mostly on genetic differences. --Taw

Taw: First, ad homeneim attacks on fellow contributors have no place in this endeavor.

Second, what you write still does not mean that heritability is 100%.

Third, even what you write is addressing the influence of genetic determinants WITHIN a population. That is not the same thing as BETWEEN populations. SR

I have restored the deleted paragraph. DO NOT delete it just because you disagree with it. Stephen Jay Gould, like him or not, is an important contributor to this debate and readers have a right to know what he says. The article does not present the restored paragraph as "fact" (even though all qualified scientists would agree with it) -- it presents it as Gould's argument. That is, it is presented in an NPOV way. Deleting it is vandalism. SR

Unfortunatelly the article presents utter methodological bullshit that no self-respecting biologist would agree with as a "fact". The WSJ letter confirms that.

And to answer your arguments:

• One: There is way too much politics in Wikipedia articles. I don't care much about things like abortion or christianity, but when it starts to make problems in scientific aricles I easily get angry about that. Btw, have you ever met H.Jonat ? You would understand what I'm talking about. ;)

I am sorry that you are frustrated with some other participants. The fact remains that there are legitimate political issues concerning the science of race and intelligence. If you want to add to and improve Wikipedia's coverage of these issues, please do so. But it is the worst kind of politics to unilaterally silence discussion.

• Two: It doesn't matter if it's 100% or 95% or 80%, what matters it that it rises, and saying "genetical differences have 100% of influence in case of perfectly equal enviroment" means no more and no less than "as envirement is more equal, genetical differences have more influence, with asymptote of 100% influence in perfectly equal environment".
• Three: It doesn't matter at all. It works as well within "simple" population as within compound population. In fact there is no such thing as "simple" population. All big enough populations can be splited into subpopulations.

--Taw

These two points do not address the misunderstanding and misuse of the concept of "heritability." Nor do they apply very well to the specific ways that IQ tests have been used, at least in the United States. Yes, all big populations can be divided into subpopulations. And still, heritability within a population will not help understand differences BETWEEN populations. Nor does it address the more complex selationship between genes and the environment, including random molecular and cellular eevents that are basic to genetic reproduction (as --April addresses below, I think).

This more complex relationship has more profound and general repurcussions, that are entirely at stake in this discussion. For example, I am nearsighted and myopic. I inherited this from my parents (or at least my father) -- I do not question the genetic basis for this. Perhaps you would say it is 100% inherited. Yet, I can see fine, thanks to eyeglasses. My environment,including my social environment (and its technological accomplishments) help me -- even 100% (or close to it)! Don't you see the analogy to the race and intelligence case? Even if some element of "intelligence" is inherited, that doesn't mean that the environmentcannot also play a significant role in a person's intelligence. This is not a trivial matter, as The Bell Curve explicitly says that the government should NOT direct resources to improve the education of low IQ people, and resources currently directed to low IQ people should be redirected to high IQ people. This would be like saying that the health insurance that pays for my eye-exams and perscriptions should be diverted from people with genetically bad eyesight, like me, and given to people who were born with great vision! Yes, this is politics -- and yes, this at the heart of the race and intelligence debate, and this is one of the things Gould is geting at when he talks about how some second-ract scientists misuse the very important scientific concept of heritability.

The fact remains that books like The Bell Curve and by people like Rushton are racist and bad science. To criticize them is not to criticze science, it is to criticize bad science. To defend them in toto is not to defend science but to defend bad science.

-- SR

• • I agree that there is too much politicizing in articles concerning science, but I fear I must disagree with the source. You have not, Taw, answered one of the more potent criticisms against your position given above. Allow me to simplify it a tad, to be sure it gets addressed this time.

• • You have identical twins. If we suppose that it were possible to raise them in precisely the same environment from the moment of birth, would they have the same fingerprints?

• • No, they would not. This illustrates the point brought up above: heritability and environment are not the only players in this game. If you happen to be as aware of biology as you claim, would you care to explain "penetrance" to the class? You know, the chance of a gene to express a given trait, which is almost always less than 100% and quite often differs between - say - identical twins? How exactly does that square with your claim of 100% heritability given above?

• • I regret the caustic tone, but the assumption of scientific superiority from someone who is not, in fact, arguing a scientifically correct point happens to hit a number of my buttons. -- April

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The Bell Curve explicitly says that the government should NOT direct resources to improve the education of low IQ people

I haven't read the book. Where do the authors advocate the above? And what is their justification? (I personally feel that someone who has significantly less ability should get significantly more help. My friend runs a Kumon (math tutoring program). He spends a whole lot more time with the "slow" students than with the fast ones.

If somehow it could be proved that some race (say, blacks) had slightly (but significantly) less intellectual ability because of their heredity -- still, IMHO this would not ethically justify pegging them in menial jobs as in Huxley's Brave New World. I might be an "Alpha" but I really don't hanker to be served by people of genetically-engineered or genetically-inherited lesser intelligence.

This issue may not be resolvable scientifically yet. Perhaps it is protoscience. My personal experience teaching children leads me to correlate learning ability with desire to learn above all other factors. My religious faith teaches that all people are born (endowed) with the potential to become geniuses.

I daresay effective educational techniques are ten times more significant than race.

Anyway, if we are concerned with intelligence of persons (i.e., see intelligence as "good") -- why not focus on discovering factors that correlate with intelligence? Why not look for cause-and-effect relationships? (There's no point focusing on race, unless you have an a priori desire to treat all members of a race a certain way.)

If we discover that family income; or parents' educational level; or number of hours of TV watched per day; or whether parents insist that all homework is done each day; or whether phonics or whole language is used for teaching reading; or any other environmental factor is at least as significant as race -- then shouldn't we focus on manipulating these social factors, to help people become intelligent?

(I'm not sure what the above rant has to do with improving the article, but since I've sworn off injecting my opinions into articles, I thought I'd blow off some steam on a talk page.)

Ed Poor

• Hi, Ed... to clear the air a bit, since there's been some recent friction, I thought I'd drop by to say how much I agree with you on this subject. On the "even if" race were a primary factor, I hold with Sojurner Truth: "If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours

holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?" Of course, as many people have tried to point out above, many (or most) of the arguments that claim race is an overwhelming factor are based on just plain bad science. I also agree with your argument that if an environmental factor is significant, we should make every effort to adjust that factor for kids in order to improve their learning, regardless of whether or not race may also play a factor.

• Unfortunately, the authors of the Bell Curve, and some researchers such as Jensen, make arguments far too close to Social Darwinism for me to stomach. They argue that we shouldn't "waste resources" on those who are "genetically inferior", but leave them to, I presume, the manual labor tasks they're "suited for"... gah. To my mind, it's not only racism (and eugenics, probably), but the ancient theme of the divine right of the lordly class, reworked under the guise of (pseudo)science. In sum, the science they use is poor, and the conclusions they draw from their findings are both unwarranted and, to me, reprehensible. But I, too, am ranting, and will stop here. -- April

I haven't read The Bell Curve, but only an article quoting from it. One of the excerpts shows that blacks with equal educational levels make more money than whites (in America). The authors attribute this to affirmative action. Could it not also mean that blacks have more ability than whites?

• sigh* I am still waiting for sociology to become a science. Robert Heinlein says, The difference between science and the "fuzzy subjects" is that science requires math; the fuzzy subjecs merely require scholarship.

BTW, Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn seems to me a lengthy argument that blacks are just as good as whites. The story recounts copious examples of whites acting stupidly and selfishly; these are contrasted with Jim's evident humanity and intelligence. The scene after the storm on the raft, where Jim calls Huck "trash" and makes Huck feel penitent, is sufficient prove (to me) that Jim is just as smart and good as any white man. Note: this scene appears in unabridged versions; I haven't seen it any of four movie versions or a condensed-for-children version.

I think the burden of proof should be on those trying to show innate inferiority. Absent that, I'm going to treat all people the same.

Ed Poor

• Yes, sociology's a worthwhile study, surely, but has perils of observer bias and qualitative analysis not as prevalent in the physical sciences. Your "burden of proof" comment is a good point, scientifically - however, it all depends on initial assumptions. You and I think the "default assumption" is a lack of systematic innate differences in ability, and the responsibility of objectors to prove otherwise. Alas, I've heard it argued that one can as easily take the default assumption to be that current social inequities are biologically based - it's all in one's presumptions, which form the starting point for later scientific study. Tricky business. Perhaps this should be pointed out in the article, to bring this back on-topic.

• I agree on Huck Finn, too. Huck and Jim are equally well-developed characters... and the "lynching" scene is a bitter and graphic testimony to the horrors racism can induce. I go nuts when people want to censor Huck Finn because it contains the word "nigger" - those people can't have actually read the book, surely, or they'd seen how very harshly it condemns the racism prevalent Twain's time, not to mention racism in general. Is this discussed in the article on Huck Finn? I think it should be... -- April

We do not achieve balance by deleting vast amounts of pertinent text! Balance is only achieved by doing some research, and adding more material to the article. Balance by deletion would end up destroying most of Wikipedia. Please, people, understand that all Wikipedia articles are growing works in progress. They need contributions, not scissors. I vote to restore the deleted text. If a particular argument is adavanced to remove some of that text, that would be a different story. RK

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The only way to neutralize this article is to retitle it: "race VERSUS intelligence"

Thus implying that those that have a 'race', have proportionately less intelligence, and those that have 'intelligence', have no race at all. That said, the article can say any moronic thing it wants, since rational people will get it immediately and ignore it, letting irrational people debate this 'issue'. Feh.

If you do not want to discuss the science and sociology behind this topic, then fine. But some of us do. Please do not hinder our efforts to work out an accurate survey of the field. We all understand that this is a sensitive issue, but we cannot let political correctness define what an encyclopedia can discuss. This is a valid field of study, and I think we can and should summarize it here. Of course, I understand how badly this field has been misused in the past...but all branches of science can be misused. That doesn't deligitimize the mission of science itself, nor does it mean that we must give up on objectively trying to discuss it. It just means that we have to try hard to be fair and objective. RK

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Oh for the love of Mike, STV stop marking everything minor! It's impossible to work sensibly when you keep hiding your changes. Tannin 03:53 Feb 8, 2003 (UTC)

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Any sentence that starts with "Mitochondrial dna evidence, carrying markers in the male Y chromosome," is scientifically illiterate. There's no mitochondrial DNA in any chromosome, let alone the "Y" chromosome: mitochondrial DNA is extrachromosomal. The female mitochondrial-DNA ancestor of all people ("mitochondrial Eve") and the male Y-chromosomal-DNA ancestor of all men (sometimes called "Adam") need not have known each other and need not have been contemporaries: the most recent common ancestor of all Homo sapiens is probably much more recent than either of the two of them. -- Someone else 04:01 Feb 8, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, please clean that para up for us, Someone Else. I'll do it if no-one else does, but it's best done by a real biologist. (Please note - it was not me that added it, though I may have restored it im my edit conflict confusion.) Tannin 04:07 Feb 8, 2003 (UTC)

PS: my assumption is that the original idea was to cite mDNA ("Mitochondrial Eve", so called) and more the recent Y chromosome research ("African Adam"). That would make sense, at any rate. Tannin

If /when the article stabilizes, I'll be happy to make any changes that are still necessary. I don't have the patience for "warfare"<G>. Wasn't accusing anyone in particular of adding it, just noting that it's nonsense in its current state. With any luck, it'll disappear when someone makes a go of defining "race". -- Someone else 04:14 Feb 8, 2003 (UTC)

I just read this passage and was about to angrily complain about the stupidity of that sentence on this talk page. Thanks for beating me to the punch. In other news, this article is a steaming pile of merde. It has no structure at all. I'm not interested in repairing this, but for those of you who seem to want to throw yourself mercilessly against this particular wall, please consider making an outline for how this article should flow, writing an introduction, and giving it some semblance of order. Thanks, Graft

Please, Someone else , go ahead, Tannin - the statement still holds... significant is an exageration, or at the very least is unclear. Even small changes can be seen as significant. -Stevert

We don't have to pussyfoot around saying "there may be a relationship" between intelligence and genetics. There is a relationship, a very powerful one. No biological or social scientist on the planet doubts that simple fact. This is why the average human is more intelligent than the average yeast - because there is a genetic difference between yeasts and humans. That fact is unquestionable. So is the fact that different humans have different mixes of genetic ability. The only place where we need to start confusing the reader by using "ifs", and "maybe"s is once we get onto considering the question of if there is reputable evidence to show racial differences in intelligence or not. Here there is controversy. Where the genetic difference is large - between human and lobster, for example, or between Border Collies on the one hand and Afghans on the other - there is no controversy and no doubt. But when you start comparing groups where the genetic difference is very small (such as human races, or Labrador and Golden Retriever) there is doubt.

I take issue with the above claim, which appears commonsensical and obvious, but which I think makes a pre-Darwinian and mistaken assumption. It is true that you can compare species along simple measures -- for example, I weigh less than an elephant; I weigh more than a mouse. We do not think that these differences signal superiority or inferiority because we understand that our different sizes are the results of natural selection, and are adaptive to different niches.

I am not sure that "intelligence" is somehing that can or should be compared so easily as height or weight. If by intelligence we mean "g," then I think we are talking about a uniquely human intelligence -- it is not something we have more of compared to chimps or dogs, it is something we have that they do not have. But this too does not signify inferiority or superiority. It is merely an important part of that package of adaptations that make us human.

One of Darwin's main points was that different species are adapted to different niches. The logic of Darwinian and post-Darwiniian studies of evolution is that there is just no point to saying that among contemporary species, one is "more evolved" than another -- all are equally evolved, but in different ways for different niches. As long as we define intelligence from a human point of view, that is, in terms of capacities crucial to our species' adaptation to its niche, then of course it will be something other species do not have.

And if you want to define intelligence in some more universal, non-humancentric way, then I think you would have to argue that each species has its own kind of intelligence. Elephant, mouse, or border-collie intelligence would have to measured in a very different way than human intelligence; the measurements themselves ought not be compared from one species to another.

I do agree that the article needs to make one point very clear: that human intelligence is a product of our evolution and in that sense has a genetic basis. But the above comment misunderstands the context of the point in question: when comparing subjects that are "more" or "less" intelligent, we are not talking about comparing humans and chimps, we are talking about comparing me and you, or Blacks and Whites -- in other words, human subjects. Since all the subjects are human, the genetic component (meaning in this specific instance whatever it is that defines us as human rather than as chimps or dogs) is the same. The claim that there "may" be a relationship between intelligence and genetics means among humans, concerning intra-specias comparisons. This needs to be clearer, I agree. Slrubenstein

I agree, but that wasnt well put, nor is that the thrust of an article about race and intelligence. This topic is suspect to begin with, given a long history of eugenics-pseudoscience, and this is the basic thrust. Once that is dealt with, then you can talk about the superobvious - "dogs arent as smart as people. this is because of their jeans." Not to make fun, but you know what I mean. :)--Stevert p.s. And I corrected the Y chroma part - "paternal half" of the dna, is clearer.

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This article should be deleted :

• there are no races;
• there is no definition of intelligence.

Ericd 23:50 Feb 8, 2003 (UTC)

In your view. In the view of many. But not in everyones view, and this project is committed to NPOV.

Moreover, there has been a lot written about race and intelligence, so any good encyclopedia must have an article on the topic. The article should be balanced, and represent current debates fairly -- this would include, as I think the current article does, some discussion of the view that neither "race" nor "intelligence exist as objective biological facts.

Delete the article and something worse will take its place, and an opportunity to educate will have been lost. Slrubenstein

Maybe your right but I'm not sure.An article about a question that hasn't any sense might suggest that the question has sense. What about including this in an article about racism for instance ?

Ericd 00:06 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

The article is not about the "fact" that races are biologically real and that genetics explains differences in intelligence between races, the article is about a debate between people who propose and dispute this alleged fact. For you, the question does not make sense. It doesn't make sense for Gould (did you read the article? Didn't you read all the stuff about Gould?), yet he wrote a book about it because it is an important topic. In any event, for you to claim the question does not make sense is YOUR point of view. But our articles have to be NPOV!

I do agree that the article on racism can mention the claim that races differ in intelligence as an example. Go ahead! But remember NPOV policy. Slrubenstein

I don't want any war as we seem to agree. But I still wonder if some articles titles are not POV by themselves. I am of those who believe that good questions are often more important than responses. This is worth both for the article and for my comments.

Ericd 00:19 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

Darwinism is scientific and refers to adaptability. Most Europeans or Americans are not adapted in Burkina Faso. Ericd 23:55 Feb 8, 2003 (UTC)

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I rewrote the introduction in an attempt to make it clearer without cutting content.

I did, however, cut this content:

Its important to remember that human beings are proven to be virtually indistinct from each other. Markers in the dna, inherited nearly identically to males via the paternal Y chromosome, have shown all people to be related to a small African population of only 5 to 10 thousand, at around 75 thousand years ago. What this means, is that there is so little in terms of differences between "races" the concept of race, itself, becomes scientifically insignificant. Many still fail to understand this basic fact, and obsolete, "old science" concepts of race still sometimes hold virtue in current discourse.

Within nature versus nurture research, however, science sometimes shows anomalies, which some misinterpret to mean a causal relationship between genes and later qualitative quantities of human development.Within nature versus nurture research, however, science sometimes shows anomalies, which some misinterpret to mean a causal relationship between genes and later qualitative quantities of human development. But research takes a very long time, and this applies to developments along the way: Each development, despite its scientifically important contribution, represents only a small step towards a larger goal of associating genetic factors with results in human beings. Geneticists often come under scrutiny for being goal-oriented in their research, as opposed to being objective and scientific.

While there may be research that shows some interesting information, is often taken out of context by uninformed members of the media. A small corrolary in graphed values between autism, for example, and female 'hereditary factors', may often be reported as: "Autism may be inherited from Mom." See Mass media and science reporting[?]

which I believe is simply too tangential for this article. I do not mean it is unimportant. I suggest incorporating it into the articles on Race and Nature versus Nurture[?]. The current introduction has clear links to these articles, so readers will have easy access to this content. Slrubenstein

I agree.

Ericd 01:09 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

Errrr ... I hate to bring this up, but - provided we assume that stupidity is indeed universal - then it's reasonable to conclude that any theory based on this 'fact' must be untestable by humans because humans are too stupid. </joke mode> <normal mode> I don't think that para is terribly helpful. Tannin

It wasn't serious but I don't believe the question of Race and intelligence is serious. Ericd 04:26 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

More seriously the word "evidence" as used in this article is not acceptable in from a scientific pov. There is no evidence of a relationship between Race and intelligence at best (or at worse) a relationship with IQ results. Ericd 04:46 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

Depends on the definition of "intelligence" you are using, Eric. If you use a commonsense lay defenition, you are absolutely right. On the other hand, if you use the most widely accepted psychological definition of intelligence, then not so.

Intelligence is what intelligence tests test. That's H J Eysenck's famous definition, and unless psychology has changed a good deal since I took my degree, still the only really well-established one that has broad agreement (unless we wander of into the realms of conceptual definitions that are impossible to operationalise). (By the way, we should remember that Eysenck was a major figure in psychology generally and IQ testing in particular, and also a partisan in the race & IQ debate.)

This is where the whole issue gets tricky. Seems to me that all of the current participants in this topic (you, me, SLR, STV, Ortolan) agree that there is no useful or demonstrated relationship between race and intelligence. Which is as it should be: there isn't one. (And for once in my wiki-career, I am talking about a subject that I have formal qualifications in!) However, we seem to disagree about why the supposed relationship can be said to be nonsense.

• For you, it is because neither concept is terribly meaningful in the first place. (A view that I share emphatically, by the way.)
• For me, it is because the conceptual difficulties and sociological biases underly the idea of "intelligence testing" are so vast and murky that we don't even need to bother looking at the methodological issues. (And the same applies to "race", of course.)
• For April, it's because much of the work in this field seems to be little more than thinly veiled Social Darwinisim.
• For Uncle Ed, it is so that we can get on with doing useful things, like educating children better.
• For Slrubenstein, it is that "intelligence" is not a simple, easily measured thing like height or weight, that it is so complex a thing that we cannot make easy generalisations about it.

As an aside: it seems that SLR and I differ only in semantics here: I maintain that any simplified testable and measurable sub-set of "intelligence" (such as whatever it is that IQ tests test) is, and must of necessity be, so shorn of general meaning that it - in reality - becomes a 'simple dimension' like height and weight, and as such clearly does vary between individuals. This variation, however, is so bound up with cultural values that it is, in general, a useless thing to measure.

Putting the same thing another way, even a lapsed psychologist like me could easily knock up any number of different "intelligence tests" to demonstrate any particular between-groups social variations I chose. Assuming a modicum of funding for such a silly project, it would be simplicity itself to follow the exact same procedures that Eynseck and Catell & Binet et al followed in developing our current IQ tests, but within a different social grouping, and then use these new IQ tests to "prove" that intelligence varies between social groups in a completely different way to the way that Rushton and Jensen and Eynsenck proposed.

All you have to do is take a particular social group: "traditional lifestyle Australian Aboriginies", for example, or "the citizens of Ruwanda", or "members of the Aubdon Society", or "members of motorbike clubs", or "heros of the people's revolution". (The original IQ test developers used, in the main, "respectable white citizens of Middle America" - just as arbitary a group as the other ones I listed.) Next, you invent a scheme for measuring "success" - here in Western societies, we mostly use money, but some other things too. Finally, you try out an arbitrary set of tests, of whatever nature seems like a good idea at the time, and measure them as predictors of "success" (remembering to maintain whatever definition of "success" you started with). Those things you tested that yielded good correlations with success you keep, the ones that didn't correlate well, you discard.

That's it: you are done. You can now proceed to prove, in terms of the highly scientific Hells Angels' IQ scale (HAIQS), that Hells Angels tend to be more intelligent than Harvard graduates. Or, if you prefer, that white Australians are less intelligent than black Australians. Or ... anything you like, really. Wonderful stuff, psychology. In the end I gave it up and started selling used cars for a living. It was more honest, and probably just as scientific.

Tannin 05:53 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

"Since higher intelligence certainly is a product of better education and higher income." Waaouhhh ! "certainly"

Does education increase intelligence ? Does income increase intelligence ?

Nothing is certain.....

Ericd 04:53 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

For what it is worth, I do agree with both Ericd and Tannin, at least as Tannin represents the debate. I believe that all human beings (absent some neurological trauma) are capable of complex symbolic thought, and that this capacity is a product of our evolution -- beyond that, I think any definition of intelligence is culture-bound; I also think races are real and important but not in any biological or transcendent or essential way, only as social constructions.

But I also know there are many people out there, including people with PhD.s in psychology and biology, who disagree with us. As I mentioned to Ericd before, if we deleted this article, someone would just write an article presenting races, intelligence, and their corelation as fact.

What we need is an article that is truly NPOV -- which is as important when we happen to be right as when we are wrong. I do not think that this article should try to answer the question "is race real" or "what is intelligence" or "Does education increase intelligence" of "does income increase intelligence." What it should do is provide an informative account of a debate among scientists and others (a debate which, of course, does raise questions like what is intelligence and does it correlate more with genes or socialization -- my point is that the debate itself should be the focus of the article). Tannin, I especially like your comments above about psychological tests for intelligence and I really hope you will put much of that content into the article. Slrubenstein

Naturally people will disagree with you if their invested in making a living sucking state-sector science funds off to 'study' crap like this. Gary

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"In early US IQ testing, Americans of African descent, Jews, and other recent immigrants from Europe, were assigned significantly lower average scores (mean of 85) than "white" people (mean of 100), with "Hispanics" somewhere in between. These studies were later rejected as badly flawed for a number of reasons, notably because they did not control for the relationship between IQ and education level or income. Since higher intelligence certainly correlated with better education and higher income - and indeed it is in part defined as the ability to have an education and earn income - the lack of a correction for these factors made the earlier studies scientifically useless. However, some later studies in the same tradition have attempted to make corrections for the lack of control; certain of these make the measured IQ gap only slightly smaller; provided one ignores the vast conceptual problems posed by IQ testing and simply examines the detailed methodological isues, these studies suggest that a significant gap does exist, but, curiously, find no significant IQ gap between "white", "Jewish" and "Asian" people. These studies have received an extremely skeptical reception in the scientific community, partly because of methodological problems in studies in the early 20th century which purported to show large IQ deficits in Irish and southern European immigrants to the United States"

This paragraph is fuzzy about the method. From a statistical POV this kind of studies led to Multiple Correlation Analysis, it would be interresting to see the coeff. for the ethnic group.

It's worth to notice also that recent immigrants are not representative of an ethnic groups. Recent immigrants were generally not members of the upper-class in their country of origin. The social bias is obvious.

Ericd 17:08 Feb 10, 2003 (UTC)

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This article needs subheadings to break it up into logical sections.

I agree, although I do not have the time right now and I wouldn't want to make major changes (even if only in the organization of the article) without getting Ericd and Tannin's imput, or others. But I would suggest:

1. A brief account of the controversy (basic facts about Burt, Jensen, and Murry & Hernstein)
2. A very very brief mention of controversies about "race" and a link to that article
3. "Intelligence"
   1. debates over the reality of "g"
   2. issues in measuring "g"
4. the realtionship between heredity and IQ scores
   1. what does correlation mean?
   2. what does heritability mean?
5. the relationship between socioeconomic status and IQ scores

What do others think? Does anyone want to start on this? Slrubenstein

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I rewrote parts of the introduction, I'll explain why: I deleted the following: "Since ancient times, intelligence (or "wisdom") has been considered a valuable attribute of human beings, and many writers have described how this attribute may be found or bestowed or developed." because it is fluff -- what doe we mean, "since ancient times?" And valued by whom? Socrates was wise and they killed him. I deleted the following "Many scholars, such as anthropologists and psychologists have described or speculated upon a cause-and-effect relationship between race and intelligence, most frequently suggesting that skin color correlates with (or "determines") one's intelligence level." only because I think the rest of the intro makes this clear (I have no substantive problem with the sentence). I replaced both of these sentences with a well-informed and historically accurate and more specific account, focusing on the West and detailing changing debates that started in the 17th century and continued into the 19th century -- more informative than "since ancient times" I think.

I deleted this "Towards the end of the 20th century, there has arisen considerable debate among natural, behavioral, and social scientists, as to the reality of this relationship." since it is wrong, the debate began in the early 20th century and I made this clear. I deleted "Some of this debate veers off into social science and politics, focusing on the extent to which race and intelligence are meaningful terms, with some writers rejecting the concept of "races" entirely (more on this aspect of the debate at Race)." because the "veering off" is editorializing and bizarre -- the subject of the sentence includes "social scientists" yet the predicate has them "veering off" into social science -- how is that a "veer?" Moreover, the question of "the extent to which race and intelligence are meaningful terms" is in no way a "veering off," it is a central methodological and theoretical question to the scientific issue at hand.

I also reinserted "important" before genetic differences; this is vague, I admit, but incontestable Slrubenstein