Kudos to MathSci for the amazing job he has done with this article. It is superb. I might have an objection to some phrasing here and there (especially with regard to the description of Jensen (1969)), but progress has been made on those disputes in the past and I hope for more progress in the future. But, big picture, 99% of the material here is just amazing and accords to the very best standards of Wikipedia. Indeed, perhaps it should be nominated as a featured article? David.Kane (talk) 14:53, 15 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that overall, this article is pretty good now, although I still have some NPOV issues with it also. My main objection at the moment is to the paragraph describing Jensen's interaction with right-wing groups in Europe, which seems to cherry-pick information about Jensen in order to cast him in a negative light. If this is how the sources describe this topic, the problem is probably that the selection of sources being used for this paragraph isn’t balanced enough, since three out of four of them take a very negative view of Jensen and his theories. If we're going to describe Jensen's involvement in politics, I think we should also mention the fact that he not only avoided involvement with segregationists in the United States; he also made it clear at several points that he was morally opposed to the idea of racial segregation. I also notice that Mathsci has also added Linda Gottfredson's article "Egalitarian fiction and collective fraud" as a source, but none of the information in Gottfredson's article is actually presented here. I think the Wikipedia article would benefit from the addition of some content from this source.

None of these things should be all that difficult to change, though, as long as Mathsci can be careful to keep the article in compliance with NPOV. I agree that as long as he's being careful about this, he can produce some very good articles. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:51, 16 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There's a harvtxt link to the Gottfredson article. I don't see a particular reason to include any more of her political statements, unless a reliable secondary source has quoted them. The essence of her argument has been made: those that do not agree with her point of view, that there is a genetic basis for racial differences in intelligence, are lying. Isn't that what she has written? Adding more examples of such statements would be WP:UNDUE (it obviously isn't inaccurate), unless as I say reliable secondary sources have mentioned those aspects. But after all, isn't Gottfredson a relatively minor figure academically? By contrast Luigi Cavalli-Sforza, Steven J. Gould, Christopher Jencks, Richard Lewontin or Leon Kamin are not particularly well represented from the point of view of their scientific contributions to the debate or their academic eminence. That said, the article is not really very much about science. In part it charts what happens when researchers from one discipline - psychology - try to use ideas from very different disciplines - evolutionary biology and genetics - with no formal training and with very unclear motivation.

In looking for new images (very difficult due to copyright on WP), I did by chance watch this video of Rushton talking about bushmen of the Kalahari and Australian aborigines as part of a talk he gave at the 2006 AmRen conference (he seems to have posted this video himself).[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmdxUeo4M9Q&feature=channel] Right at the end he talks about Flynn "cherry picking". Is this real life imitating the talk pages of wikipedia? I'd be more interested to see a talk in front of an unconverted audience. Mathsci (talk) 10:44, 16 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In part it charts what happens when researchers from one discipline - psychology - try to use ideas from very different disciplines - evolutionary biology and genetics - with no formal training and with very unclear motivation.

This is an incredibly crass statement. In your opinion, behavioural genetics is an invalid discipline, and the article should reflect this? Do you have some kind of fundamental objection to interdisciplinarianism? I'm not actually aware of any valid criticism of Jensen's use of genetics, so why would you say this? mikemikev (talk) 11:20, 16 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A defense of interdisciplinarty sounds rather funny coming from you Mike. When I talked about how most Anthopologists rejected the Jensenist race and intelligence paradigm you were very quick to state that anthropologists opinions about genetics related subjects shouldn't count. Yesterday I presented Sternberg, Grigorenko and Kidds opinions on the (in)validity of race as a biological concept and you were quick to dismiss suggesting that no authority in genetics had the same opinion (and when presented with two topnotch geneticist expressing the same opinion in several (admittedly second hand) quotes you dismissed them as well.) You are not being very consistent in your application of scientific rigour here...·Maunus·ƛ· 11:41, 16 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) @Mikemikev: As far as I'm aware Behavioral genetics was not properly established in 1969. The first journal Behavior genetics appeared in 1971. None of the researchers on race and intelligence publish or are currently classified as working in that area as far as I know. Sociobiologists do, but that's a different topic. The statement I made - a general vague meta-comment - was just an aside, not a topic for open ended discussion. Lots of biologists have criticized Jensen's use of biology - I couldn't possibly comment whether they were right or wrong. Anyway wikipedia is not about WP:TRUTH. Mathsci (talk) 11:53, 16 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Maunus, you're confusing interdisciplinary and out of field. Whether race has biological validity is purely a question for biologists. Incidentally, I can reference a paper and a book from some apex sources where the answer is yes. Whether the racial IQ gap has a genetic component is very much interdisciplinary. mikemikev (talk) 12:26, 16 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

“The essence of her argument has been made: those that do not agree with her point of view, that there is a genetic basis for racial differences in intelligence, are lying. Isn't that what she has written?”

Actually no, and if you read the article from her, she makes it pretty clear that this isn’t her point. Her actual point is explained in the first paragraph of the article:

“Social science today condones and perpetuates a great falsehood - one that undergirds much current social policy. This falsehood, or "egalitarian fiction," holds that racial-ethnic groups never differ in average developed intelligence (or, in technical terms, g, the general mental ability factor). While scientists have not yet determined their source, the existence of sometimes large group differences in intelligence is as well-established as any fact in the social sciences. How and why then is this falsehood perpetrated on the public?”

Her point isn’t that academics are lying when they claim that there’s no genetic basis for the difference in average IQ between races, it’s that they’re lying when they claim that there’s no difference in average IQ between races at all. And then she goes on to explain how the claim that there’s no racial IQ gap is propagated, and how it affects the academic community. She also points out that the proportion of experts holding each opinion about the cause of the gap, as documented in the Snyderman and Rothman study, is also being misrepresented in the media. (Although that isn’t her main point.)

Something else you should keep in mind is that this article is itself a secondary source. The primary source that it’s summarizing is the Snyderman and Rothman study, which was published in its own separate book. For these reasons, I don’t think there’s any good reason for the Wikipedia article to not include any of what’s in Gottfredson’s article. And as I said, I think the section describing Jensen’s involvement in politics needs more balance also.

Are you willing to allow these things to be changed? I can try changing them myself, if I can trust you to not repeatedly revert me if I do. --Captain Occam (talk) 19:31, 16 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Mathsci, if you have any objection to what I'm proposing, I'd like you to please explain it now, so we won't end up having an edit war over this when I try to add it. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:02, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Focus on secondary sources. Primary sources can be only be used here with extreme care. If this is a notable topic, secondary sources will identify why it's notable, what kinds of claims and arguments are important, and who warrants mention and to what degree. I can't help but notice from the talk page there may be some confusion about the focus is supposed to be here. This article is not to rehash the debate. It's to describe key events and issues that took place in the debate. It's not about plugging holes or reviving the debate before a new set of judges. In articles about controversial topics, if an editor is looking in primary sources to select arguments or issues to address here, 99 times out of 100 it's going too far with primary sources. Professor marginalia (talk) 01:22, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Professor marginalia, especially when the primary sources are controversial or polemic as is the case here. Looking at the secondary source I used (Winston), he has a footnote which discredits Gottfredson's interpretation:

Rushton's (1994) notion of the "equalitarian fiction" is that Blacks and Whites are genetically equal in cognitive ability. Gotffredson's (1994) notion of the "egalitarian fiction" is that "racial-ethnic groups never differ in average developed intelligence" (p. 53). I have never seen a scholarly source which maintained that groups never show mean differences in intelligence test scores. Gottfredson gives no reference for anyone who holds this position.

In other words the secondary source indicates that the primary source is making untenable assertions. That's why we use secondary sources in cases like this. Mathsci (talk) 02:09, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As I said, Gottfredson’s paper is a secondary source; the primary source she’s writing about is the Snyderman and Rothman study, which is what originally documented the existence of this discrepancy between the views or researchers and what’s reported in the media. If you read the Snyderman and Rothman study, you can see for yourself what data this study’s conclusion (and hence Gottfredson’s conclusion) is based on. You’ve provided another secondary source which disagrees with Gottfredson’s conclusion, although apparently not commenting on the primary source which Gottfredson’s conclusion is based on, and which is about as strongly opinionated as Gottfredson’s article is. What do we do at Wikipedia when there are two conflicting viewpoints about a topic that both appear in the source literature? The answer is to include them both.

We’ve done this for lots of other parts of the article, such as mentioning that some sources associate Shockley with Jensen becoming a hereditarian, while Jensen himself credits Eysenck for this. What I’m suggesting is that we present Gottfredson’s view about the Snyderman and Rothman study, as well as any other views we can find also. If Winston talks about this study specifically, then that includes him. --Captain Occam (talk) 02:56, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure I understand what your meaning here. I couldn't locate what claim Gottfredson 1994 is supposedly referencing. If she's a secondary source, what claim is it referencing? The fact that someone issues an opinion i]doesn't necessarily insure it's a notable opinion. Professor marginalia (talk) 03:35, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Gottfredson is summarizing the conclusions of both a 1987 academic paper by Snyderman and Rothman, and a book these authors wrote the following year in which they present the conclusions of their study as well as some additional data they’d gathered about the same topic. The original study is Survey of Expert Opinion on Intelligence and Aptitude Testing, which was published in Vol 42(2) of American Psychologist, and the book is The IQ Controversy, the Media and Public Policy.

Were you just wanting me to point you to the primary sources that she’s summarizing, or did you want me to go into more detail about them? If it’s the latter, this study has its own Wikipedia article also. --Captain Occam (talk) 03:59, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, I meant what claim in this article is being cited? Professor marginalia (talk) 04:03, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean what claim in the Wikipedia article? Right now, nothing in this article is being cited to the article by Gottfredson, although Mathsci has added the Gottfredson article as a source. And what I’m suggesting is that now that Gottfredson’s article is being listed as a source here, we should add some content that’s actually cited to this article, because Gottfredson’s article discusses some notable and relevant topics that currently aren’t covered here.

Do you agree that now that this article is listed as a source, it would reasonable to add some of its content to the article? --Captain Occam (talk) 04:26, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No. I don't have an opinion yet. So let me ask further, why was it added as a source? Professor marginalia (talk) 04:52, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You need to ask Mathsci that. He’s who added it as a source, and I have no idea why he added it if he was opposed to including any information from it in the article. --Captain Occam (talk) 05:11, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. But I shouldn't be the only one here asking this question. We need to focus on how to properly craft a wikipedia article, not how to shoehorn in whatever with legalisticy appeals to fine-printy-ish technical loopholes. Professor marginalia (talk) 05:25, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You aren’t being clear about whether or not you think this information actually belongs in the article. I think it does, for the same reason as every other piece of information that’s in the article: because it’s relevant, notable, and described in several secondary sources, one of which Mathsci has already added to the article’s list of sources. If you consider this a “loophole”, or have some other problem with adding it to the article, you haven’t explained what your objection is to this.

If you think there’s something wrong with adding information from this source, I would like you to explain specifically what it is. WP:IDONTLIKEIT is never a valid reason to not include something. --Captain Occam (talk) 05:40, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm trying to be clear that we need more than yours, my, or any other wikieditor's opinion about what "belongs" because our opinions in "history of race/evolution controversy" don't count. What "counts" is what published reference materials indicate "counts". After two run-throughs all I've gathered is a) Mathsci added Gottfredson 1994 to the biblio and b) you say it's secondary to Snyderman-Rothman. Well, Snyderman - Rothman I don't see sourcing any claims anywhere in the article. All I have found is that it was added as a See also by a soon-after banned sock account. Neither auspicious perches from which to launch notability defenses, as far as I'm concerned. I'm not a mind-reader. So make a case why her opinions in this article are notable here? Professor marginalia (talk) 06:19, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The reason why nothing in the article is cited to the Snyderman and Rothman study (or the accompanying book) is because Mathsci considers Snyderman and Rothman a primary source, and therefore won’t allow it to be cited here. Well, if we can’t discuss this study while citing it directly because it’s a primary source, then the obvious solution is to discuss this study while citing it to some of the secondary sources that discuss it, just like we do for any other topic in this article. One of those secondary sources is Gottfredson’s article. It isn’t her views themselves that are notable, it’s the study itself; and her paper happens to be one of the several secondary sources we can use to discuss it.

If you need to be convinced that the Snyderman and Rothman study itself is notable, look at some of the sources discussing this study that are cited by the article about it. Several proponents of the hereditarian hypothesis have brought up this study as demonstrating that their ideas aren’t as controversial within their field as the media makes them out to be, while opponents of the hereditarian hypothesis such as Ferguson, Kouyate and Taylor describe this study as meaning that racism is common among psychologists. This study is at least as notable as some of the other topics presented in the current article, such as statement from the Association of Black Psychologists. --Captain Occam (talk) 06:47, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to see a writeup of your proposed addition of the Gottfredson material, that would make it easier for me to determine whether I think it would be an overall benefit to the article or give undue weight to certain viewpoints. Apriori I don't see why a secondary analysis of a survey of opinions from psychologists should not be includable, but it would of course depend on how it is used in the article.·Maunus·ƛ· 07:34, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) Captain Occam seems not to be reading what I have written. If we add a quote that is used in a secondary sourcce, we add the secondary source plus the primary source from which it came. We do not add our own additional comments on what we think the primary source says, or even pick quotes. An example of that occurs in the "early history" section where the writings of Raymond Cattell are discussed. Captain Occam or Slrubenstein might have strong feelings about some of the things written in that primary source, but we have to take all the analysis from the secondary source. The writings of Gottfredson on this topic are similar. Captaub or Slrubenstein might have strong feelings about some of the things she writes, but if they have not been voiced by a secondary source, we simply cannot comment. This has been the pattern of editing in this article from the beginning. But if some new wikipedian, say EvaLaPen, came along, took a look at the 1933 tract of Cattell, thought it was all absolutely WP:TRUE, just like her favourite work Main Kampf, and starting adding her summary of those sentences as if they were true, we'd be in trouble, wouldn't we? That's of course an exaggeration, but it makes the point rather clearly. I don't see how we can distinguish between the primary sources of Kevin B. MacDonald or Linda Gottfredson. That's why we use secondary sources in the case of controversial articles. To avoid confusion, I have added the exact contents of Andrew Winston's footnote as a footnote to the wikipedia article. Mathsci (talk) 07:55, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Mathsci, you’re still not getting this. Gottfredson’s article is a secondary source, which is summarizing a primary source. (The primary source is the Snyderman and Rothman study.) And there are also other secondary sources which discuss this primary source, so Gottfredson doesn’t have to be the only secondary source about it that we use about it. Maunus understands this, and wants to see a proposed addition to the article summarizing this study using secondary sources such as Gottfredson’s article. Can you accept that? --Captain Occam (talk) 08:09, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No it's a primary source from which the quotes in the secondary source have been taken. That has been standard ediitng practice in this article, and no amount of wikilawyering will change that, persistent though you are. A footnote has been added, which you seem to have ignored. I don't see any point in discussing a controversial primary source. I should wait to see what the others think. It would be nice if you could find a way of discussing content that did not continually involve arguments that involve violating wikipedia editing policies. Just to make my point again, the article of Kevin B. MacDonald is also a primary source. Your line of reasoning - that he is discussing other articles in his article - would make it a secondary source. So your argument just looks like wikilawyering to me. Mathsci (talk) 08:19, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Mathsci, what’s your definition of a secondary source? Is it the same as Wikipedia’s? This is Wikipedia’s definition:

“Secondary sources are second-hand accounts, at least one step removed from an event. They rely for their material on primary sources, often making analytic or evaluative claims about them.”

You haven’t even attempted to explain how Gottfredson’s analysis of the Snyderman and Rothman study is a primary source rather than a secondary one. Unless you do, your argument is nothing but WP:IDONTLIKEIT and WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT, with a few personal attacks thrown in for good measure. --Captain Occam (talk) 08:33, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think we are confusing some things here, a source can be primary and secondary at the same time. And we are allowed to use primary sources, when we agree that the way we use them is unproblematic. Gottfredson is a primary source of her own opinion and a secondary source of Snyderman & Rothman's conclusions. I think Mathsci is worried that Gottfredson's analysis of Snyderman & Rothman is not necessarily congruent with other analyses of that source since she evaluates it from one a particular viewpoint. That is however not a problem of Gottfredsson being a primary source, but rather a problem of whether she is a sufficiently objective source to be used for making objective second hand claims about other studies. This problem can be avoided by making it clear that the viewpoint included is an expression of her own personal analysis. The question then becomes whether her opinion is notable and/or requires balancing by a second opinion. That is why I don't think there is an apriori reason that we shouldn't be able to include her opinions about Snyderman & Rothman's study, but I need to see a concrete example in order to see whether it can be done in a neutral way and whether it contributes valuable information to the article. I'd be concerned whether her evaluation of the studies can be seen as sufficiently neutral not to require a second opinion for balance, in which case it might be preferable to include a third more neutral opinion or not to include opinions about the study at all.·Maunus·ƛ· 09:14, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't agree in this case in using Gottfredson, for precisely the reasons you give - see below. The correct thing to do in this case, if details of the Snyderman and Rothman study are to be included, would be to find reliable secondary sources that discuss the report (not too hard). That is how that kind of editing would go. Preferably a disinterested commentator not directly involved in any of the debates from a historical perspective. Graham Richard perhaps? In the 1970s there were plenty of petitions and letters to newspapers by lobbying groups from the right and the left, which have not been discussed in detail. Anyway here the right approach is to look for neutral secondary sources if the S&R report is to be mentioned. Mathsci (talk) 09:23, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) There is no reason for any wikipedia editor to discuss a primary source like Gottfredson's paper. Gottfredson is another player in the Bell Curve debate, in the same way that Stephen J. Gould was. In Tucker's 2002 book on page 180, he gives his summary of her 1994 article, written in the full heat of the Bell Curve furore:

Linda Gottfredson, professor of education at the University of Delaware, and codirector, along with Gordon, of the Project for the Study of Intelligence in Society, argued that the socioeconomic inequality between races was the expected outcome of lower black intelligence and insisted that much "current social policy" was based on a "collective fraud", perpetuated by scientists who refused to acknowledge the intellectual inferiority of blacks.

In his footnotes (page 265), Tucker references page 53 and 55 in Gottfredson's article. We can obviously use a paraphrase of any of the above. It's enough using secondary sources. For example it's quite esay to locate secondary sources describing how in print Gottfredson claimed that another Pioneer grantee Roger Pearson had no connections with the far right (Tucker, page 206, wikilinks my own):

Particularly absurd was Gottfredson's assertion that Roger Pearson—one of the most important figures in the post-war Nazi movement, who boasted knowning "on good authority" Hitler's own words, created and published the New Patriot dedicated exclusively to anti-Semitic diatribes, and corresponded openly with leading figures in the American Nazi Party—had refused to have any contact with Earl Thomas after learning that his devoted assistant had been a party member. And, according to Gottfredson, Pearson's Mankind Quarterly—in which his pseudonymous contributions maintained that the tendency to "distrust and repel" members of other races was a biological imperative and that interracial marriages were a "perversion" of natural instincts—was merely a "multicultural journal" interested in "diversity ... as an object of dispassionate study."

Perhaps that's something useful to add to the article: it has an attached primary source, a 1990 letter from the ISAR archives. What do you think? Mathsci (talk) 09:23, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that Gottfredson would be a primary source about the debate over The Bell Curve, since she was directly involved in it. However, the information I’m wanting to add to the article is not about The Bell Curve, it’s about a 1987 study that Gottfredson had nothing to do with. As Maunus pointed out in his comment, it’s possible for a source to be primary about some topics and secondary about others, and on this topic she’s a secondary source.

If you think Gottfredson isn’t neutral enough, then that’s an entirely separate issue. However, as Maunus said, the solution to that is just to make it clear that what she’s expressing is her own opinion, and provide other sources to balance it. Can you agree to what Maunus is suggesting? --Captain Occam (talk) 09:53, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Brief sentences on opinion polls and opinion pieces/lobbying could be added if reliable secondary sources are found providing appropriate context. We're not not here to establish WP:TRUTH. Best to try to look for secondary sources that give an uninvolved historical commentary. Certainly wikipedians shouldn't try to write history themslves by a "he said, she said" method. That leads to poor or misleading wikipedia articles. As for example can be found at Mainstream Science on Intelligence which I have also tagged (and mentioned several times before). Mathsci (talk) 10:26, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Would you consider John B. Carroll an acceptable secondary source about the Snyderman and Rothman study? He’s written about it also. --Captain Occam (talk) 10:37, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've found one other source about this that I'm hoping you'll consider acceptable: Myron Lieberman's book Public education: an autopsy. If you don't have a problem with either of these sources, I'll add some information from them about this study to the article. (I'll also mention Gottfredson's analysis, but make it clear that this is her own personal opinion, following Maunus's suggestion.) --Captain Occam (talk) 10:52, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please put comments about S&R below in the next section with the exact source. It's impossible to tell what you mean by a link to a wikipedia page of an author. Anyway what we do is look for all possible sources, hoping that there is some neutral historical account, not yet another person expressing a point of view about a multiple choice survey. I would allow a few days because wikipedians are very busy in real life. There is no rush. Mathsci (talk) 11:06, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

All I’m asking is whether you think John B. Carroll is sufficiently uninvolved in this issue for you to consider him neutral. Since your problem with using Gottfredson as a source is that you consider her to be too heavily involved in this debate, which is independent of any specific paper from her, you should be able to answer this question about Carroll without me having to tell you what paper from him I’m hoping to use. --Captain Occam (talk) 11:27, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Moot, now. In future please (a) respond in the new section on this topic below as requested (b) providing precise references when requested. I did my own exhaustive literature search, and looked at everything available using citation indexes. I chose Jencks, Flynn and Sternberg as academics who seem to be undisputed leaders in the subject of psychometry. I added Gottfredson since she has written so many articles on this matter and seems to have become the spokesperson for the hereditarian school. Mathsci (talk) 17:18, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How is it moot? 146.179.213.158 (talk) 15:53, 21 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is already a wikipedia article - but it is completely ureliable because it has been extensively rewritten fairly recently by Varoon Arya (talk · contribs) to remove all criticism. Here is an old version, before the POV-pushing:

Snyderman and Rothman (study)

Here is an account (opinion piece?) published in Intelligence by Harry F. Weyher (pronounced "wire") of the Pioneer Fund:

• The Pioneer Fund, the Behavioral Sciences, and the Media's False Stories

That at least mentions that the 1996 APA report ignored completely the findings of the S&R study. I have tagged the other wikipedia article, which seems very problematic. (I have mentioned this before.) Mathsci (talk) 10:10, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Have you looked at that talk page for that article, Mathsci? The criticism that was removed had been tagged as synth for over a year, because all of it was from sources that did not actually mention the Snyderman and Rothman study. Both Varoon Arya and Ramdrake have searched for criticisms of this study published in reliable sources that specifically discuss this study, and all of the criticisms they’ve been able to find which aren’t synth have been included in the article. If you can find any other criticisms that aren’t synth and which have been published in reliable sources, though, you’re welcome to suggest them. --Captain Occam (talk) 10:28, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Firstly, Ramdrake has been in hospital for several months since November and seems only to have come out fairly recently. I hope everything is going well for him at the moment.

I'm not interested in editing that article - it seems unneutral, unbalanced and written as some kind of synthesis. Both it and Mainstream Science on Intelligence are pushing a point of view which is probably not mainstream and therefore WP:UNDUE. They are certainly both unreliable for any purposes here. But finding properly sourced historical commentary for this article is another quite separate matter.

We should be hunting for reasonable historical commentaries in neutral secondary sources. Mathsci (talk) 10:42, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This page seriously needs to be archived. The scroll bar is 5 pixals tall! 110.32.131.13 (talk) 10:03, 21 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have deleted a controversial sentence that we have argued about before. It was: "He also concluded ^[1] that some kind of eugenic intervention was needed to reduce the birthrate of those with low IQs, particularly in the black population, and that as students they should be taught by relying on their ability to associate rather than understand, i.e. learning by rote, not through conceptual explanation.^[2]" An uninvolved editor at WP:BLP/N pointed out [1] that he could not verify it. I agree. See there for the full discussion. Summary: When making extreme claims about a living person, the standard of proof is higher. You can't claim that Jensen made eugenics claim relating to the black population without clear evidence that he did so. Tucker saying so is not enough. (I will also note that the references to Jensen (1969) are false. Pages 95 and 115 say nothing of the sort. (Please read WP:BLP for background.) David.Kane (talk) 16:23, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's absolutely, completely absurd. This is a very weak objection to raise here. Where has Jensen even disputed that he said this in that article? He clearly said it. Professor marginalia (talk) 16:56, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Even if he didn't say it there are so many independent reliable sources that have interpreted his statements in that way that it cannot possibly be a BLP issue. NPOV requires that we present Jensen's own version and that the views of his opponents are attributed as being theirs. Nothing more. ·Maunus·ƛ· 17:36, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

1) Professor marginalia: Please quote the exact sentence in the article where he said it. 2) I encourage anyone involved here to participate in the conversation at BLP. The only two uninvolved editors (Rvcx and Off2riorob) to comment there have agreed with me. Summary: Claims about living people require very high standards. It is not enough to note that Tucker (or whoever) said X. 3) "so many independent reliable sources"? Really? Other than Tucker, I am unaware of any other sources that report that Jensen was wanted to reduce the birthrate "particularly in the black population." Can you provide a citation? David.Kane (talk) 17:49, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You were involved when this was previously discussed on the talk page so I don't understand why you're re-raising the dispute here again. Jensen has a section titled, "Genetic Improvement of Intelligence" in which he advocates a "negative eugenics" approach. "There is little doubt that in the long run the surest way of changing the biological basis of intelligence is through genetic selection," he says, but he says it's unlikely to happen because popular attitudes would oppose it. He says though that "at present" a "negative eugenics" approach is a "reasonable answer," discouraging traits that "all humane persons" would agree are "human misfortunes" to be avoided if at all possible, and quotes at length some position of Elizabeth and Sheldon Reed to elevate sterilization rates among the mental retarded. He then goes on to delve into birthrates in the low income "Negro" population which clearly is of particular concern to Jensen, who repeatedly addresses the implications of links between IQ, academic and economic performance in the context of this population in particular throughout the paper. The disproportionately high birth rates in the lower income (suggestive of lower IQ, Jensen asserts) black population poses the risk, he says, of "the genetic enslavement of a substantial segment of our population". Jensen's cite for this concern is another paper focused on this population by Hill and Jaffee called, "Negro fertility and family size preferences" and published in The Negro American. Jensen writes, "Our failure seriously to investigate these matters may well be viewed by future generations as our society's greatest injustice to Negro Americans." Even Jensen has been more forthright about what he's really said than his defenders at wikipedia seem willing to be. Professor marginalia (talk) 18:35, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"You were involved when this was previously discussed on the talk page so I don't understand why you're re-raising the dispute here again." First, my previous involvement helped to correct a major (?) mistake: asserting that Jensen (1969) said something which, in fact, it did not. Perhaps MathSci's error in that context should have caused me to look more closely. I apologize for my tardiness in revisiting this topic. Second, because I am not an experienced editor, I had never read WP:BLP closely before. I just did today. I now understand that a much higher level of proof is called for as long as Jensen is still alive. Third, this is not an open-and-shut case, on either side. That is why I brought the topic to WP:BLP/N. As you can see there [2], MathSci has received zero support from uninvolved editors. Read the discussion for the details. My summary: You can't claim that something extreme about Jensen unless you can show, directly, that Jensen said it. You can't simply rely on person X saying it. I encourage you to participate in that discussion.

As to the substance, I am happy to believe that all your quotes from Jensen (1969) are accurate. But I don't see how you get from there to what we used to have in the article. You are making a major leap. You can't make such a leap when dealing with a living person. Let me remind you, also, that you claimed above about "so many independent reliable sources." Please provide them. As best I can tell, these claims about Jensen come from Tucker alone. David.Kane (talk) 19:49, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What "leap"? And I didn't say anything about "so many independent reliable sources". It's like the target keeps moving in here...where's the beef? What do you think the article here claimed that Jensen doesn't? Professor marginalia (talk) 19:54, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

David.Kane, whose edits yesterday were self-declared to be agnostic, today has made edits that seem to be Jensenism denial. Not only can the statements of Tucker be read directly in the HER paper, but there are plenty of other primary and secondary sources. There's the 1987 book in which Jensen reiterates these claims. There is his book on Genetics and group differences form 1973. And most directly there is this interview in LIFE magazine which seems fairly unambiguous: [3]. It's not a good sign that RegentsPark disgarees with David.Kane's point of view. Mathsci (talk) 20:10, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Professor marginalia: Apologies! I mistakenly attributed a quote from Maunus to you. My mistake. MathSci: Please provide the exact quote(s) from these sources which justifies this sentence in the article. I agree with you that Tucker makes this claim. I see no other source which makes this claim. David.Kane (talk) 21:56, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You say Tucker said "it". You also agree with what I quoted from Jensen about what he said, but disagree it agrees with what the claim here said. To me, all three agree. So once more what, exactly, was different about how it was formulated here from how it was formulated in Tucker or Jensen? Professor marginalia (talk) 22:11, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Professor marginalia: Let me quote the objectionable sentence and take it apart bit by bit. I believe that much of it is fine. The problem is that, taken as a whole, it misleads about Jensen's writings.

• "He also concluded^[3] that some kind of eugenic intervention was needed to reduce the birthrate of those with low IQs . . . " Does Jensen actually write this? Again, I am not denying that Tucker says that he did, but I have trouble coming up with a citation in which Jensen writes: "People with low IQ should be sterilized." or "People with low IQ should be given monetary awards to not have children." Are you aware of such a quote? Again, I could easily be wrong about this. Perhaps Jensen does write something exactly like that. If so, it should certainly be included in the article.
• " . . . , particularly in the black population," I highly doubt that Jensen ever wrote this. He may have written something claiming that eugenics was "needed" for low IQ people, but he never said that this need was particular to the black population. It may be that, once this clause is removed, the sentence is fine.
• "and that as students they should be taught by relying on their ability to associate rather than understand, i.e. learning by rote, not through conceptual explanation." What does the "they" refer to in this sentence? If it is all low IQ students, then I think it is reasonable. Jensen certainly believed that different teaching methods should be used for students of different IQ. But I don't think he ever said (nor do Tucker's citations support that he ever said) that this claim applied more to black low IQ students then it does to Hispanic low IQ students or white low IQ students.

Thanks for taking a look at this. I do not think that you and I, at least, are too far away on what a good sentence would look like. David.Kane (talk) 22:23, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Jensen wrote that "There is little doubt that in the long run the surest way of changing the biological basis of intelligence is through genetic selection. It is a fact that many different behavioral traits, including those we would identify as intelligence, can be changed through selective breeding in lower animals. There is no reason to believe this does not also hold true for the human species. But I doubt that we will see any move in this direction of systematic eugenics in the foreseeable future for several reasons...[omit where Jensen outlines 2 of them]...The reasonable answer, I believe, is to think at present only in terms of negative eugenics rather than in terms of positive eugenics." A secondary source (Tucker) characterizes Jensen's asserting this as a "reasonable answer" to elevating IQ as "advocating". Whereas you are worrying about any "implication" that suggests Jensen would apply this to blacks but not Hispanics is reading too much into it. Jensen himself concentrates on black white differences because (he in other interviews has pointed out) that's the data available. It would be false to apply this to Hispanics because he didn't in this paper. And it would be false to pretend that he saw no distinction between black and white remedies. He emphasized the differences themselves, noting the "disparity" between black and white birth rates in what he called the "disadvantaged" class, and he was concerned that continuing on that path would result in even greater black and white group differences. In other words by reducing the low IQ births of blacks the academic/economic gap between blacks and whites in society would lessen. Professor marginalia (talk) 23:26, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

<= I have added some completely new content and a new secondary source (one of many available), so that the direct quotes of Jensen could be expanded. I realized, on rereading Wooldridge's summary, that I'd left out a significant bit at the end, which has now been inserted. I changed the subclause in the lede and gave a new direct quote from Tucker's 1996 book. Everything is sourced. As other editors have said, the Tucker quote is accurate and is reflected in numerous secondary sources. Mathsci (talk) 23:58, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

MathSci: WP:BLP clearly requires us to reach consensus before contentious material about a living person is added. Why do you continue to violate this policy? I may have no choice but to revert some of your changes. David.Kane (talk) 02:43, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What contentious material? Isn't this just a repetition of the discussion you just had above with Professor marginalia?

Just as a matter of interest, why do you think Jensen gave an interview to American Renaissance in 1992 [4]? (Not something that needs to be mentioned in the article since it's not described in a secondary source.) Mathsci (talk) 03:27, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have no idea. David.Kane (talk) 13:27, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Professor marginalia: We are arguing over a single sentence that begins "He concluded" and that, given the context, is clearly a reference to Jensen (1969). Agreed? So, in that context, any evidence you provide to support that claim must be quotes from Jensen (1969) or from secondary sources discussing Jensen (1969). Agreed? But some of the quotes you provide are not from Jensen (1969). Can you provide quotes from Jensen (1969) to support the sentence? (If you wanted to move the sentence elsewhere and make clear that the "concluded" referred to some other article/book/speech, that would be a different matter. David.Kane (talk) 13:27, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

David.Kane, this is exasperating. All my quotes were from Jensen 1969. All of them. "He concluded" is not only sourced to Tucker, it is a perfectly adequate assessment of Jensen's own statement - to quote again, "The reasonable answer, I believe, is to think at present only in terms of negative eugenics rather than in terms of positive eugenics."

It's been very frustrating to nail the focus here. Let me lay it out this way:

• Why isn't Tucker sufficient? Because Jensen is a BLP?
• If Tucker is insufficient because this is a BLP and the claim is allegedly "contentious", how is it contentious? Does Jensen dispute it? Or does he concede to it? Do other references dispute Jensen concluded this? Or do they agree he did? More directly, for the sake of argument here, if even Jensen's own quotations confirms the same thing post 1969 (as you seemed willing to allow above) then isn't it disingenuous to argue that the claim is only narrowly "contentious" in the context of this one paper?!

So focus. It isn't our job to "vet" the strengths or weaknesses of Tucker's claims. He's the authority-we aren't. So if Tucker's to be given extra scrutiny here, by what rationale? Thanks. Professor marginalia (talk) 16:19, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, perhaps I have been using a bad version of Jensen (1969). This is the one [5] I have looked at. Do you have a better one? I do not see your quote about "But I doubt that we will see any move in this direction of systematic eugenics in the foreseeable future for several reasons" or some of the others there. Am I searching poorly? This is clearly at the root of much of our disagreement. Apologies if this is my fault somehow. David.Kane (talk) 19:52, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Leaving aside the issue of exactly what is in Jensen (1969), let me address your questions about Tucker. Imagine Tucker has written "Jensen argued in his 1969 article that the moon is made of green cheese." Now, Tucker is, we all agree, a reliable source. But that hardly guarantees that everything in Tucker is correct. If Tucker makes a clearly false claim (as above), then surely, it does not belong in Wikipedia, even though it appeared in a reliable source and even if we wrote it as "Tucker concluded that Jensen argued . . . " If Jensen were dead, then I would have less of an objection to what I see as clearly false material. (And, again, this debate originally involved a mistaken interpretation of Tucker.) But, because Jensen is alive, we must be sure that claims in Wikipedia, even if found in a reliable source are correct. I admit that this is a subtle issue that is not currently addressed clearly by WP:BLP. In this case, the claim is "contentious" in the sense that I (and other editors) think it is clearly false. Tucker is claiming that Jensen (1969) says X when, in fact, Jensen (1969) does not say X. We are doing the contending. Now, if this were some minor issue, we would probably not care. But this is a major issue. Tucker believes that Jensen argued that all blacks should be educated differently than all whites while, in fact, Jensen argued that all low IQ students should be educated differently, regardless of race. David.Kane (talk) 20:11, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Going forward, we should probably keep in mind this comment from Jimbo Wales.

Sorry to come in late here, but I want to agree with Off2riorob on the philosophical point here. "Contentionus claims require exceptional citations" is a concise statement, beautifully put. Now, as to this particular issue, and whether that burden of proof has been met, I don't think so, but I am not certain. I read enough of the discussion which follows to think that is almost certainly has not been met, but I applaud that people do seem to agree that in order to claim that Jenson "has recommended separate curricula for Blacks and Whites" we need it from his own words, not the synthesis and conclusion-drawing of his critics.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:32, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Would anyone disagree with that sentiment? David.Kane (talk) 13:58, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well I'm actually exchanging emails with Jimbo at the moment, so I think you should wait until that's done with. Meanwhile I have added a slightly sdifferent summary of half the statement from Joan Freeman (in gifted education); and the content of the famous "eugenic foresight" quote is summarised in many other places. So I should just wait to see how things pan out. Of course Jimbo is unaware of the long and faithful summary with as many quotes (always taken from a secondary source). I am not dead set by the way on keeping the Tucker quote. I am quite happy to break it up into two halves. But just let's wait and see for the moment. Mathsci (talk) 14:26, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's a red herring to pose the question here isn't it? I can't find any trace of a dispute here over the statement "Jensen recommended separate curricula for Blacks and Whites." We could do with more focus and less bluster to sort through these disputes. It's clearly adding confusion to an already challenging topic. So if you're thinking that you can conveniently apply some broadly expressed "philosophical point" to the content disputes raised in the last few days here, no. It doesn't apply. Professor marginalia (talk) 15:40, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No. There are disputes about Jensen related points in both this article and another. Wales added his comment after both had been brought up in that thread. Read the history. In fact, a different editor complained about the lack of support for the eugenics claim that I have tried to remove from here that thread. Anyway, the main point is fairly obvious. "Contentions claims require exceptional citations" when it comes to living persons. Do you disagree with that sentiment? David.Kane (talk) 15:53, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but that doesn't work. There is nothing "obviously" contentious about "the eugenics claim" to anyone who knows about Jensen because Jensen has been surprisingly consistent about on this for decades. That's why we need to focus exactly on the particular claims in each and every case here and it's not helpful to try and airbrush claims about him with a broad brush rationale that the topic is "contentious". Virtually everything Jensen has said in the last 40 years has been contentious. The article is about the "controversy", of which he plays a key part for the last 50 years. Professor marginalia (talk) 17:06, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I do think Wales's comment is of marginal relevance here. Beyond which, he is just one more editor and his view doesn't carry any more weight than anyone else's (although his experience and understanding of policy is probably pretty good).

My complaint was with the initial phrasing that Jensen articulated a "need" for eugenics, which I felt implied a level of advocacy that wasn't well-sourced. The new text said that he found "the solution" in eugenics, without clearly defining the problem being solved, which I feel is also a (much weaker) implication of advocacy. I've been bold and slightly reworded. It seems pretty clear that Jensen thought eugenics could prevent what he perceived as a growing racial IQ divide; I think the new wording stands on its own and there's little of value to be gained by strengthening it to imply advocacy. Rvcx (talk) 17:23, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That works for me. Jensen sees eugenics as a far more effective remedy than education, but he's not an "advocate" in any realpolitik sense of the word. Pro-eugenics advocates do cite Jensen's work, but he's relatively passive. In his own words, he's resigned to the fact that it's so unpopular it won't happen so it's pointless to dwell much on it. He does think there's every chance that totalitarian regimes will implement eugenics programs and he predicts that by doing so they'll "pass up" those countries or cultures that don't. Professor marginalia (talk) 17:43, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I think we are making progress. The current version is much better than what we started with. I would ask Professor marginalia to keep in mind that there is a difference between making a claim about what Jensen believes now (or believed over the course of his career) and what he "concluded" in a specific article. If you want to claim that, in a specific article Jensen said X, it is not unreasonable for I or Rvcx to ask for a citation in that article which supports that point. David.Kane (talk) 19:47, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No, that's not quite right. We don't overrule sources. We take extra care to use good sources. If something is obviously erroneous, polemical or inconsistent, yes of course it's legitimate to look more closely. If other sources contradict it, if it's an obscure cite rather than a widely accepted source, etc., these factors also into the decision. And the claims have to be faithful to the source. But the disputes here tend too often to go round in circles like this: "The article says 'In 1969 Jensen came out with an explosive paper that claimed the moon is made of green cheese.' That's a controversial claim so we need to be sure he said it in 1969. I'm not satisfied, so I reverted it." Then we waste considerable amount of time over texts where he consistently says it from 1970-2010, but because it's a controversial claim, the secondary sources are overruled. But of course, only secondary sources are sufficient to source controversial claims (We can't go cherry picking for favorites of our own. Secondary sources are absolutely critical to source controversial claims.) There is nothing controversial about whether he said it in 1969 or 1970. That's a detail that we should take care to be as accurate as possible, but it's the green cheese that's controversial, not the date. And with sources and Jensen consistent on that very point in other years, we correct such details--we don't dispense with the controversial issue altogether. That's why we need to sharply focus and express exactly what's wrong with something in order to fix the real problem. Professor marginalia (talk) 01:36, 30 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The summary ofJensen's article is taken from Wooldridge's book. We paraphrase that summary in the text without inserting our interpretation. Here is the text in Wooldrdge's book [http;//mathsci.free.fr/wooldridge/png]. It reads

But he felt that 'the technique for rasing intelligence per se in the sense of g, probably lie more in the province of biological sciences than in psychology or eduaction'; eugenic reform rather than compensatory educationheld out the solution to the problem of the nation's intelligence.

There is no comparative here, as would be expected in an article that started "Compensatory eduction has been tried and it has apparently failed", No need to include original research by dparting from the secondary source used. That's how wikipedia is edited. We stick to the secondary source and do not include our WP:OR. Mathsci (talk) 10:33, 30 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You don't seem to know what a comparative is: "more". Woodson characterizes Jensen as asserting that biology would have more of an impact on raising intelligence than psychology or education. This source doesn't support Jensen as saying "we need to change people's biology", or "changing people's biology is the solution" (without qualification for what it's the solution for); only that biology would be more effective than education in raising intelligence. Rvcx (talk) 10:41, 30 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]