Talk:Intelligence quotient

Why I'm reverting edit citing Bouchard

First, the edit gives the misleading impression that Bouchard's estimate is generally accepted. The Minnesota Twin Studies have been criticized, and they're partially financed by the Pioneer Fund. Secondly, the 80% estimate goes back to Cyril Burt in mid-20th century or earlier, so it shouldn't be called "a recent estimate". NightHeron (talk) 09:32, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

A meta-analysis or review would be better, if one exists. BooleanQuackery (talk) 19:51, 31 July 2022 (UTC) Striking WP:BLOCKEVASION. Generalrelative (talk) 19:33, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

If it goes back to Cyril Burt, it should not even be called an "estimate". --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:04, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that Burt's estimate was correct. Leon Kamin found extensive evidence that Burt faked his data, see The Science and Politics of I.Q.. NightHeron (talk) 10:16, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you implied that. --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:37, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Short description improvement

Sock drawer. Generalrelative (talk) 19:32, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Current short description: "Score derived from tests purported to measure individual differences in human intelligence." My problems with it: Factually incorrect or ambiguous wording. The score is not derived from tests purported to measure individual differences in human intelligence. The score is derived from tests which themselves are not said to measure intelligence, but when calculated in aggregate they do. If instead this means different entire IQ tests instead of subtests, it should be changed to "score derived from a test . . ." The use of the word "purported" implies that IQ tests do not really measure intelligence: [1] The words "individual differences in human" are irrelevant for a short lead, and also not the most accurate. IQ tests don't usually measure differences in intelligence; they usually measure a single individual's intelligence. "Human" and "individual" are also redundant, as only humans can take IQ tests (lol) and more than one person can't take the same test. My proposed changes: "Standardized score from a test designed to assess intelligence." An IQ test score is by definition both a standardized score and standardized in the sense that it is a normed test. BooleanQuackery (talk) 20:10, 31 July 2022 (UTC) Some comments on the wording: There is considerable controversy about the definition of intelligence and whether or not it's meaningful to assess it with a single number. In his book The Mismeasure of Man Stephen Jay Gould criticized the tendency to reify intelligence. We should not assert in wikivoice that something is a measure of intelligence. By using the word purported, we avoid taking a position on whether or not IQ measures intelligence. The commonly understood use of the word standardized is in the term standardized tests, meaning tests - such as IQ tests, the SAT in the U.S., and the tough college-admissions exams that are given in several Asian countries - that are given throughout a region or country and do not vary from school to school or city to city. In this context it is confusing to call the score standardized. What's meant is that the score is normalized so that it conforms to the normal distribution. This technical detail doesn't belong in the short description, especially since the average reader won't understand standardized to mean that the graph of the distribution of scores is made to look like a bell curve. I agree that "purported to measure differences in human intelligence" should be changed to "purported to measure human intelligence". Logically, the scores are purported to measure the intelligence of the people tested; the differences between scores are purported to measure differences in human intelligence. NightHeron (talk) 22:39, 31 July 2022 (UTC) The word "designed" also avoids stating that IQ is a measure of intelligence, though it is consensus among scientists that it is. IQ tests are both standardized in the layman sense (given throughout a region or country and do not vary from school to school or city to city) and standardized in the "normalized" sense. BooleanQuackery (talk) 00:26, 1 August 2022 (UTC) I won't debate the question of consensus here, except to note that a consensus among a certain subculture of psychometricians is not the same as a consensus of scientists. What I objected to was the term "standardized score" that you wrote, because that makes no sense to a nontechnical reader. NightHeron (talk) 00:56, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Addition of Negative Flynn Effect Citation

Thanks to @Generalrelative for asking why I think it would be beneficial to cite new Dworak study. The current page on the Intelligence quotient already has a paragraph talking about the "negative flynn effect", citing a 2016 study coauthord by Richard Lynn and a 2018 study coauthored by Bernt Bratsberg. In the current issue of the "Intelligence" journal there has been new research on the topic, including the (2023) study I cited. I think that study would be beneficial to cite since it provides interested readers of Wikipedia another, more recent, source on the topic.

Apologies - but I don't know what you mean by the topic being contested? The negative flynn effect definitely a phenomenon for which evidence has been recently discovered. Besides, I didn't add any new description, only another source for the already existing description confirming what the previous sources already have shown. Maybe I misunderstood what you meant? LenoJeno (talk) 19:59, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

When another editor reverts your addition, that means it's been contested, see WP:BRD. The article you wanted to add from the journal Intelligence is a primary source appearing in a journal that often publishes questionable material. There are already two sources, so there's no need to add a 3rd source that's low-quality. NightHeron (talk) 20:55, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

I see, so "contesting" refers to other editors here, thanks. It's weird then to see how one of the other two sources accepted are also from Intelligence, in fact, coauthored by Richard Lynn, who is the scientific racist. Surely that's even lower credibility. Many thanks for the clarification anyway @NightHeron! LenoJeno (talk) 21:36, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree that we should remove the Richard Lynn source. Unfortunately Intelligence does not conduct any meaningful peer review to screen out pseudoscience when race / ethnicity / nationality are concerned, so I'd be concerned about the new Dworak study for that reason. A secondary source would be better. Are you aware of any that we could use to discuss the "negative Flynn effect"? For now I'll remove the Lynn source and retain the NAS Norway study. Generalrelative (talk) 21:44, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Induction is not a specialized ability like spelling

It is learning from examples. There is lots of this all the time in out environment. Inductive reasoning Ran8dom9 (talk) 19:05, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

@Ran8dom9: Article talk pages are for discussing suggested improvements to an article, not discussion of our personal thoughts about the topic. Do you have a specific suggestion for improving the article? Induction as a specialized ability (a subfactor of fluid reasoning) has been demonstrated by Thurstone (and a tremendous amount of subsequent research by a vast number of researchers, including Cattell, Horn, and Carroll) using factor analysis of massive amounts of test data. Can you cite research from peer-reviewed academic journals that clearly refute all of that research, and not just your personal opinion? Sundayclose (talk) 19:26, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Job-performance correlation issue

§ "Job performance" includes this paragraph: "Newer studies find that the effects of IQ on job performance have been greatly overestimated. The current estimates of the correlation between job performance and IQ are about 0.23 correcting for unreliability and range restriction."

I fear this presentation lacks WP:BALANCE, given that it's citing what is essentially a single paper by two researchers (the other is a minor follow-up) which has been subject to quite significant significant criticism from experts in just the few months since publication, who point out that it's narrow (only including supervisor ratings as a "performance" measure) and is hardly "new" (as its range-restriction claims have been brought up and dismissed in the past). Moreover, the paper(s) referenced find diminished correlations between almost every other metric and performance (e.g., interviews; work sample tests; job-knowledge tests, etc.)

Given that there is hardly a consensus in support of the Sackett, et al. paper(s) it seems unbalanced to include them, at least in the current framing. I'm in favor of removing it entirely, since it runs contrary to consensus backed by an staggering amount of research. Alternately, we could add its narrow focus and other significant criticism, but that may just compound the WP:UNDUE issue. Frankly, I'm not sure it adds much to our article, since of course Sackett, et al. still concede that cognitive ability is one of variables most highly correlated with job performance. Thanks! Ekpyros (talk) 19:26, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Suggestion to add a source

Hello,

I would like to suggest a source that could enrich this article:

"IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (January 2019) - https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39

This source could be relevant to this article on Intelligence Quotient for the following reasons:

Critical perspective: The article offers a critical view on the concept of IQ, which could contribute to a balanced presentation of the subject on Wikipedia.

Renowned author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an influential scholar, whose opinions on scientific subjects are often discussed.

Arguments against validity: The article presents arguments questioning the validity and usefulness of Intelligence Quotient as a measure of intelligence.

Scientific debate: It illustrates the ongoing debate in the scientific community regarding the value and limitations of Intelligence Quotient.

Methodological aspects: The article addresses methodological issues related to the measurement and interpretation of IQ.

This source seems reliable to me and could provide useful information regarding the rigor of Intelligence Quotient. Narzil (talk) 11:57, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is indeed a super influential person, but he is not a subject-matter expert on this topic. Medium is what we call a self-published source, meaning that only stuff by subject-matter experts can be considered reliable and only in certain contexts (see WP:MEDIUM). So unfortunately, while this is an interesting essay, it can't be used as a source for our article on IQ. That said, if a subject-matter expert were to publish a response, both Taleb's arguments and the response could then be discussed in article space. I hope that's helpful! Generalrelative (talk) 15:14, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Summary of race relationship

Proposed summary sentence for the paragraph on race:
The scholarly consensus finds environmental factors, not race, determines IQ scores. Superb Owl (talk) 18:14, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

I appreciate you bringing your suggestion here. The issue with this sentence is that IQ differences between individuals do indeed seem to be highly heritable, i.e. genetics plays a role in accounting for why person A scores higher than person B. Some folks have naively assumed that this fact redounds to group-level differences, but it does not. This mistake has been called the "hereditarian fallacy".

If you'd like to explore a source, see e.g. "Heritability in the genomics era — concepts and misconceptions" in Nature Reviews Genetics, which lists in its table of Misconceptions regarding heritability the notion that Heritability is informative about the nature of between-group differences.

As they explain:

This misconception comes in two forms, and in both cases height and IQ in human populations are good examples. The first misconception is that when the heritability is high, groups that differ greatly in the mean of the trait in question must do so because of genetic differences. The second misconception is that the observation of a shift in the mean of a character over time (when we can discount changes in gene frequencies) for a trait with high heritability is a paradox. For IQ, a large increase in the mean has been observed in numerous populations, and this phenomenon is called the Flynn effect, after its discoverer. The problem with this suggested paradox is that heritability should not be used to make predictions about mean changes in the population over time or about differences between groups, because in each individual calculation the heritability is defined for a particular population and says nothing about environments in other populations. White males born in the United States were the tallest in the world in the mid-19th century and about 9 cm taller than Dutch males. At the end of the 20th century, although the height of males in the United States had increased, many European countries had overtaken them and Dutch males are now approximately 5 cm taller than white US males, a trend that is likely to be environmental rather than genetic in origin.

I hope that's helpful. As I stated in my edit summary, I'm all for improving the language if anything is unclear or wonky, but a lot of this stuff is the result of painstaking consensus-building across a number of related articles in the R&I topic area, so changing anything substantially is going to require some workshopping. Cheers, Generalrelative (talk) 22:30, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

I appreciate the detailed answer. How about:
"There are no biological differences based on race." Superb Owl (talk) 22:51, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

I hate to be a Debbie Downer but I also find that sentence confusing. Most scientists prefer the formulation "race is a social construct", which is what we already state at the beginning of the subsection.

Maybe it would help if you explain what you find disagreeable about the current section intro?

Among the most controversial issues related to the study of intelligence is the observation that IQ scores vary on average between ethnic and racial groups, though these differences have fluctuated and in many cases steadily decreased over time. While there is little scholarly debate about the continued existence of some of these differences, the current scientific consensus is that they stem from environmental rather than genetic causes.

Thanks, Generalrelative (talk) 23:41, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

The intro does not seem clear as it is a bit jargony as written. I think a thesis sentence could help it out a lot:
"Scientists do not believe that IQ differerences are influenced by one's race." Superb Owl (talk) 01:15, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't feel particularly qualified to speak on this subject, but your proposed sentence sounds off. At least in the US, race does entail environmental differences, even if they are not genetic. CAVincent (talk) 01:29, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I should maybe add that these environmental differences are themselves heritable, again even though they are not genetic. CAVincent (talk) 01:36, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I suppose I should be clear for the talk history that I struck my own comments. I noted my own lack of qualification, and was graciously corrected on my misunderstanding. CAVincent (talk) 12:55, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

In vernacular usage "heritable" is sometimes used to mean anything that's often passed on from parents to children, such as wealth, a history of domestic abuse, poverty, obesity. But in the context of this article -- that is, in scholarly usage -- it does mean genetic. NightHeron (talk) 07:31, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

There is a lot of cherry-picking of sources that's gone on with respect to this sentence, and similar sentences in other articles. Of the sources for the current sentence, only one uses the word "consensus" or any similar term as required by WP:RS/AC. While it's a high-quality source, it also is fifteen years old. Of the other two sources one is from twelve years ago, and the other contains only a single sentence about group differences in IQ. Statements like this one appear in nearly every Wikipedia article related to intelligence, and the sourcing is mostly of a similar level of quality. See my earlier comment about a similar statement in another article: [2]

All of these sources, even the Guardian article and the VOX blog post, theoretically satisfy the requirements of WP:RS and can be cited. But in a Wikipedia article about virtually any other topic, sources like these would not be used to make a statement about what academic "consensus" is, especially when more recent and higher-quality secondary sources are available, such as those linked to in the last comment here and the off-Wiki discussion cited there. The most recent source this article cites about academic "consensus" is from 2017, but the off-wiki list includes ten secondary sources about this topic that were published more recently, and nine out of ten of those newer sources (all except Harden's book) present a very different view.

Various people have been objecting for years that these statements about academic "consensus" are based on a very small number of sources which were selected to support a specific viewpoint, and past such objections have usually been dealt with by piling on yet more of these old or mediocre-quality sources (the equivalent statement in the race and intelligence article now cites nine of them, including one that was published more than half a century ago). But maybe now we finally have the critical mass of editors needed to change this trend.

CAVincent: you seem to be new to this topic, so I'd like to hear your opinion about whether we should make use of some of the newer sources I mentioned, and modify these parts of the article(s) accordingly. 64.127.212.41 (talk) 11:30, 13 October 2024 (UTC) Striking WP:BLOCKEVASION. Generalrelative (talk) 22:20, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

There is zero ambiguity about the scientific consensus in top-quality scholarly sources, e.g. :

Recent articles claim that the folk categories of race are genetically meaningful divisions, and that evolved genetic differences among races and nations are important for explaining immutable differences in cognitive ability, educational attainment, crime, sexual behavior, and wealth; all claims that are opposed by a strong scientific consensus to the contrary.

The consensus among Wikipedia editors is clear as well. It will not be relitigated here. Generalrelative (talk) 15:25, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Superb Owl: Perhaps the IP's comment offers some perspective as to why we use "scientific" language here. Scientists speak with great precision for a reason. This topic area is a case where white supremacists are highly motivated to misrepresent what the science says, which is why we need to be extra vigilant to say things precisely as the best sources do. If you'd like to read more about this context, I suggest this recent article in The Atlantic: "The Far Right Is Becoming Obsessed With Race and IQ". Generalrelative (talk) 15:29, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing the research, the WP:RS article and your perspective - I still believe that it would be very helpful to include a clear succinct summary of the scientific consensus in the first sentence. Paraphrasing that quote you added:
According to a strong consensus of scientists, there are no genetically meaningful differences between racial groups related to IQ or intelligence. Superb Owl (talk) 15:40, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I like this suggestion a lot, but it's still not 100% there in my opinion. How about we just import the sentence from the first paragraph of Race and intelligence:

Today, the scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain differences in IQ test performance between groups, and that observed differences are environmental in origin.

We could also add this other sentence from the lead:

In recent decades, as understanding of human genetics has advanced, claims of inherent differences in intelligence between races have been broadly rejected by scientists on both theoretical and empirical grounds.

The current sources, along with Bird et al. easily support this. How does that sound? Generalrelative (talk) 16:20, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I still think your language is a bit too science-y but we are getting much closer. Curious to hear what others think/propose. I also would prefer the paragraph giving background to come after the main paragraph establishing that there is no relationship which seems to be a better summary paragraph of the section. Superb Owl (talk) 17:51, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

That's fair. Let's leave the question open for the time being and see if other editors care to weigh in. Generalrelative (talk) 18:43, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Various people have been objecting

Your use of WP:WEASEL WORDS makes it unclear who these various people are, but if you mean Wikipedia editors, this topic has been litigated and re-litigated repeatedly and the consensus of Wikipedia editors on this subject has been made repeatedly quite clear. This comment boils down to WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT, which is doubly apparent in your claim that any and all new sources added as a result of these litigations are mediocre, while not even pretending to acknowledge the criticisms of the quality of the sources you feel contradict the current Wikipedia consensus.

If, on the other hand, you mean Justapedia editors, well, there's a reason they don't comment over here much, except periodically from IPs in futile attempts to relitigate long settled issues.

As for your link to that Justapedia thread, I'm sorry, but a thread on a far-right Wikipedia clone is not a reliable source, and I don't just mean this in the sense of the term used on WP:RS, but also in the conventional definition of the term "reliable". Since anyone purporting to calculate the relative percentage of major secondary sources that agree vs. disagree with Murray must necessarily make some decisions about which sources to look at, which qualify as "major" (the terminology of the post), and which qualify as neutral, for, or against, the methodology by anyone from that site is inherently suspect because of the known biases of the vast majority of Justapedia's editors and articles. But I am not merely casting vague aspersions here; the immediate effects of this bias are apparent in their selection criteria and their justifications, enumerated in three items which I will likewise address point by point:

1. They begin by limiting their "survey" to just two fields known to be a magnet for white supremacists and their fellow travellers.
2. They then proceed to summarily disregard the views of those that agree with the stated consensus of the American Anthropological Association that "race" is an arbitrarily defined social category (the author's words, not the AAA's), since, according to them, this means such researchers have nothing much of substance to say about the empirical research on this topic. How convenient that the people most likely to disagree with you are immediately judged to be irrelevant. They further justify this by citing WP:MNA and the corresponding Justapedia policy—apparently, a policy designed to encourage one to make necessary assumptions largely tangential to the topic at hand in the writing of an encyclopedia article is justification for assuming as true the most basic sina qua non premises and conclusions of the supporters of a hypothesis when conducting a literature survey on the relative scientific support vs. criticism of that hypothesis. Imagine your reaction if we applied this principle in reverse while conducting the same sort of literature survey: we disregard any scientist and their writings who assume that race has biological substance on the grounds that "we must make necessary assumptions".
3. Finally, in a marked demonstration of their complete lack of self awareness, they actually claim that the use of the stated selection criteria is in order to avoid the sort of cherry-picking of sources about this topic that's occurred at Wikipedia. Because immediately ruling out anyone who believes in a position fundamentally at odds with the one you are trying to advocate for is definitely not cherry picking.

Brusquedandelion (talk) 10:06, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Just FYI Brusquedandelion, the IP you're responding to was blocked as a sock. I didn't hat the comment since it had been referenced in my exchange with Superb Owl, but at this point their comment above should probably be struck so no one else wastes time on them. Generalrelative (talk) 13:41, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Update: I went ahead and struck it. Generalrelative (talk) 22:21, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

We don't need to hedge our sentences on Wikipedia with "scientists believe". Scientific consensus can be written in WP:WIKIVOICE, appropriately cited of course. Brusquedandelion (talk) 04:16, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

This sentence:

The issue with this sentence is that IQ differences between individuals do indeed seem to be highly heritable

But the proposed sentence says nothing about heritability, only that environmental factors, not race, determines IQ scores. Race is not the same thing as genetic inheritability. Brusquedandelion (talk) 04:13, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

My objection to the sentence in question is not that it's wrong but rather that it might be confusing to the reader, because it seems to imply that environmental factors are the only determinants of individual differences in IQ test performance, which most scientists agree is not the case.

On the other hand, environmental factors do appear to be the only determinants of differences in average IQ test performance between population groups. And we should indeed state that emphatically. Generalrelative (talk) 07:58, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

This is not true. A scientific discussion about evidence is not a discussion of politics or social policy. The safe and obvious assumption is that population differences are a result of genetics and environment. There are several reasons this is clear to anyone with sufficient verbal abstraction ability:

intelligence is highly, highly polygenetic. Groups separated for tens of thousands of years are not going to have the exact same variance of genes. Can you name me a biological trait that is only environmentally determined?

just because something is true, it doesn’t mean you have to say it. But the ethical answer never is too tell a lie when the truth is expected. RationalFactor (talk) 19:54, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi RationalFactor,

You've done a great job illustrating why we don't rely on the original analysis of our volunteers, especially not about what it is "safe and obvious" to assume. Instead, we follow what the reliable sources say, and this has already been adjudicated. If you truly have good-faith questions on the matter, I will direct you to this handy explainer.

Cheers, Generalrelative (talk) 20:57, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

There is no evidence to suggest it’s only environmental, except for some falsified data from Gould a long time ago. There are only arguments made by some scientists, but they do not pass scientific scrutiny.

After some minimal comprehension of biology and statistics, it’s clear that such a claim would not even be considered were it about any other topic, like sprinting or height or propensity to heart disease or hairiness or hormone production or ability to digest lactose or alcohol response or immunology or propensity to certain cancers or heat tolerance.

No environmental change outside the extremes of neglect, poverty, iodine deficiency, injury, or poisoning in a developed nation has ever been found to even influence IQ scores. RationalFactor (talk) 20:34, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Importantly, this was the consensus. However, since these are all university jobs, it couldn’t possibly be the consensus today.

I think informed people who are open minded and good faith could in fact be confused, because in the past people hoped IQ was only 50% genetic, and in nearly any university this is presumably still the number given as fact. It might even be given in this article. If it were true, there would be room to say only environment; HOWEVER, even then, it’s not true science to now stray from the null: mix of environmental and genetic. RationalFactor (talk) 20:42, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

My grandfather used to say: It ain't the stuff you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's the stuff you're damn sure of that just ain't so.

This is a case in point. I explained the hereditarian fallacy above, and quoted a gold-standard source saying that yes, serious genetics professionals understand this to be a fallacy, and yet you're repeating it. To reiterate: the heritability of individual-level differences tells us nothing about group-level differences. If you think this is all based on Gould, you have clearly not looked at the literature that was so thoroughly discussed in the RfC.

I'm sorry to say, but at this point there's nothing more to be said. If you have source-based suggestions for improving the article, you are free to suggest them. But this talk page is not a place for complaining about the WP:THETRUTH. Generalrelative (talk) 22:12, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Don't feed the trolls.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Many sources expressing agnosticism or hereditarian views were provided below. But you dismiss these in favor of your favorite blog post. Tarantaloid (talk) 08:36, 21 October 2024 (UTC) Account with 1 edit, created today, after the IP sock was discovered and banned. @Generalrelative, does this warrant admin investigation? Brusquedandelion (talk) 08:38, 21 October 2024 (UTC) Not worth wasting admin time unless it continues. Just expand the hat to cover the troll. Generalrelative (talk) 16:47, 21 October 2024 (UTC) Done. Generalrelative (talk) 16:48, 21 October 2024 (UTC) Generalrelative, that source you're linking to was published in American Psychologist so it's of good quality. But of its authors, one (Kevin Bird) is a botanical geneticist, one (John P. Jackson) is a professor of communication studies and Systems Training for Emotional Predictability and Problem Solving (STEPPS), and one (Andrew S. Winston) is a historian of psychology. In other discussions you've linked to this source which has the opposite issue: it is written by experts in human genetics but is a blog post. For statements about scientific consensus, the best possible sources are those from prominent journals and academic publishers that are written by experts in human genetics or aspects of psychology that relate directly to intelligence. And we actually do have such recent sources available, such as these four: [3] [4] [5] [6] The Harden source more or less agrees with the current article, but the other three don't. Can you explain why, in terms of policy, we would privilege academic sources written by people whose expertise lies outside this field over those written by subject-matter experts? 64.127.212.41 (talk) 18:24, 13 October 2024 (UTC) I think we should stick with peer-reviewed scholarship, not books (especially not without quotes and page numbers backing up these extraordinary claims), for this topic Superb Owl (talk) 04:33, 14 October 2024 (UTC) There are quotes and page numbers for the relevant parts of all these sources in the off-wiki discussion linked to in my earlier comment. I also don't see a reason for regarding books from reputable academic publishers as either more or less reliable than reputable academic journals, as academic presses' editorial boards use a review process that's very similar to peer review, and the relevant sourcing guideline WP:SCHOLARSHIP makes no distinction between the two. 64.127.212.41 (talk) 05:09, 14 October 2024 (UTC) 64.127 – Likely block evasion from Captain Occam and stop linking to Justapedia an unreliable source. The only reason you are linking to that is because you have posted on that very page you are linking to. Most of the sources you are citing over there are not reliable: Russell T. Warne, Heiner Rindermann, Richard Haier all hold far-right political views and have appeared on alt-right podcasts. Academia has ignored their publications. Definitely not WP:SCHOLARSHIP. Most of what you are citing is WP:Fringe. Psychologist Guy (talk) 10:17, 14 October 2024 (UTC) Rindermann has a poor academic record. Here he is only last month, a paper of his retracted by the editor in chief, "The Editor-in-Chief has retracted this article. After publication, concerns were raised about the methodology and dataset used in this research. Independent post-publication peer review has confirmed fundamental flaws in the use of student assessment studies as a measure of IQ or cognitive ability, and in the prominence of individual examples taken from the author's life". [7]. Rindermann is the same person who spends his time attending far-right conferences making anti-immigration talks several of which can be found on YouTube. Obviously not a neutral or reliable source for this topic area. Psychologist Guy (talk) 10:24, 14 October 2024 (UTC) Well, so much for you having "no interest in race and intelligence". But it's valuable that you're citing those RationalWiki pages, because that provides some useful information about whether the Norwegian IP user was correct in his suspicion about you. There is only one person who cites RationalWiki articles to support his arguments here, although I respect your patience in building up a convincing contribution history in other topics before returning to that behavior. You apparently (incorrectly) think I'm someone evading a block, and with your recent comments you've made me suspect that you're evading one also, so there is no meaningful discussion we can have here. All we can do is wait for other editors to comment, unless this discussion has already become too sidetracked to go anywhere. 64.127.212.41 (talk) 11:38, 14 October 2024 (UTC) Avoiding the valid points I made. Why are you citing far-right extremists? They fail WP:RS And no I am not particularly interested in this subject I have rarely commented on it, but I have been attacked off-site by yourself and your friends so sometimes I will take exception. Several users have agreed you are a block evader and it is obvious, you have been using IPs on here for months to evade your block. And lol at the conspiracy theory claims I am evading a block myself from your far-right group of friends. I have created 100s of articles here and improved 1000s of articles. BTW I am an admin at RationalWiki, I think I have created 200+ articles there as well. Who are you again and what have you ever done for this project? Based on your Captain Occam account you had no constructive edits but just trolled talk-pages on race and intelligence. It seems you have been at this for decades. It seems your MO is to stir up drama on race articles. Pathetic. I won't waste time responding to you again. See you in a few weeks I guess on a new IP like you have been doing for years. Psychologist Guy (talk) 12:28, 14 October 2024 (UTC) WP:AGF 24.126.11.219 (talk) 14:10, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

References

Intro paragraph

The concluding sentence, “Many of the proponents of intelligence tests and IQ scores were eugenicists who used pseudoscience to push now-debunked views of racial hierarchy” is inappropriate, given that it’s irrelevant to a discussion of empirical evidence. Furthermore, hierarchy has nothing to do with this conversation. IQ has been the most replicable aspect of all of psychology, and it is summarized as racist in the introductory paragraph? That’s advocacy, not science. RationalFactor (talk) 03:04, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

This is historical context, and historical context is relevant to an encyclopedia, provided it is well-sourced. Generalrelative (talk) 20:59, 19 October 2024 (UTC)