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The WP:FRINGE Debate

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RESOLVED AS:
Research into race and intelligence is not "fringe", some of the conclusions drawn from that research are highly contentious and need to be presented as such in the article.

--Ludwigs2 17:33, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Extended content moved to Wikipedia_talk:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2009-11-12/Race_and_Intelligence/Archive_3#The_WP:FRINGE_Debate

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Mediation Meta

Slrubenstein suggested changing: “All current research in race is based in SIRE information” to: “All current research on race in relation to IQ scores is based in SIRE information”. Basically, he's saying "Race can be biological when we talk about sickle-cell anemia, or anything but IQ. But when we talk about intelligence, there are no races--and I want this stated as a fact in Wikipedia". This illustrates the obvious bias of a group of editors here who are attempting to railroad this kind of nonsense through on their own. Captain Occam (who did a good job) quit as moderator due to the lack of consensus here, and now the POV group includes the moderator. Mikev made the manifestly reasonable statement:

"Using the 2009 AAPA statement as a principle reference point for writing the R&I article is unacceptable, since it contains an unproven and highly suspect genetic statement, which invalidates the discipline of R&I studies. I for one would be prepared to accept it as a POV. If he can reference the scholar responsible for the statement, that would be helpful."

He was very rudely attacked:

"[That's] absurd on its face. Not only do I reject it, ...it is a sign that Mikemikev not only does not wish to work towards a mediation, ...but merely wishes to disrupt this mediation process.... Mikemikev would use this as an opportunity to force in his own POV. Mikemikev... is a disruptive editor who... does not respect Wikipedia policies. I see no point in feeding this troll"

He then cited a Wikipedia policy which the punishment for breaking is wikipedia capital punishment: being banned from editing.

If this had been a physical confrontation on the street I would have called the police. But the "police" here are now on the take, so to speak. Mikev replied very politely:

"I feel I have made a valid point. I believe you cannot address it, so you are resorting to ad hominem."

The moderator's response to the ugly assault and polite response was NOT to berate the attacker or even censure him, but to call mikev's manifestly reasonable statements "unreasonable claims" and telling mikev, who has been part of this for weeks, [paraphrasing]: "Now get the hell out of here and don't come back until you've officially joined the conversation". I was shocked. I'm genuinely surprised that these editors would perform such mafia-like strongarming in a context which is being recorded and publicly available.

If they're not attacked outright or declared irrelevant, anyone pointing out why the biased position is nonsense is completely ignored, as if the objection had never been raised. For example, Mikev objected to the inclusion of an AAPA statement (which the biased editors were misrepresenting as being supportive of their position). He said: "I would be grateful if one of the advocates of using this could explain which parts of the statement are relevant to the article." his request went unanswered, the moderator having declared this kind of talk "exotic quibble". The AAPA statement will go in Wikipedia along with the implication: "The AAPA says that race is not biological", something their carefully-worded list of (true) statements did NOT say. I take particular offense at this because my first major was physical anthropology, and had I not eventually found cultural anthropology boring, I would be a member of AAPA now and signed that statement myself.

It's like trying to talk to "tea-party" wingnuts at a political website. It's like trying to talk to the Borg.

Look, NO one says that the universally-accepted IQ score gap is totally genetic in origin. The position of the POV-pushing editors is that NONE of the IQ difference is genetic, because they falsely (and insultingly) characterize that as a statement that (and I quote) "black people are inferior".

I am on the edge of saying "f*ck this", abandoning the article to the PC propagandists and coming back when scientists have smoking-gun proof that IQ is even partly genetic. My problem is: scientists have already DONE that. A summary of the research --probably over a thousand studies--was published by the prestigious APA in 2002(?). I am not sure of the year because the link to the most important document in this matter--which supports the genetic position--is broken. I replaced it with one that works weeks ago, but I see now that someone changed it back to a broken link. Given the above, I suppose I should not be surprised that these went unchallenged by the moderator:

[Our] statements are POV. Well, so what? I mean, is not everything in Wikipedia a point of view?", and

"To say there are two sides to the debate is itself a point of view."

And there's so much more of this that I'm tired of going back to the other Firefox tab, finding the next instance, then describing it here. To do so would be essentially to post an annotated copy of the entire discussion, and I have RL responsibilities. But I missed ONE day here, and when I came back, I discovered the decisions which "we" had supposedly made, and which I and others objected to. These decisions declare, in a nutshell, that as long as it's not mathematically impossible that the R/I correlation isn't biological, even the most conclusive, published psychometric research showing it is should either be minimized, described as "fringe science", or entirely replaced with statements of "race doesn't exist" by groups like the ASA, who are not even tangentially involved with DNA or biology.

I may very well be mistaken and I hope I am, but it seems more likely to me that this effort is being organized by a college club, a fraternity, or a political organization rather than that so many well-meaning Wikipedia editors are actually willing to tell lies in public about a scientific topic and back them up with thuggery.

This post, like many others objecting to the political corruption of this article, will probably be ignored. Certainly, the blatant, obvious bias will continue. However I may receive a polite version of "F*ck you, you're outvoted", a threat from the demonstrably biased moderator to ban me if I point out their next POV pontification, or actually ban me. So I'm putting this in the record for reference, should a review of this farce be done by an unbiased observer after everyone objecting to it has been thrown out. I see my role here now, not as an advocate for the objective presentation of repeatedly-proven facts, because those facts are routinely declared irrelevant. I am now merely documenting the shameful bias of this make-believe mediation. TechnoFaye Kane 04:07, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I applaud your frankness. But don't be so hard on Ludwig. He's doing a difficult job and I have confidence in him. As for the AAPA statement, if editors cannot justify it's use as a benchmark statement on race with regard to R&I, I think it will be safe to assume we do not use it. The fact that it is considered 'absured' (sic) to ask this is not a valid counter argument, and I believe Ludwig will appreciate this. mikemikev (talk) 12:44, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

TechnoFaye is twisting my words in her first paragraph. I meant precisely what I wrote. What I wrote means what it says. It does not mean what TechnoFaye reads into it. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:45, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Faye is misrepresenting everyone here, but I don't think it's intended to be malicious - I'm seeing this as a bit of exaggeration due to venting. C'mon faye - none of this is supportable by actual diffs.

But since the issue has been raised, let me lay out my perspective exactly as I (currently) see it, so that anyone can evaluate my potential biases on their own. Here's what I know/think:

To my understanding, there is a statistically significant difference in IQ scores between races; races in such research almost universally being defined by SIRE methods
To my understanding, there is a scientific debate about the cause of this difference: is it based in culture? based in family environment? inherited individually as a genetic characteristic from parents? inherited as a genetic characteristic from groups? some combination of these?
- To my understanding, the 'group genetic' approach is a significant but relatively small part of the research.
To my understanding, there is scientific evidence that intelligence is at least partly inherited, but no conclusive evidence (as of yet) about what particular genes influence it.
To my understanding, there is research that links SIRE to clusters of genes, but these are genes that were preselected to be indicators of race, and it is unknown whether any of them influence intelligence

Now, any or all of those points may be incorrect (and I welcome being enlightened, since I think most of you are currently closer to the material than I am). However, given the above, I have worries about engaging in synthesis. It may be natural to take the last two points and combine them to say that genes which influence intelligence are part of he cluster of genes that distinguish races, but I know of no research in the literature that actually demonstrates that. As mediator I am not interested in advocating for or against points that are present in the literature on the subject (in fact, I will insist that such get balanced properly), but as mediator I cannot allow synthesis by wikipedia editors to confuse the issue endlessly. I've been waiting this long to try to try to get some clarity on whether this is in fact synthesis of published materials; I'm still not 100% on that point, but I am heavily leaning towards the belief that it is synthesis, and if I make that decision I will simply close the discussion as resolved per policy, and we will move on. ok?

so, I've been studiously avoiding keeping track of who is on what side in this discussion, so I don't know who (aside from Faye and Mike) would argue for this point, but I would like to see some evidence that this entire debate is not simply argument from synthesis. Please be brief, to the point, and cite material that I can see for myself. --Ludwigs2 17:28, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

That looks generally correct. The only thing I would add as a clarifying bullet is that

There is direct and indirect evidence that environment affects intelligence, but only indirect evidence that genes do.

That is to say that the evidence for environmental effects on intelligence has been experimentally verified, but this is not the case with genetic effects. A.Prock 18:36, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree with this summary on genetic aspects of R&I (except for 'inheriting genetics from groups', what's that?). As you have put it, it is clear that intelligence genes have not been proven to differ between races, so it's not synthesis. If we then give adequate treatment to the environmental and hereditarian hypotheses, it will definitely not be synthesis, just a necessary statement of the facts. mikemikev (talk) 20:08, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Ludwig said: "There is research that links SIRE to clusters of genes"

Will you now stop demanding proof that SIRE is genetic? You already acknowledged somewhere in this War-and-Peace-length discussion that it (SIRE) correlates with low IQ scores. Or will you introduce more irrelevant, deliberately-distractive red-herrings like "Yes, but the sickle-cell gene hasn't been proven to affect intelligence".

Sickle-cell anemia is genetic and universally accepted as occurring almost exclusively in people who describe themselves as "Of Sub-Saharan African descent" [i.e., SIRE]. Would you require still more citation than that to say "SIRE can be used as a proxy for some specific DNA sequence?" If so, how is that different from saying that there IS biological (genetic) race--without even bringing intelligence into it at all?

Note that I am not asking if you can find someone's article giving a contrary opinion about genetic race. The question is: does the extremely strong correlation of SIRE with a genetic disease imply that genetic race exists, or do you call this statement "synthesis"?

> There is research that links SIRE to clusters of genes [which]... were preselected to be indicators of race.

So SIRE has a physical basis in genes that are indicators of race. You'll now stop saying that it hasn't been proven, right? We agree that SIRE can be used to mean "genetic race". Or will you continue insisting that you've never seen anything authoritative saying so, even though whole point of the study was to establish that, and you yourself just said it did?

> and it is unknown whether any of [the genes correlated with SIRE] influence intelligence

Those specific genes don't HAVE to be proven to influence intelligence! They only need to correlate with intelligence for us to say so. A possible explanation could be that there is some other gene affecting intelligence. But if there is, it occurs only with the SIRE-linked gene because SIRE is very strongly correlated with IQ score. Okay? GOD!

In what I can only attribute to a slip up in your obfuscation, you admitted both that SIRE is very strongly linked to low IQ scores and has been proven to be genetic. That's all that integrity requires we say. If you'll agree to put what you already acknowledge as true in Wikipedia, maybe we can end this runaround and publish the article. TechnoFaye Kane 15:10, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Inclusion of genetic intelligence research details

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

resolved at Wikipedia_talk:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2009-11-12/Race_and_Intelligence#The_99.86.25_correlation_number

Above Slruenstein writes:

If I am right, the debate here is thus: one side says, since the psychology article concluded that there is no or not yet evidence that these loci correlate with race, it means that this issue was discussed in a psychology article, which means that it is relevant to accounts of discussions of psychological research on race and IQ, even if all we say is that the conclusion was there is no conclusive evidence. The other side says, since the conclusion was there is no conclusive evidence for a link, it is therefore not relevant to discussions of race and intelligence, therefore not relevant to the article.

We seem to have gotten stuck on some of the particulars of this issue (preliminary gene level results), and I don't think we've really addressed the topic at the broad level. I for one am firmly in the summary side. That's not to say that gene level details shouldn't be in the article. Rather, they should be included when a reasonable summary of the Genetics of intelligence article warrants it. It would be useful for those interested including these details (I'm thinking of Captain Occam in particular) to discuss where they sit on the broad level, and whether summarizing Genetics of intelligence is a valid approach. Additionally, if they think gene level details should be included, an explanation of the rationale might move the mediation forward. A.Prock 17:55, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

What "psychology article concluded that there is no evidence that these loci correlate with race"? TechnoFaye Kane 15:10, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Faye: I recognize that this seems obvious to you, but we don't add things to wikipedia because they are obvious to editors, we add things to wikipedia because they are present in reliable sources. Correlation does not equal causation: even a perfect correlation between two variables does not tell us anything about what 'causes' the perfect correlation. That requires extra foundational research which (in this case) simply doesn't exist. Unless you know something I don't know? What you seem to be asking is that we engage in synthesis from published materials, which is against wikipedia policy. --Ludwigs2 16:32, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.