Talk:History of the race and intelligence controversy/Archive 4

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4 Archive 5

Shorter summaries of the 1969 paper of Jensen

This section is intended for summaries. We don't include unsourced synthesis nor do comment on the writer (eg words like "in a critical account"). That is WP:OR. In the account of James R. Flynn (from New Zealand) he comments about the events of the 1969-1975. That is clearly of this section. It is to help readers understand how different academics in reliable secondary sources have interpreted Jensen's paper. Certainly it's not about whether Jensen's paper is correct or not. That people commented later on that is mentioned in the appropriate place in the article. These are straight summaries, not points of view on the correctness of Jensen's article. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 11:53, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

The quote from Flynn isn’t about whether Jensen is right or wrong; it’s only about whether Jensen should be taken seriously as a scientist.
Let me make sure I understand your point about this correctly. Is it that you don’t have a problem with the Flynn material in general, but just think it’s in the wrong part of the article? If that’s the only problem here, then it can be moved to wherever you think is an appropriate place.
Incidentally, it might be worthwhile in general to cover the 1970s debate between Jensen and Flynn, because this debate is what defined most of the basic assumptions of the race and intelligence debate. (As well as leading to discoveries such as the Flynn Effect.) --Captain Occam (talk) 11:59, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
I agree that his Level - Level II theory was taken seriously by experts: the sentence about Flynn and Mckintosh should make that clear. We are giving authors' summaries of the articles, not their personal opinions or comments in the light of historical events. I did access a typed book or paper by Flynn where he discussed the Level I and Level II theories, but I'm not sure now that it was the 1980 book. I'd have to check that carefully. How did you access Flynn's 1980 book? Mathsci (talk) 12:34, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
The sentence about Flynn and Mckintosh just says that they both gave accounts of Jensen’s research. It doesn’t make it clear how valuable Flynn considered Jensen’s contributions to psychometrics to be, including his research about race differences. It also doesn’t provide any information about the 1970s debate between Jensen and Flynn, which I think the article should cover.
Flynn’s book used to be available at Google Books, but I’m not sure if it still is. You can always just buy it or find it at a library, in any case. I might purchase a copy of it on eBay or somewhere similar. --Captain Occam (talk) 13:05, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
I own a copy of Flynn (1980). It has two brief discussions of Jensen's ideas about Level I and Level II on pages 27-29 and 205-206. It seems consistent with the descriptions that we already have in the article. Let me know if you have questions. David.Kane (talk) 13:11, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Lynn on Bushmen

One of the captions says that according to Lynn's Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis, Bushmen are "mentally retarded". This sounds dubious. I'd like to have an exact quote on this.--Victor Chmara (talk) 12:31, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

I haven't actually read Lynn's book, but when this was discussed on the talk page for the Race and intelligence article someone quoted the relevant passage of it. Based on that, I'm pretty sure the way Lynn describes this is that Bushmen have a lower mental age than other groups of people. Some of Lynn's critics have interpreted this as meaning the same thing as mental retardation, but that isn't the wording Lynn actually uses. --Captain Occam (talk) 12:42, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
If Lynn himself does not use the words "mentally retarded", then the article should not use them either.--Victor Chmara (talk) 13:05, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
It's on page 76 of Lynn [1] and referred in the secondary source, the book review of Nicholas Mackintosh. Instead of blanking content, could editors please go to the secondary sources to verify the content? In Tucker's 2002 book, it was explained on Page 2 (and elsewhere) that the Pioneer Fund financed Mankind Quarterly. That's why there was a precise page citation. I've slightly changed the wording to make this more explicit. Mathsci (talk) 13:13, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

[2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

Mathsci has just reverted the article six times in under 24 hours. Victor, you might want to report this at AN3. I'd rather not do it myself, because of my involvement both here and in the AN/I thread; I think it's generally preferable for things like this to be reported by someone who's as un-involved as possible.

Let me know if you don’t want to, and I or David.Kane can do it. --Captain Occam (talk) 13:19, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Matschi now claims that Mankind Quarterly is "Pioneer-financed". This suggests that all or most of its funding is from Pioneer. Is this true? Currently, the article links together the Mainstream statement, Pioneer and Mankind Quarterly in a very POV manner.
In the quote Lynn does not explicitly classify them as "mentally retarded". I modified the caption accordingly.
In reverting my edits, Mathsci ended up deleting corrections of fact, clarifications and additions that I think even he would approve of. Can we agree on which of them are ok? The quotes from the Mainstream statement should stay and the Lynn & Vanhanen books should be mentioned.
Occam, I have no interest in reporting on Mathsci or anyone else, but you can of course do it if you want.--Victor Chmara (talk) 14:03, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
I have reverted the vandalism by the driveby IP and requested semiprotection of the page; and will continue to do so, since it against consensus. He is removing images and text against consensus. In every other case I have in fact added new properly sourced content each time. Pioneer-financed is reported in the secondary source - it only means partially in this case. I have modified the caption to agree with the secondary source (Mackintosh) and the primary source (Lynn) and disambiguate bushmen. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 18:12, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a portrait gallery

I've removed some of the bewildering array of portraits. Strange to see such bloat, most I can recall anywhere on Wikipedia. Portraitpedia we are not.99.141.254.167 (talk) 13:32, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

I thought that the portraits (almost all found/added by MathSci) were really good and interesting. Maybe add back half the ones you deleted? What do other editors think? David.Kane (talk) 13:47, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
Yes, add them back, please. mikemikev (talk) 14:34, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
I have added them back. Mathsci (talk) 14:36, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

What is the encyclopedic purpose of a portrait gallery? Twenty-three images? Sixteen portraits? Not acceptable.99.141.254.167 (talk) 17:07, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

If MathSci, Mikemikev and I agree on something (!?), then we are probably right. I say keep them. David.Kane (talk)
That's not a sufficient basis for inclusion. Please support your basis, I will be removing the portraits again - the onus is upon those arguing for inclusion. 99.141.254.167 (talk) 18:30, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm not aware of any Wikipedia policy which forbids the inclsion of images to illustrate an article. What is frowned upon is an article composed uniquely of a picture gallery, unless you can cite an article of policy of which I'm unaware. I say leave the pictures in.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:24, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
The burden for inclusion lies with those who wish to add material. What is the encyclopedic value in 23 images, 16 portraits? Each one challenged should be supported. Supporting arguments should also be presented not only for each challenged image but for the body of 23 as a whole. 23 images is far beyond any encyclopedic need. 99.141.254.167 (talk) 01:21, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
You wrote, "The burden for inclusion lies with those who wish to add material." Could you kindly source that statement to an official Wikipedia policy? -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 04:49, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
no problem, please look at WP:Burden. .19:17, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Twelve portraits removed as unsupported, individually and as a group, for inclusion in the article.99.141.254.167 (talk) 14:09, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Request for arbitration

Note that a request for arbitration has been filed relating to various disputes over this article (among others). Rvcx (talk) 18:16, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

IP editor reported on WP:ANI

Since this editor has used three IPs and appears to be a sockpuppet account who has been warned for disruptive and tendentious edits on PIGS (economics) I have reported him on WP:ANI. Almost all his points are POV-pushing. he has removed sourced captions in what looks like an edit war by a POV-pusher who does not engage with secondary sources. His removal of images seems to be an act of disruptive and tendentious editing. His reasoning is illogical and not borne out by any secondary sources: as on the other articles he has edited, he is behaving kike a classic edit warrior and the sockpuppet account of a banned user. the reasons he gives above for Terman, Burt, Gould, etc, "non-notable image" are just blatant trolling by a user determined to disrupt wikipedia: the removal of these images is childish disruption for its own sake. No reasonable wikipedian would argue that a paragraph devoted to Cyril Burt should not illustrated by a photograph of him. Mathsci (talk) 20:08, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Many of the points he raises are entirely valid. Leave the personal attacks for ANI. Rvcx (talk) 03:22, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Ahem, the editor in question has been blocked for 24 hours by Black Kite for disruptive editing and the page has been semiprotected. The blocked IP editor did not cite any secondary sources; so unfortunately almost all of his arguments were invalid. You should also be aware that all editing on the article and its talk page will be under scrutiny during the current ArbCom case. So please try to follow what goes on at ANI more carefully (IP block and semiprotection of page); and please remember that you yourself must read secondary sources carefully if you wish to participate in editing this article. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 04:02, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
And I will remind you yet again to stop the ad hominem and focus on content for a change. Many of the captions were blatantly unsupported by sources, and some pictures were entirely irrelevant. Getting editors blocked will not obviate the need to address those issues. Rvcx (talk) 04:41, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Nevertheless, until now the speed of your responses indicates that you do not bother consulting secondary sources. Perhaps then it's worth pointing out that a second user that you have supported on this page, who also edited without consulting secondary sources, has been recently blocked for two weeks. Since I have added 82,000 bytes to this article and about 100 sources, there is no indication whatsoever that I myself do not pay careful attention to content and sources. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 04:50, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Mathsci be careful not to leave yourself open to a WP:OWN accusation. As for other users, set up a RFC or 3O if you want to discuss these changes. Remember that bold changes that get reverted lead to discussion, not edit warring. S.G.(GH) ping! 09:16, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Your point is well taken. Mathsci (talk) 09:50, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Link to Arbitration Case Pages

This talk page mentions that the article Race and Intelligence is currently before the Arbitration Committee, and of course some of the same editors who are involved persons in that case and some of the same editing issues are seen here at this article. The arbitration case file provides more details. Wikipedians who are familiar with relevant evidence, whether or not they are listed as "involved persons" in the case, would do well to post the evidence they can readily link to over there. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 16:22, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Article Images and Captions

Yes - MathSci, MikeMikev, and David Kane really did agree that the miniportraits were nice. And i will add my vote to the list. So it really is true that people who are often divided can find some common ground!

Now, an anonymous editor has entered into a revert war deleting the images. Apparently this IP raised an objection on this talk page, and no one agreed with the objection, and two editors who have usually differed with MathSci supported him in this case. So the IP knows that editors with a history of work on this article support the images. That this person has gone to war deleting images and reverting MathSci seems to me to be the worst kind of disruptive editing. It serves no purpose except to discourage any agreement (let alone collaboration) between MathSci, David and Mike.

The page is now protected but I urge any admin checking this out to see that MathSci was restoring edits supported by a consensus of registered users, in opposition to an anonymous SPA who refuses to listen to anyone else. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:20, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Slr. In my new temporary statement on the RfAr I describe this consensus as a "rare event". I have no idea who the driveby IP was, but they were simply vandalizing the article. I can see no reason to WP:AGF in this case. It was out-and-out vandalism. Mathsci (talk) 20:05, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Agreed. I think the photos added a nice touch and made the article better. I could imagine a reasonable argument for decreasing their number or substituting some for others, but visitor did not seem interested in discussion. Don't we know any admins who can fix this? David.Kane (talk) 20:13, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
No one has yet to lift even a finger to support the images notability for inclusion individually or as a group. At the moment this is simply a textbook example of the fact that Wikipedia is not run by "Votes". "Nice pictures" is not sufficient support for their encyclopedic notability. 99.141.254.167 (talk) 20:19, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
I'll also add that I'm tremendousnessly disappointed in the Editor "Mathsci's" fabrications. Your false declaration at ArbCom is troubling: "On the other hand I haven't seen the level of disruptive edits that have occurred on the history article, with no scholarly basis whatsoever. I don't quite know why, but a series of IPs has been randomly vandalizing the article for the last two weeks, removing images and newly added content"
My first edit to the article was at 13:30, yesterday June 1st. One needs to go back to early last month to find the next IP edits:[8](2), from there one needs to go back nearly another week - except this IP edit inserts an image:(3). Your false testimony otherwise, coupled with your unshaded declaration of no WP:AGF, and blatant mis-characterization of my edit as drive by vandalism does nothing to further honest discussion of the debate on its merits and substance. One can only wonder how often you resort to such techniques when your intellect fails you - perhaps such behavior can be found littered along the route that brought you before Arb-Com in the first place.99.141.254.167 (talk) 20:50, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

99.141.254.167: Can you point us toward any Wikipedia policy which specifies how many photos are too many in an article? Perhaps I am naive, but most encyclopedias that write an article which mentions X like to include a picture of X, if one is available. Given that the article mentions, for example, Arthur Jensen, what is wrong with including a picture of him? Perhaps your position is that the article should only include photos of people about whom there is enough discussion? I just want to get a better sense of your point of view. Can you point us toward examples of articles that also had too many photos but which, after discussion, had them removed? David.Kane (talk) 21:01, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you on Jensen. Jensen was retained, as perhaps 3/4 of the article revolves around him. Shockley, given his fame, his association and his influence on Jensen was also retained. Lysenko's infamy and real world ramifications kept his image. (I was also influenced by a desire to highlight the link as a sort of educational "Someone You Should Know") Binet was kept (again a closet link, like Lysenko, advertising, "Something You Should Know") as the path here begins at IQ testing, itself a notable and important subject for it's controversial utility and influence. 99.141.254.167 (talk) 21:19, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
I think the pictures are great. Maybe the Lysenko and Boas portraits are questionable, since they weren't direct participants, acting more as "labels" for a certain points of view. The rest I have no problem with, and I think they help readers connect better by putting faces with a bunch of unfamiliar names. Professor marginalia (talk) 21:20, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm also going to remove the wanted poster for the Weather Underground. This group, and its members, are not related to local SDS chapter action in 1973 (The image caption here incorrectly dates the protest to 1969). The Weather faction did not exist until the SDS national convention, becoming first the Weathermen and overthrowing SDS leadership before the organization SDS later effectively dissolved and core members went underground. The poster has no relevance and is an historical mis-characterization. Also note that the faction that protested (SDS-WSA) was specifically the faction that DID NOT support or include Weather.99.141.254.167 (talk) 21:43, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
The picture illustrates the article. The FBI picture dates from 1970 and the people pictured were leaders of Students for a Democratic Society. You incorrectly assert that the protest was in 1973. However that claim is cdirectly ontradicted by what's written in the 1975 article by Lee Cronbach, where he describes how the protest as occuring in 1969 two weeks after Jensen's paper appeared. The caption had a citation and you didn't bother to check the secondary source. Your personal point of view is irrelevant for editing wikipedia. Mathsci (talk) 22:28, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Can you please directly quote the source which attributes the protest to any one of the pictured individuals - or to the Weather Underground? An organization which itself did not exist as such until Christmas, 1969? Thank you in advance for the direct quote in support of the claim.99.141.254.167 (talk) 22:37, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

<== Passage from page 3 of Cronbach (1975):

As soon as the article was in type the publicity broke. The Harvard Review made the article available to the press along with the remarks of the prearranged critics. Substantial excerpts appeared in U.S. News and the New York Times, and lesser accounts appeared in other media. Within two weeks, the Students for a Democratic Society were cruising the Berkeley campus with a sound truck whose chant was "Stop racism. Fire Jensen!"And on the Eastern seaboard, it was rumored that the Nixon cabinet had discussed whether the article could be used to justify reducing outlays to aid blacks.

So 1969, not 1973. Other sources write "Fight racism. Fire Jensen!" (probably more accurate, if it matters). 99.141.254.167 will find that Jensen wrote about this event in the 1972 book "Genetics and Education". Why is he trying to contribute here if everything he says contradicts the sources, which he doesn't bother to read? The illustration illustrates the organization not the protests. Only he seems to object and h;s said a number of quite incorrect things so far. Why should anybody pay any attention to his personal thoughts on wikipedia? This isn't a WP:FORUM after all is it? Mathsci (talk) 22:48, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Your reference has nothing at all to do with the Weathermen. Period. The FBI wanted poster has no relevance at all. My ref regarding the 1973 SDS protest referred to "A Resolution Against Racism" that was published in the New York Times on October 28, 1973 that specifically targeted Jensen and Shockley, leading to the formation of the Committee Against Racism, (CAR). 99.141.254.167 (talk) 22:56, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Which secondary source cites the letter to the New York Times? Mathsci (talk) 23:58, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
It wasn't a letter. Here are some cites:[9] [10][11][12][13] It's also described in this Wikipedia entry on the SDS here:[14] Are the cites acceptable?99.141.254.167 (talk) 00:29, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
I'll take it that no further opposition to removing the FBI poster exists?99.141.254.167 (talk) 19:24, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
All your suggestions for removing images are invalid. You are simply being disruptive. All the picture illustrate indivuals involved in the controversy. Your reasons for emoving them seem petty and not designed to increase the readability of the article. If you look at a standard texbook on the history of psychology, such as that of Ludy T. Benjamin, pictures do appear. Your suggestions seem wholly negative and not designed to improve this encyclopedia. The half page advertisement can be mentioned, but no reliable secondary source indicates that SDS, in whatever form it had by 1973, was responsible for collecting the signatures. The other images were supported by all contributors to this page except you and so will be restored when the page is unlocked. If you persist in edit warring to remove them, your own editing patterns will probably be mentioned in the current ArbCom case. IP editors rarely appear to suddenly edit an article of this type without having previously edited wikipedia under a different account. Mathsci (talk) 11:12, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
I agree with MathSci. The consensus of editors here clearly want more pictures, not fewer and there is no Wikipedia policy against such a preference. I am happy to discuss the merits of specific images --- for example, the Nazi pamphlet should go; maybe the Wanted poster is off-topic --- but wholesale deletions without discussion are clearly unacceptable. Once the article restriction is lifted, I support adding the images back. David.Kane (talk) 12:08, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
What Nazi pamphlet? Could David.Kane clarify his thoughts a little? My guess is that many editors voicing opinions here will not be permitted to edit these articles in a month or two's time. Mathsci (talk) 23:44, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I was referring to | this which, I now see, was not a Nazi pamphlet. The description given is "The first issue of Neue Anthropologie was dedicated to Fritz Lenz, coauthor with Erwin Baur and Eugen Fischer of a text on Rassenhygiene, the scientific theory used to justify genocide in Nazi Germany[78]". Comments: 1) To the extent that this belongs in the article at all, it does not belong in the section labeled 1960-1980. 2) As best I can tell, none of those author or the journal itself are mentioned in the article. 3) Although I agree that on-topic images are good, images with no direct connection to the text/topic of an article are bad. At the very least, the caption needs to make clear what relevance the image has, at least if it is not obvious from reading the article. Given all that, I am deleting, but I am not against it being re-added if someone can fix/explain the above. I think that the vast majority of MathSci's other images should be re-added. But, instead of simply adding them all back (I don't want to edit war), I will just add back a selection of the most relevant ones. David.Kane (talk) 02:38, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Weather Underground FBI wanted poster

The FBI wanted poster of the Weather Underground has no relevance whatsoever here. Weather had no involvement. The ref supplied earlier makes no mention of Weather. The Weather Underground on the poster did not even exist until Christmas of 1969. It's removal is required.99.141.254.167 (talk) 19:33, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Those pictured were the leaders of SDS. Your own account, which seems to be an alternative account of a regular editor, has been so disruptive on various noticeboards that it is likely to be blocked fairly soon based on WP:DUCK. Mathsci (talk) 23:49, 9 June 2010 (UTC
No. Those pictured were leaders of the Weather Underground. The SDS of Berkeley in 1969 were unrelated. Please produce a ref showing any Weather Underground involvement, the group didn't even exist then. We really shouldn't be creating an artificial history were none exists. It's important to be honest with our sources.99.141.250.125 (talk) 01:15, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
I've removed the images again. Please do not re-insert. There was no Berkeley Chapter of the Weather Underground. the Weather Underground did not even exist then.99.141.250.125 (talk) 13:37, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Which secondary source are you citing - or is this personal opinion? Wikipedia is not edited this way. Mathsci (talk) 20:12, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
It ia your duty to supply the ref supporting Weatherman involvement, or even that of one or more of the photographed principals, Ayers, Dohrn, etc... I tried, in the section above, to show the error by pointing out that the group Weather Underground did not exist at that time. I even showered you with references[15] in which one can follow a time line[16] of Berkeley SDS transforming to SDS-WSA to the Committee against Racism, much of which centered around the articles controversy itself. SDS-WSA and CAR were quite explicitly constituted from the elements not associated with Weather.99.141.250.125 (talk) 20:54, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
WP:V: "All material in Wikipedia articles must be attributable to a reliable published source to show that it is not original research, but in practice not everything need actually be attributed. This policy requires that anything challenged or likely to be challenged, including all quotations, be attributed to a reliable source in the form of an inline citation, and that the source directly support the material in question." This image has been challenged and hence policy requires that it be directly supported by a reliable source. 94.196.199.229 (talk) 21:12, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Fly-by IP editors like this one - possibly participating here because of off-wiki communication on external websites - should probably find different articles to edit at this stage. IPs from Sheffield at a loose end might try Sheffield incest case, Yorkshire Ripper, Crucible Theatre, Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday, A. S. Byatt or William Sterndale Bennett. Mathsci (talk) 21:26, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
No, no conspiracy here. Any evidence for that assertion? No, I thought not. Refactor your personal attack or your editing privileges may be restricted. 94.196.17.49 (talk) 15:54, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
All the Ed. did was quote policy. Do you ever respond to anything on its merits? Or is illogical misdirection, obfuscation and accusation your only rhetorical tools when your position is challenged?99.141.250.125 (talk) 21:33, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
The Sheffield IPs comments seem to show a complete misunderstanding of editing policy. Now you, for example, removed an image of Cyril Burt, in a long paragraph about Burt, because you thought it was "unnotable". What part of wikipedia policy do you think justifies that kind of edit summary or reversion? Mathsci (talk) 21:49, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
My objection to the Burt image is found on this page in a section entitled "Burt image", indeed it's devoted to the discussion of the subject. This section is devoted to an FBI wanted poster regarding the criminal activity of the Weather Underground.99.141.250.125 (talk) 22:00, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
The reasoning about Cyril Burt seems not to be supported by any secondary source. To me, it looks like disruptive trolling: what you wrote has no relation to the content. Unfortunately you (a) don't get to edit the article and (b) don't get to dictate what discussions here are about. Why not register an account? Mathsci (talk) 22:06, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
OK. You seem to be having trouble with the concept of dividing discussion by subject. 99.141.250.125 (talk) 22:12, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
No, I have limited time; you are editing tendentiously and disruptively. Meanwhile please answer the question about Cyril Burt. Mathsci (talk) 22:19, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
If you haven't the time to properly edit...99.141.250.125 (talk) 22:36, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

If no source prominently linking the Weather Underground can be found then this image should certainly be left out. Rvcx (talk) 04:56, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

These people were the leaders of SDS in 1969 when these events took place; that's recorded in plenty of secondary sources on the student protest groups of that period, e.g. Leaders from the 1960s: a biographical sourcebook of American activism by David De Leon or Outlaws of America: the Weather Underground and the politics of solidarity by Dan Berger, to name but two. Mathsci (talk) 10:22, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
You don't seem to know your history here. The SDS split in two in 69: one faction went on to protest study of racial differences; the other went on to become the Weather Underground. If you can find a secondary source explicitly linking these four people to the organization of the Jensen protests then the photo could be relevant. Otherwise, including it is just sloppy, and you really can't do that where living people are involved. Rvcx (talk) 12:26, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Cattell, 2 images and 1 disingenuous caption

I've removed the images of Cattell. The article text does not support his importance at 15, nor does it support the claim, "... one of Jensen's main supporters, referring to his opponents as "ignoracists"" The term does not appear to be a Jensen-centric term. Indeed, evidence shows a wide and general use. Here are some refs, "one may guess that the explanation lies outside science in the racist prejudices of Hitler and the ignoracist counter-prejudices of which he is the originator", Theophile Stanley Krawiec[17] There are many[18], the oldest I can find is from 1971, "Racists and ignoracists are equally anathema to the scientist and to the man of good will and faith in evolution." Robert Cancro[19] It also appears possibly multidisciplinary with one noted IPE scholar[20] also using the term[21]

In short the images are, for a start, misrepresentative, are of undue weight and lack notability.99.141.250.125 (talk) 13:32, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Which secondary source are you citing - or is this personal opinion? Wikipedia is not edited this way. Mathsci (talk) 20:12, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Hey, genius, there are five sources cited.99.141.250.125 (talk) 22:16, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
While I can't endorse the IP editor's incivility, this does underscore the counterproductive nature of all of Mathsci's cut-and-paste rhetoric. Rvcx (talk) 04:53, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
What rhetoric? You don't even bother to check the citation in the caption. Isn't that extremely disruptive of you? Mathsci (talk) 04:58, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
The sources have already been provided for Cattell's neologism "ignoracist". The 1996 book of Tucker is impeccable. We don't paraphrase or interpret primary sources, we leave that to reliable secondary sources. The page numbers have been given in Tucker's book. I really don't undersatnd why the IP editor is quibbling about properly sourced captions. He has not consulted the secondary source cited and has given his own personal interpretion of a primary source. Mathsci (talk) 10:14, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Verschuer image

I've removed the Verschuer image, not-notable, not supported by article text and eugenic twin studies go back to at least Galton in the 1800's .... as well as continue to this day.99.141.250.125 (talk) 15:45, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Which secondary source are you citing - or is this personal opinion? Wikipedia is not edited this way. Mathsci (talk) 20:12, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
The caption and citations are related to Mankind Quarterly, discussed in the text. Of course this material could equally incorporated in the main text. I don't understand what is meant by unnotable, Mathsci (talk) 09:54, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
This is particularly egregious. The journal is mentioned in the text, but the editor is not. The picture is this of no relevance, anyway. But you go even further by using the caption of the photo (of a man not mentioned in the article) as an excuse to link him through an assistant he once had to Auschwitz. How on earth can that be considered encyclopedic? Rvcx (talk) 12:30, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Terman image

I've removed the Terman image, not notable. Additionally Binet's image is already prominently featured. Binet, as the namesake, is sufficient to illustrate the Stanford-Binet IQ test. 99.141.250.125 (talk) 15:50, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Which secondary source are you citing - or is this personal opinion? Wikipedia is not edited this way. Mathsci (talk) 20:12, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Terman is mentioned several times in the text, so his image is relevant. The Stanford-Binet test is Terman's adaptation of the Binet test. That is what was used on the US army and that is specifically discussed in the text. Terman is not only notable but very relevant, Mathsci (talk) 10:05, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Goddard image

I've removed the image. Image is not notable.99.141.250.125 (talk) 15:50, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Which secondary source are you citing - or is this personal opinion? Wikipedia is not edited this way. Mathsci (talk) 20:12, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Goddard is mentioned several times in the text, so his image is relevant. Mathsci (talk) 10:02, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Draper image

Not notable, also appears to give undue weight. Although the idea is widely held in disrepute today it was not outside the mainstream then. Focusing on Draper is Undue Weight. Carnegie, Rockefeller, Harriman, Ford, Kellogg, Gamble, Dodge, Scripps, Biddle, Morgan ... etc, all were publicly associated with, and financial supporters of, eugenics.99.141.250.125 (talk) 16:04, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Which secondary source are you citing - or is this personal opinion? Wikipedia is not edited this way. Mathsci (talk) 20:12, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
None of these people are mentioned. None of them except draper set up the Pioneer Fund to support heriditarian research. The other mentioned are not recorded in any secondary source as having funded research of this nature. It's totally irrelevant and unhelpful to mention these names. This is not about the funding of eugenics but of hereditarian research. That is very clear from the secondary sources. Mathsci (talk) 10:02, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Boas image

Removed. Not-notable image. 99.141.250.125 (talk) 15:56, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Which secondary source are you citing - or is this personal opinion? Wikipedia is not edited this way. Mathsci (talk) 20:12, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Relevant to the text since the "Boas cult" is mentioned various times. Mathsci (talk) 09:55, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Eysenck image

Eysenck image removed as not notable and undue weight. Jensen's mentor's portrait has no place here. The controversy neither begins, nor ends, with Jensen - or his mentor. 99.141.250.125 (talk) 16:09, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Which secondary source are you citing - or is this personal opinion? Wikipedia is not edited this way. Mathsci (talk) 20:12, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Eysenck is mentioned explicitly in the text, so the image is relevant. Again I don'tknow what is meant by "not notable". Eysenck is mentioned many times in the article. Mathsci (talk) 09:57, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Neue Anthropologie image

Not at all notable. The caption notes that: 'Jensen had a peripheral relationship to a journal founded in 1973 that featured separately at one time a guy named Lenz in it's first issue, Lenz once co-authored a paper with two others on Rassenhygiene. Rassenhygiene is the theory underlying the holocaust.'

The evils of eugenics may be made stark through the application of the swastika - but it predates them and was firmly entrenched in English speaking, and many other, societies before then. Indeed, Rassenhygiene's use here is just a dressing up of Galton's idea in German clothes. Lenz didn't create the thought, and the Journal's 1973 foundation are not relevant. The image is undue, not notable and a misrepresentative simplification and Godwin influenced near-canard.99.141.250.125 (talk) 16:42, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Which secondary source are you citing - or is this personal opinion? Wikipedia is not edited this way. Mathsci (talk) 20:12, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
I agree that this image is WP:UNDUE. As best I can tell (corrections welcome), this image is only connected to the article because Jensen (once?) gave an interview (about what?) to this journal. We know nothing about that interview (when it was, who gave it, what the questions were, and so on). I don't think we should. That whole incident is too obscure to merit coverage in this article. And, even to the extent it merits inclusion as a sentence or two (and I see no reason to delete the current sentence), this image (and especially its caption) have no direct connection to that discussion. I think that 90% of the complaints about the images have no merit, but this one does. Why not compromise and let it go? David.Kane (talk) 22:03, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
This content appears as a caption but could just as easily be explained in detail in the full text, with a long section on German involvement in that part of the history. As I'm sure David.Kane is more than aware, there are huge amounts of history written about that topic and this appears in many of the secondary sources already used. On a slightly different note, regarding direct quotes, which I know that David.Kane has pressed for, Jensen himself gave an interview to Jack Fincher in 1972 in Human Behavior, Volume 1, in which he said, [22] "People with IQs of 70 and below are a burden on everyone, a disservice to themselves. Left to their own devices they simply create problems, their lives are so miserable." The full transcript is available, is mentioned in reliable secondary sources and, since it is exactly what Arthur Jensen said, would not violate all those BLP violations that David.Kane has brought up. I agree with him that we need far more material on Germany and eugenics in addition to these very relevant and revealing direct quotes from Jensen. Thanks David for this valuable input. Mathsci (talk) 22:44, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
MathSci: You seem confused about my position. 1) If you want to add large amounts of material to the article about "German involvement in that part of the history" then go for it! The more material in Wikipedia the better! Indeed, the history of race on intelligence could use more material from countries outside the US/Britain, including Germany, France, China, Japan and so on. 2) If you want to add more direct (in context!) quotes from Jensen, then go for it! The more material in Wikipedia the better! At some point, we might need to split this article up into sub-parts, or migrate the material around, but I have never complained about a direct, in context quote of Jensen, only about false descriptions of his views. 3) But 1) and 2) are irrelevant to this discussion. Images should have a direct and meaningful connection to the article. This image does not and so should be deleted. Or are you the only editor whose opinions matter with regard to which images belong and which do not? David.Kane (talk) 12:47, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Burt image

Removed Burt, not notable and undue weight - Twin studies have been academically documented continuously to this day from back over 100 years. The image does nothing to further our understanding, indeed its prominent use and perceived directed conclusion actually obscure the wider and more complex encyclopedic telling of this academically disreputable controversy.99.141.250.125 (talk) 16:56, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Which secondary source are you citing - or is this personal opinion? Wikipedia is not edited this way. Mathsci (talk) 20:12, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Mathsci seems to be having trouble with editing. I'll try to respond to his randomly placed concern[23] here, at the subject location. My simple point, regarding the long history and breadth of twin studies is thouroghly discussed in an entire article here at Wikipedia devoted to the subject, entitled Twin study, our article dates modern Twin studies back 135 years. (That's over 100). Here is a direct secondary ref, a lecture given at the Royal Society entitled "Twin Research from the time of Francis Galton to the Present Day":[24] And here, a study from 1874[25]. Hope this helps.99.141.250.125 (talk) 22:30, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
That shows a full lack of awareness of what consititues a reliable wikipedia source. The primary source you have produced, however, reveals a lot about yourself. It was written in 1939 by a German psychologist, one of the foremost experts in Nazi Germany in Rassenhygiene, who after 1942 solicited blood samples from the corpses of twins from Auschwitz concentration camp, through his former assistant, the camp medical officer Josef Mengele. I don't think that is an acceptable WP:RS by any kind of wikipedia standards. Then you cite a second paper from 1874, a primary source which you feels justifies your point about Burt. I'm sorry this is trolling in the worst possible taste. Mathsci (talk) 23:08, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
A lecture at the Royal Society given in London is not an accepted source as supporting reference for a simple claim that Twin study's have been conducted for greater than 100 years? Nor is a world famous study itself acceptable? The Royal Society is unquestionably a WP:RS. . .99.141.250.125 (talk) 23:18, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Gould image

I've removed the image of a single member of the short-lived 35 person student/professor - Sociobiology Study Group. Undue weight.99.141.250.125 (talk) 17:05, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Which secondary source are you citing - or is this personal opinion? Wikipedia is not edited this way. Mathsci (talk) 20:12, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Mathsci, "secondary source" is not an incantation. Wikipedia certainly is edited by pointing out the marginal relevance of particular subjects and requiring editors to demonstrate their prominence and why they deserve special mention. Rvcx (talk) 04:45, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Skull images (multiple)

I've removed one of the two skulls. Not notable and not reflective of the "early history" section. The image predates article text and is not an image derived or referenced in relation to the article subject.99.141.250.125 (talk) 17:12, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Which secondary source are you citing - or is this personal opinion? Wikipedia is not edited this way. Mathsci (talk) 20:12, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
You don't cite a secondary source to show lack of notability. That's a rather obtuse rebuttal to the reasonable argument that one meaningless picture of a skull is enough. Rvcx (talk) 04:48, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
I don't quite follow Rvcx's reasoning here, since Samuel George Morton is notable (as his WP article describes) for measuring a huge number of North American skulls. The secondary source now cited explains that Morton believed intelligence was correlated to brain size and that this differed between different racial populations. So no, this was not just one more "meaningless picture of a skull". Most other users commenting here have welcomed the Morton image and understood its historic significance. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 05:34, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Images of persons still living

Images of persons who have been identified with the issue have been placed in the article. I suppose this adds some minor interest, but I suggest that the images of the persons who are still living should be removed. The issue has stirred up much disputation and even hatred, as shown in the article, and personal harassment has resulted in some cases. I think it would be in the interest of BLP policy that the chance of such people being identified in person should be reduced by removing their portraits. Of, course, their portraits are available in other sources, but few in such easily accessible form as on Wikipedia. Xxanthippe (talk) 05:15, 26 June 2010 (UTC).

Lead

Same observation as at Race and intelligence, it's about quantification of intelligence (measures and what they are interpreted to mean) not about intelligence itself. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 01:54, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Also, overall, seems a bit flat (tending to black and white, no pun intended, interpretations of some positions) for such a rich and nuanced topic. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 22:04, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
Unfortunately for this article and all the treatments in books and articles on the history of psychology, in this context intelligence is what is measured by IQ tests. That's what all the secondary sources say. Mathsci (talk) 23:01, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
Unfortunately, there appears to be a confusion on the part of some between measurement and quantification on the one hand, and "conclusions" on the other.
   There is also a disturbing one-sided-ness (leading to POV tagging itchy finger) to the narrative here. For example, Goddard, is presented strictly in the dimension of his original work. There is no mention that by the late 1920's he recanted (on numerous occasions, publicly) most of his conclusions, including that morons (a term he originated) could not be suitably educated, that the feeble-minded should not have children or should be segregated from the rest of society. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 17:37, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
Are you talking about the lede now? You should discuss directly the secondary source, not your own personal point of view. That is how wikipedia is written: you provide no reliable secondary sources to support your statements. That is quite unhelpful. Mathsci (talk) 21:49, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Contentious claims about Jensen while that very topic is under discussion at Arb Com

The difficult topic of how to apply BLP to contentious claims about Arthur Jensen is under review at Arb Com. If you have an opinion, please chime in. In the meantime, with regard to edits like this, some comments:

Jensen. If Arb Com rules that this sort of material is appropriate, then I think we need to resurrect the article about Jensen (1969). Thoughts on that?

  • We could also expand the Arthur Jensen article. Certainly, the more (correct!) information in Wikipedia, the better.

My initial thought is that we would recreate the Jensen (1969) and then make it a daughter article of both this article and Arthur Jensen. Thoughts? Thanks. David.Kane (talk) 12:26, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Re-creating the article on Jensen 1969 sounds like a good idea to me, although it would most likely need some additional work in order to avoid being a potential POV fork. The most recent version of it that existed probably relied too heavily on Helmuth Nyborg as a source, since I only had around a week to try and improve the article after Mathsci nominated it for deletion, and Nyborg’s article was the only secondary source I could find that discussed the reactions to Jensen’s paper in depth and that Mathsci hadn’t rejected.
David.Kane, if I remember correctly, the article still exists in your userspace. What I’d recommend doing is editing the article there and adding some additional sources in order to balance the Nyborg material, and then re-creating the article when you think you’ve made it neutral enough to not be a POV fork anymore. (Not that think Nyborg’s article should be left out entirely, of course.) --Captain Occam (talk) 13:06, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
There are plenty of materials @ JSTOR which represent a wide range of reactions to Jensen/1969 from various academic communities and interest groups therein. A chronological and inclusive view over time would be beneficial. (Unfortunately, the NYPL is not readily accessibly to me at this time, perhaps someone would be interested in spending some time on that. I'd also note that while JSTOR typically provides the first page of journal articles, I've found that simply lifting quotes or characterizing positions based only on the "free" part of articles can lead to overall misrepresentation of sources.) PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 13:29, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

<= These are not "contentious claims". That is disruptive rhetoric from David.Kane, who with his tag team of Captain Occam and Mikemikev, is simply engaged in edit warring.

Vecrumba misunderstands that this is a history of psychology article and we use WP:RS to report on contemporary reactions to a highly controversial paper. But at present we are discussing "summmaries" of the contents of the paper not reactions. Vecrumba's suggestions are not helpful and confuse second and primary sources. The commentaries of Richard Lewontin or Leon Kamin for example are primary sources and cannot be used directly.

But here we have the whole tag team amassed to contradict a reliable secondary source.

And for what reason? WE DON'T LIKE IT. They don't discuss the WP:RS but are in automatic "let's all revert this together" mode.

However, this is commentary found in multiple texts; and that is what we report on wikipedia. In this case it comes from an article from a 1997 book in a prestigious Stanford University series. It is an article written by Richard Valencia, professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas, Austin and Daniel Solorzano, professor of social science and comparative education at UCLA. It is what they wrote. David.Kane is hardly in a position to question or evaluate material from an impeccably reliable seondary source. His tag team mate Mikemikev simply reverted the edit with the explanation "material false". And David.Kane and his other tag team mate Captain Occam apparently think the same. But nobody is interested in their personal views on this material. On wikipedia neither David.Kane, Mikemikev, Captain Occam nor Mathsci get to give their summary of or commentary on Jensen's highly controversial 1969 paper: we leave that up to reliable secondary sources. We might agree with what they write or we might disagree: but, if it is attributed and comes from a WP:RS, we cannot suppress it just because we disagree with it. Those who suppress content like that or try to give their own interpretation should not be editing this encyclopedia. And if they continue to do so after being warned, they should not be allowed to edit wikipedia. There is no moratorium on editing the article during the ArbCom case and certainly I have made edits on June 14. I think probably there should be some ban on the disruptive wikilawyering/edit-warring that David.Kane and Mikemikev have just engaged in. It seems to serve almost no purpose. In this case it would appear that the edits of David.Kane, Captain Occam and Mikemikev are just a form of bullying. That is how they have both been behaving for some time, with a total disregard for WP:RS. Mathsci (talk) 17:00, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

That edit touched directly on a number of issues currently under discussion at ArbCom, including undue weight on ad hominem as well as how to handle synthesis from secondary sources that not all reliable sources confirm. Until we've received further advice on how to address such issues I object to any further introduction of such material. There as been a bold edit, a revert, some discussion, and a clear failure to achieve consensus in favor of the change. The goal is to achieve consensus, not to push through a change against it. Rvcx (talk) 17:11, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
Synthesis? Ad hom? In this?[26] Professor marginalia (talk) 17:16, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
Rvcx as on previous occasions doesn't address the WP:RS. Nothing he writes seems to make any sense at all or have any relevance to the article. Aren't edits like that normally referred to as "trolling"? Mathsci (talk) 19:23, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm not trying to inflame the situation, but I don't get it. I've been editing years, and seen my share of crazy, but in this one article is the first time I feel like there's a foreign set of rules consistently applied. "All reliable sources must confirm"? All? Professor marginalia (talk) 20:06, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
I didn't write "must confirm"; I meant that this touches on "disputes" between reliable sources stemming from synthesis which appears in one but is notable for its absence from others. And I'm not even weighing in on the final merits of the edit, merely on the fact that such issues are currently under discussion at ArbCom, and that a consensus is extremely unlikely to emerge here until some conclusions emerge from that forum. Can we please stop with the attacks on other editors and at least pay lip service to WP:AGF? Rvcx (talk) 20:18, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Professor marginalia. At present this is a normal neutral wikipedia article, created according to the usual rules. Now we have a group of editors, including Rvcx, who arrive and declare that some bizarre new set of wikipedia rules applies to editing this article. Perhaps these editors haven't edited normal neutral wikipedia articles before (e.g. Europe). Why are they making such a song and dance here about standard edits? Presumably Rvcx is suggesting that, in the real world, some conspiracy has possessed two full professors at leading universities to write a deliberate lie in a published book, published under the auspices of Stanford University. And then of course there are all the other academics who have written the same thing. Could Rvcx take a little time to step back and clarify his thought processes to us, so that we might have a little more understanding of his personal objections. At the moment it's hard to make any sense at all of what he's written. Mathsci (talk) 20:32, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
@Rvcx-I didn't mean to put words in your mouth. I think what we have at play is some interpret "blacks" to say a) "all blacks, just because they're black" instead of b) "those blacks who have lower IQs and different intelligence attributes than the average white, which as it happens would be most but not 100% of blacks." He also didn't say "all low SES children just because they're low SES", nor, for that matter, "all low IQ just because they're low IQ." There is probably no rigid "all" about anything to find anywhere in the paper. But Jensen's made his own case several hundred times at least-it's not like we are so unbiased compared to the secondary sources, or that we know so much more about the issue than the secondary sources do here. His "opponents" (if you want to call them that) - their opinions of his work are as relevant to the debate (if not more) as his are, you know? Scientific papers don't even have any relevance except to how they're received by peers-scientific studies aren't personal diaries. Professor marginalia (talk) 21:33, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

@Mathsci: "Vecrumba misunderstands that this is a history of psychology article", the Wikilinked lecturing is getting a bit tired. My comment was regarding the so-called (as I'm unfamiliar with any prior incarnations) "resurrection" of Jensen (1969). As such it would be germane to the history of controversy which is the domain of this article, so I fail to see how this being a (Wikilink!) "history of psychology" article constitutes any misunderstanding on my part. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 14:01, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

And regarding "Vecrumba's suggestions are not helpful and confuse second and primary sources", as others have stated, sources can be primary or secondary sources based on their role and content. This is rocket science only for those who insist we must dance on the heads of pins. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 22:29, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Discussion of and proposed solutions to our Jensen problem

We continue to have a problem with Jensen. While waiting for Arb Com to rule (and they may not), perhaps it is time to brainstorm some solutions. Here are some ideas to get the conversation going: I.We seem to have a lot of material that people want to include about Jensen (1969). Would anyone object to creating that article again?

    • Support' A thorough article is essential. Much has been also published in journals both immediately after, and over time, spanning the gamut of reactions to the study which I think is essential to communicating the reaction (as opposed to what a secondary or tertiary source simply, and dryly, summarized about the work). PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 19:24, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
      • I should mention the article should not stray beyond the boundaries—the study and reactions to/perspectives on it over time—except for essential context. As I've indicated, there is sufficient material available for a substantive article. Jensen's study, as a part of this article, can then be summarized. The controversy existed before Jensen and after Jensen. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 14:06, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
    • Support I agree with the general idea that it is reader-friendly to have a detailed discussion of the long 1969 Jensen paper (which I have at hand as a reprinted copy in a published book) in a Wikipedia article on that paper itself. In short, I favor resurrecting an article on that paper, as long as the editors collaboratively maintain verifiability and neutral point of view. Similarly, it is reader-friendly to discuss the overall career of Arthur Jensen in the existing article about Jensen. By Wikipedia policies, all biographies of living persons require sourced statements for controversial claims, and there are plenty of claims of that nature about Jensen--with plenty of verifiable sources. The current ArbCom case about the race and intelligence article may or may not include a ruling clarifying the breadth of application of BLP to statements by third-party authors about a biography subject, but in any event I think most biographical statements about Jensen belong in the Jensen article. Wikilinks exist to direct readers to further, detailed information: that's what hypertext is all about. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 20:00, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
    • I now have a better idea. The most accessible form of Jensen (1969) in print is the reprint volume Environment, Heredity, and Intelligence including the original Jensen article and the original reply articles from Harvard Educational Review. (I have that volume at hand as I type this, and it is surely available in any well stocked academic library.) One Wikipedia guideline objection to an article about a scientific paper is that articles about books are favored over articles about single journal articles (even though Jensen 1969 is about as high-impact an article as one could name). Another, very legitimate, objection to resurrecting the Wikipedia article is that it has the look of a POV fork from other articles on the subject. But if the new article were about the book Environment, Heredity, and Intelligence, both objections are answered. The book as a whole is neutral in point of view, very historically important, and cited by a great number of subsequent reliable sources. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 17:54, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
This comment seems to show no familiarity with any reliable secondary sources. Where are all these new history of psychology articles, so far unearthed, miraculously going to appear from? They do not exist. What you have written is unreasonable and inaccurate. Please do some reading beyond primary sources. All the historians of psychology refer to all Jensen's output in the late sixties and early seventies. Although the 1969 paper has a certain symbolic position, it is by no means the only source on which they comment, since the later books of the 70s expanded and clarified the article (as recorded in the WP:RS). It might be an idea for you to get some more experience in adding content to and finding sources for articles before making generalisations which seem quite wide of the mark. Mathsci (talk) 19:41, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
The question about whether or not a stand-alone-article is needed is quite separate from the question of how it should be sourced. All articles should rely mostly on secondary sources. In terms of which is a better prospect for the stand-alone article, the HER paper or the Environment, Heredity, and Intelligence book, I'd argue that it is the HER paper. The book seems to be simply where the HER paper and responses to it are reprinted, if I'm understanding this correctly. Jensen also published Genetics and Education which also reprints the paper and has a pretty comprehensive catalog of published reactions to the paper. The HER paper is a more noteworthy stand-alone candidate than either book. The first effort seems to have been AFDed as POV fork that merely duplicated content from here, and if the HER content here was simply shifted to a stand-alone then we'd have WP:UNDUE weight problems here (the HER paper is a very significant chapter to this article). The only way a stand-alone would be justified is if the new article was established to go into much, much more detail about the HER and its subsequent reception. And my pragmatic advice would be that this be done in user space until the new article is ready for prime time. I can't emphasize enough how much burden these disputes have placed on the community already. Recurring article protections, AFD, NORN, BLPN, RSN, AN/I, 3RR, WQA, MEDCAB, RFAR--and continuous disputes here and in the Race and Intelligence article--with Jensen's paper easily the most contentious element to this article already, at this early stage a stand-alone article would probably end up burdening the community even further. Professor marginalia (talk) 20:22, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
"The question about whether or not a stand-alone-article is needed is quite separate from the question of how it should be sourced." Agreed. I have no staked-out position on whether or not the article should exist, nor about what the article should be about, but agree that any decision on the issue should be made under much more general Wikipedia principles. "The book seems to be simply where the HER paper and responses to it are reprinted, if I'm understanding this correctly." Yes, that is the correct understanding. Thanks for mentioning the other published source where the article is reprinted. "The only way a stand-alone would be justified is if the new article was established to go into much, much more detail about the HER and its subsequent reception." Yes, that seems to be happening in the article under discussion here, which is already getting to be quite long, thus one rationale for developing another subarticle that would be summarized by a couple of paragraphs here in History of the race and intelligence controversy (and perhaps by a sentence or two, in turn, in Race and intelligence). Subarticles are spawned as main articles grow with better sourcing and more NPOV. "And my pragmatic advice would be that this be done in user space until the new article is ready for prime time." I'd be happy to follow that pragmatic advice as the related articles see an end to the arbitration case. I appreciate your thoughtful comments about my suggestion. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 00:17, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
    • Note that the article existed, for a time before. It was deleted. The primary (?) reason for deletion was a concern over POV fork and lack of criticisms. Thanks to MathSci, we have many more criticisms to add. Here is the current copy. I will wait a few days to see what other people think. In the meantime, feel free to edit it there, especially to add some criticisms. David.Kane (talk) 19:41, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
The AfD concluded that it was inappropriate to have such an article outside its historic context. And David.Kane, I should point out to you that there were papers written before and books written afterwards by Jensen on this topic, expanding the ideas. (These are cited in the history article.) So having an article on that single paper, no matter how stubborn you are about it, is a waste of time. You are refusing to understand the message of the AfD and that is not a very good sign at all. Mathsci (talk) 22:23, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
Mathsci, you write that "The AfD concluded that it was inappropriate to have such an article outside its historic context." Could you kindly provide a link to that conclusion? As you know, I am new here, but already I notice that the present article here is quite long, and quite likely to grow longer. So my suggestion was on the basis of the general Wikipedia tendency to flag articles as long and ready for splitting into smaller articles when they reach a certain byte count. I'm happy to review the AfD to see what has gone before. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 00:25, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
After clarification of the objections of a few users, whose sole contribution so far has been to blank content, it's likely that part of the summary section can be made a lot shorter. At the moment the main thing that could be improved is the account of research in inter-war Germany, which is extensively discussed in several WP:RS. A short summary is enough (Tucker 1996 and Kühl have detailed accounts, and there is also Kevle, as well as many others not used so far). The AfD is here Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement? The closing admin took Slrubenstein's point as crucial: that the article was not notable except in relation to the controversy over race and intelligence. Mathsci (talk) 01:17, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
  • Premature The first attempt was deleted as a POV fork. Currently involved parties are stretched thin now with unresolved disputes spread over numerous articles and arb com, and it would benefit editors who have little editing experience beyond these involved articles to spread their wings into other articles and themes, and practice the "writing for the enemy" skills often needed for NPOV editing. To prevent further burden on the community by recreating more of the same in yet another location, it would be best to polish the draft in user space such that it is bringing the in-depth NPOV content it requires per the POV fork problem. Professor marginalia (talk) 21:04, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
  • Support, as I stated above. As one of the most famous and heavily-discussed papers in the history of psychology, Jensen 1969 is definitely notable enough to deserve its own article here. The only difficulty will be avoiding making it a POV fork, but I think we’ll be able to manage that. Professor Marginalia is right that this article won’t receive as much attention as it would otherwise due to the arbcom case, but there’s no hurry here, either with creating the article or with perfecting it after it’s been created. I would suggest that David.Kane continue to polish this article in his userspace until he’s satisfied with its neutrality, and then go ahead and create it; I don’t think it especially matters whether this happens before or after the ArbCom case is finished. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:23, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
There are standard processes on WP to appeal a deletion: WP:DRV. But it is disruptive to propose reinstating a largely copy-pasted article which has recently been deleted. That is just a waste of everybody's time, particularly mine, the creator of most of the material. As has been said before, Jensen's article, apart from being controversial, would not be viewed by academics as any more notable than any of Jensen's previous output or subsequent books. No reasonable justification, beyond notoriety, has been given for creating this POV-fork. However, the persistence of David.Kane and Captain Occam is noted; as is the inappropriate use of the talk page for this article. Mathsci (talk) 09:13, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

II. *Given that this article is about the entire history of race and intelligence, we need to be aware of WP:UNDUE. How much space should be devoted to Arthur Jensen?

  • A large share Arthur Jensen's work has been characterized by more than a few as the most controversial and explosive scientific issue since Origin of Species. It would be hard to overstate it's significance to this topic. And I haven't seen a related source yet that doesn't address it or cite his work in some fashion. It reinvigorated those pushing for eugenics, triggered policy changes that significantly limited further such research or its implementation, and left intelligence inheritance researchers in the US few avenues but the Pioneer Fund. It's a big deal. Professor marginalia (talk) 21:07, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

III.Thanks to the hard work MathSci has done in unearthing sources, we now have excellent secondary sources which directly dispute the Jensen-wanted-all-black-children-treated-differently meme. We did not have this before, so many thanks to MathSci. Perhaps this allows us to reach a compromise? Something like "Scholars dispute whether or not Jensen sought to have children educated differently on the basis of race." This would be a) True and b) Not violate WP:UNDUE. One source for this is here. We could provide several citations to go along with that one.

    • I think we've already established that characterizations of Jensen's study should be stated as such instead of as direct article narrative asserting facts. Perhaps that's just the "royal" we've, but I suspect I'm not alone. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 19:24, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
  • Different focus We want to avoid getting sucked into the "he said/she said" too much because this article isn't about him. He's not on trial here. A better way to address this would be to follow the Loehlin's lead which does a good job of it. I don't have it in front of me, but the tone he uses is a useful model. Try assuming for the sake of argument that all sides are right. Jensen may well be truthful that he didn't seek to have blacks and whites educated differently-he recommended that because low IQ blacks need a different education than is designed for the normal and high IQ whites it should be provided to them. But the other side could be right as well. Perhaps whether conscious of it or not Jensen was recommending two kinds of education, one for most white kids and another for most black kids. Don't get sidetracked into debating Jensen's personal integrity, and focus on the methods and implications of his findings. That's really what the controversy was about. Professor marginalia (talk) 21:11, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
We can only follow what is in the secondary sources concerning summaries and references to contemporary comment. We certainly can't write them ourselves, because that would be original research. At the moment this is only about summaries of the paper. A large number of commentators say that Jensen suggested teaching by rote learning (Level I) for those with low IQs, and that this included a large proportion of the black population at the time because of their IQ scores. If those WP:RS summarise the paper in that way, that's what we have to report, provided it's properly attributed. We can't clarify or change their meaning, These are qualified academic educationalists writing and they know what they're doing. Mathsci (talk) 21:26, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
Quite right. If I made it sound otherwise, let me correct myself. My "assume for a moment" is not a recommendation about making content claims, it's a recommendation about tone and treatment when there are two sides, say, to an argument. We have to be careful not to stage opinions as necessarily in direct "conflict" unless sources do. The Flynn quote, for example, does not necessarily disagree with the Valencia quote. One can claim Jensen's recommendations included a provision that "black children should concentrate on lower level skill development" without trying to claim he's a segregationist. We have no business pitting views like these in competition without a secondary source making the claim. Professor marginalia (talk) 21:40, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
Exactly. Commentators like Kevles refer to Jensen's indirect style; Cronbach explains that haste cuased a certain lack of clarity compared with previous articles on the same subject; others talk about the speculative nature of his writing. So the paper made speculative suggestions, couched, as Kelves says, with expressions like "it seems not unreasonable" and "there might be". In spite of that, most commentators find a pithier less circumlocutory way to express his points; and that is a matter of interpretation. But that's exactly why we use secondary sources. But these suggestions for schooling policy (rote learning for those with low IQ) were indeed what Jensen was arguing for; and, as many WP:RS report, there are very short answers to the title of the paper. Q: How Much Can We Boost IQ? A; Probably not at all because it is genetically determined according to race and SES. Q; How Much Can We Boost Scholastic Achievement? A: By using associative and rote learning methods for teaching those with low IQ. WP:RS have different ways of stating this and of course there's no definitive version. But we certainly can't omit the material on schooling suggestions, described in lots of different sources, since it was one of Jensen's main ideas (according to Mackintosh). Mathsci (talk) 22:20, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
I think Professor Marginalia’s initial suggestion here might be worthwhile. We should make it clear that Jensen’s paper did not explicitly advocate separate education based on race, but also that some scholars have interpreted his paper as indirectly arguing for that. I think we also should mention the fact that other scholars have argued that Jensen never intended to make such as suggestion, as well as that Jensen himself has denied ever approving of this idea. (Such as in his 2002 interviews with Miele.)
The article used to have a similar problem with the claim that Shockley influenced Jensen to become a hereditarian, which is claimed by some secondary sources such as Tucker, but disagrees with what Jensen himself has written. Eventually, Mathsci came up with a compromise for this part of the article that I think was satisfactory to everyone:

One of Shockley's lobbying campaigns involved the educational psychologist, Arthur Jensen, from the University of California, Berkeley. Although earlier in his career Jensen had favored environmental rather than genetic factors as the explanation of race differences in intelligence, he had changed his mind during the year 1966-1967 spent at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford. Here Jensen got to know Shockley and through him eventually received support for his research from the Pioneer Fund.[1][2] Although Shockley and Jensen's names were later to become linked in the media,[1][3] Jensen does not mention Shockley as an important influence on his thought in his subsequent writings;[4][5] rather he describes as decisive his work with Hans Eysenck. He also mentions his interest in the behaviorist theories of Clark Hull which he says he abandoned largely because he found them to be incompatible with experimental findings during his years at Berkeley.[6]

I think something similar to this would also work for the claim that Jensen advocated separate curricula based on race: we can point out that some scholars interpret his writings that way, but also mention that other scholars (including Jensen himself) deny this interpretation. --Captain Occam (talk) 01:11, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
Most of that was written by Maunus and me, including the careful footnotes. In particular this one: In Shurkin 2006, pp. 270–271, Jensen is reported as saying that Shockley's main contribution was to distract opponents and that "I have always been amazed that someone as bright as he could have contributed so little over so long a span of time". None of the material was inaccurate; but perhaps it's best to remember that Jensen's autobiographical comments from 30 years later are again not WP:TRUTH and I would have no idea how to evaluate them. Are we to include Richard Lewontin's later reflections on the 60s and 70s as well? The commentary of Lee Cronbach, a neutral and eminent psychologist, gives a slightly different picture. Again, although Jensen wrote the paper, he is only one of the figures in the history and this obsessional concentration on Jensen is quite puzzling. What about Lewontin and Kamin? Or for that matter Steven Rose? Does Jensen have some special status? Mathsci (talk)
“Does Jensen have some special status?”
When the article is discussing Jensen’s own opinions and motives, he does. Since other researchers are not able to read Jensen’s mind, anything that they write about his opinions and motives will be based only on what Jensen has expressed in his own writings. Every secondary source that exists about this will have to be in some way based on what Jensen said in his own writings, even if not directly. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use secondary sources about them, but it means that when these secondary sources disagree with the only source they have about Jensen’s opinions and motives (that is, Jensen himself), it’s necessary to make that clear in order to write a balanced BLP.
All of this we’ve been over before, and this seems to be why you changed the description of what caused Jensen to become a hereditarian in order to make it more neutral, so it looks like you’re aware of this already. I don’t know why you’re acting like it’s necessary for me to explain this again. --Captain Occam (talk) 12:00, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
I don't recall seeing disputes over content describing tJensen's opinions or motives. They've been about the work he published about genetics, race and intelligence. Professor marginalia (talk) 03:00, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Nor do I. There has been tendentious edit warring by Captain Occam, Mikemikev and David.Kane to remove numerous pieces of sourced content summarising Jensen's work on genetics, race and intelligence without any discussion whatsoever. The moment a discussion starts based on reliable secondary sources used to edit the article, a miracle will have happened on wikipedia. Mathsci (talk) 07:10, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
The question of what caused Jensen to become a hereditarian is a question about his motives, and the question of whether he approves of separate curricula based on race (when his 1969 article doesn’t state this directly) is a question about his opinions. And as I said, Jensen himself is the only person who can know the answer to either of these questions with 100% certainty, and anything that other scholars write about it will only be based only on what Jensen has said about it in his own writings.
I think I’m done here, at least until either the arbitration case is finished or until there’s another change to the article that needs to be discussed. When the responses I’m getting are disputing things as obvious as how Jensen’s views on education could be considered his “opinion”, and the rest of the post is just an attack on me and the rest of the users that Mathsci disagrees with, this seems like an appropriate place to apply the principle of DNFTT. --Captain Occam (talk) 23:40, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
The article has been written using reliable secondary sources and citations. Lee Cronbach for exampe gave a detailed account of Jensen's writing in the 1960s which has been used in the article. In the case of a controversial paper like this, personal statements can be recorded but are open to interpretation. They certainly don't necessarily represent the WP:TRUTH. Mathsci (talk) 01:34, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Please respond to each of these individual points, directly beneath them. I look forward to your comments. David.Kane (talk) 17:49, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

This shows a fundamental misunderstanding on David.Kane's part as to how wikipedia articles on history of psychology are written. Jensen was only one of the academics involved in the debate, so this emphasis in dicsussions here on Jensen is inappropriate. Secondary sources gives as much space to the commentaries of other scientists on Jensen's work and what they considered to be its shortcomings. Balance requires that those criticisms appear with due weight in the article. This applies particularly because of the extremely controversial nature of the 1969 article. Mathsci (talk) 20:02, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
I am alarmed at Captain Occam's claim, "... it’s necessary to make that clear in order to write a balanced BLP." I thought we had put this red herring to rest. We are not attemption to "write a balanced BLP" BLP is not a kind of article it is a policy. And we certainly have no business rewriting policy at this page. In any event, there is nothing in this article that violates BLP. Captain Occam's waving some plag about BLP concerns is a waste of time. As MathSci correctly points out, the more controversial a topic, the more important it is to rely on secondary sources. Relying on primary sources risks violating NOR, a core content policy. We certainly will not do that. Slrubenstein | Talk 01:46, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Eminent scientists involved in the debate

I have included two explicit expert commentaries by scientists from the 1970s, described in the WP:RS by Adrian Wooldridge. The three authors areall Harvard academics and still living. Both Christopher Jencks and Richard Lewontin were elected to the National Academy of Sciences, although Lewontin later resigned. Mary Jo Bane is currently Professor of Public Policy and Management in the Kennedy School. Mathsci (talk) 19:50, 25 June 2010 (UTC)


Victor's recent edits

How do we establish due weight for what current scholarly opinion is on some of the underlying issues? (And by current, I mean scholarly opinion as of the publication date of reliable sources published in twenty-first century, not mainly sources published in the 1980s or earlier.) What is the best indication of current balance of opinion among informed scholars? -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 19:26, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

We discuss things. Do you have a better approach? Best is probably to talk about specific edits he is making rather than some sort of theoretical discussion. His edits seem fine to me. David.Kane (talk) 19:34, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, WeijiBaikeBianji, could you please specify which of my edits you find questionable. I don't think I've added anything that is particularly controversial.--Victor Chmara (talk) 20:28, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I really was just asking an informational question, not identifying any of the edits to the time of my opening a new talk page section here as problematic. I know that this issue is contentious all around (after all, the ArbCom case has been dragging on for a long time), so I just thought I would give all concerned here an opportunity to name procedures by which we can be assured that all editors here are attempting to consider due weight for up-to-date scholarship on the historical issues treated in the article. I first posted at greater length to Victor's user talk page before replying here. In between, I had busyness in my off-Wiki personal life. Thanks for the comments here. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 22:50, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Comment The two edits I've looked at so far contradict the sources and are contentious. In particular my last edit was completely justified (about "paid advertisement", etc) as explained below. At present it looks as if Victor Chmara seems to be pushing his on POV, without checking sources.

  • The article of Winston makes a very long statement about Garrett, Gottfredson and Rishton.

    According to Philippe Rushton, the "equalitarian fiction," a "scientific hoax" that races are genetically equal in cognitive ability, underlies the "politically correct" objections to his research on racial differences. He maintains there is a taboo against race unequaled by the Inquisition. I show that while Rushton has been publicly harassed, he has had continuous opportunities to present his findings in diverse, widely available, respectable journals and no general suppression within academic psychology is evident. Similarly, Henry Garrett and his associates in the IAAEE, dedicated to preserving segregation and preventing "race suicide," disseminated their ideas widely, although Garrett complained of the "equalitarian fiction" in 1961. Examination of the intertwined history of Mankind Quarterly, German Rassenhygiene, far right politics, Henry Garrett, and Roger Pearson suggests that some cries of "political correctness" must be viewed with great caution.

The cited article makes a full comparison with the phrases introduced by Garrett. It was not as you claim synthesis. Since you apparently haven't looked at the source, here is the full text of the article.

Extended content

Rushton (1996) argues that there exists a "taboo on race" in science for which "there is no parallel . . . not the inquisition, not Stalin, not Hitler." He maintains that this taboo helps explain the protests over his evolutionary theory of average differences between Black, White, and Oriental "races". Given that Rushton continues to hold a tenured professorship, to teach and write about race, and has suffered neither the rack, the Gulag, nor worse, his statement is difficult to interpret. The strength of his words conveys a dire image of the silencing of scientific truth. Certainly he has been harassed; we must all deplore any threats made against Rushton, and all academics must be concerned about threatened government interference in university teaching. My purpose here is first to examine whether or not Rushton has been censored within the academic community, particularly within psychology. Given his assertions of censorship resulting from the "egalitarian fiction" (Rushton, 1996), it is necessary to examine his access to publication outlets and his opportunities to respond to his critics.

Discussion of research on race differences in intelligence must be informed by history and social context, including the history of eugenics. The literature on this history and context is vast and cannot be reviewed here (e.g., see Allen, 1986; Barkan, 1992; Kevles, 1985; Kühl, 1994; Proctor, 1988; Sokal, 1987; Tucker, 1994; Weingart, 1988). Nor is this the place to review the scientific status of Rushton's claims, which have been the subject of strong criticisms by the research community (e.g. Cain and Vanderwolf, 1990; Cernovsky & Litman, 1993; Gabor & Roberts, 1990; Lynn, 1989; Peters, 1991, 1993, 1995a,b; Weizmann, Weiner, Wiesenthal, & Ziegler, 1990, 1991; Zuckerman, 1990; Zuckerman & Brody, 1988).

Nevertheless, it is possible to place some essential features of Rushton's argument in context. I wish to focus on Rushton's assertion that a pervasive "egalitarian fiction" or "equalitarian dogma" has prevented free academic discussion of race differences for some time, possibly since World War II. In this discussion, I will focus on the work of Henry Garrett, who, according to Rushton, proposed that the equalitarian dogma was in full force in 1961, and Roger Pearson, the de facto editor (see below) of Mankind Quarterly, who described the treatment of Rushton and other "scholar-victims" in detail, and argued that "political correctness" is at work in this arena (Pearson, 1991). Rushton (1994a, 1996) suggested that Pearson (1991) is an authority on the "fascism" of left-wing egalitarians, whose political correctness suppresses the truth.

Opportunities to be Heard

Rushton's work on evolutionary approaches to race differences shares theoretical underpinnings with his sociobiological work on altruism, mate selection, and genetic similarity theory. This work, including some discussion of race differences, first appeared in Behavior Genetics (Rushton, Russell, & Wells, 1984) and in the Annals of Theoretical Psychology (Rushton, 1984). The work on genetic similarity theory, which argues that data on mate selection, friendship selection, and ethnocentrism can partly be explained by an evolved tendency to seek out and support genetically similar individuals, also appeared in Ethology and Sociobiology, a standard journal in the area. Other work was reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA (Rushton, Littlefield, & Lumsden, 1986), and the well-respected Brain and Behavioral Sciences (Rushton, 1989). The presentations explicitly dealing with race differences and Differential K theory appeared in a series of five papers in the widely available journal Personality and Individual Differences, edited by Hans J. Eysenck. The most important and comprehensive of these is probably Rushton (1988). Four papers also appeared before 1990 in the highly respectable Academic Press Journal of Research in Personality (formerly the Journal of Experimental Research in Personality). Additional papers appeared in Intelligence, and Acta Geneticae Medicae et Gemellogiae. In sum, Rushton published more than 20 papers on genetic similarity theory and race differences in widely accessible, respectable journals from 1984 through 1989, the year of his American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) talk.

As Rushton (1996) notes, wide publicity and public concern over his work began after the 1989 AAAS paper. The talk was published in Psychological Reports, (Rushton, 1992), which is not a prestigious journal but one that insures a short publication lag. If publicity over the talk created a politically correct reaction, we might expect subsequent reduction in Rushton's visibility. This does not seem to be the case, although Rushton (1994a) reported cancellations and withdrawals of his work. From 1990 to the end of 1995, Rushton published at least 20 additional papers on race differences, heredity, and evolution. Five more papers appeared in Personality and Individual Differences, four in Intelligence, and others appeared in Society, Social Science and Medicine, the Canadian Journal of Criminology, Canadian Psychology, Psychologische Beiträge, and other sources. Many of Rushton's publications during this time have been in the form of replies to critics, and it is important to note that Rushton was given the opportunity to reply (at the very least in a letter or note) in nearly every journal, including American Psychologist (received by all members of APA) and Psychological Science (the official journal of the American Psychological Society) in which he was criticized. He has reached audiences in sociology, anthropology, and criminology as well as psychology and neuroscience.

Rushton (1994a) reported a disturbing event: an article to an unnamed journal was rejected after the page proofs were returned to the journal, despite the protests of the editor. Clearly such action is wrong, although there may be circumstances (e.g., the discovery of new information) which makes such a decision justifiable. The details of this case are unknown, and probably will never be known. But, as Rushton notes, the "pulled" article was subsequently published in the respected journal, Intelligence (1994b). Moreover, Rushton was given an extraordinary opportunity: to write an editorial "The Equalitarian Dogma Revisited" (1994a), which appeared in Intelligence in the same issue. What was particularly remarkable about this editorial was the inclusion of a photo of a person writing a slogan on Rushton's door, which is again reproduced in this journal. It is unprecedented for a scholarly research journal to include a photograph of this sort, and its inclusion suggests the latitude extended to Rushton.

Rushton is correct in his report of hostile responses in the media(2), but Race Evolution and Behavior (Rushton, 1995a) received a cautiously supportive review in The New York Times Book Review (Oct. 16, 1994). The New York Times (Feb. 21, 1996) recently printed his reply to a column criticizing his research. He made a number of radio and television appearances, during which he was able to explain his findings (see Horowitz, 1995). While some speaking engagements have undoubtedly been canceled due to fear of disruptions, he has continued to present papers at the annual meetings of the American Psychological Association, and recently returned to the AAAS meeting to present a poster (The Globe and Mail, Feb. 12, 1996). His work is now receiving attention in introductory psychology textbooks. In one case, Rushton's evolutionary theory is presented as a potentially reasonable scientific interpretation of racial differences in IQ scores (Roediger, Capaldi, Paris, Polivy, & Herman, 1996).

One consequence of the public concern over Rushton's work and the calls for his dismissal (which were not pursued by subsequent left-leaning or right-leaning governments in Ontario) was an increased interest in his work among diverse academic audiences, including groups who would never have read his articles in Intelligence or Personality and Individual Differences. Discussions of his views on brain size and IQ have thus appeared in Society (1994c, 1995b) and the Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, when the topic of the special issue or section in a journal was Cyril Burt or "political correctness. (3) Table 1 in Rushton (1996) previously appeared in Intelligence, (Rushton, 1994a) in his 1995 book, in Canadian Psychology, (Rushton, 1991), in the Journal of Research in Personality (Rushton, 1989b) and in modified form in other journals. Sections of the present paper in Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless (e.g., "De Facto Censorship") appeared in Intelligence (Rushton 1994a). This repetition of material further illustrates Rushton's extensive opportunities to make his case.

Unfortunately, the technical details and the fundamental controversies over such work are unavailable to these new audiences. In Table 1, three measures of brain size are reported, and in two of these "Orientals" appear to have larger brains than "Whites" which are in turn larger than "Blacks." The claimed superiority of "Orientals" to "Whites" on intelligence tests, a debated and unstable phenomenon (e.g., see Flynn 1988, Sautman, 1995), is, to Rushton, partly the result of larger "Oriental" brains. What is not shown in Table 1 or the text is whether these are the "raw" brain sizes, or are corrected for height, as Rushton usually does (e.g. Rushton 1994b). Without the correction, taller "Europeans" have larger brains than shorter "East Asians," and the IQ interpretation collapses. As Peters (1991, 1993, 1995a,b) has shown, the relationship of body size and brain size is highly complex, and there is no clear rationale for the height corrections that Rushton makes. Readers of the Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless will encounter no hint of this controversy, nor fundamental difficulties with the tripartite division of races, the aggregation of data, and countless other problems in Rushton (1996).

Thus Rushton has had continued access to diverse, respectable scholarly outlets for his work. This pattern is similar to that of Arthur Jensen and Hans J. Eysenck. Despite the intense controversy and public harassment over their writings on intelligence and race, both continued to publish actively in this area. University libraries carry their works, as well as dozens of recent monographs on behavior genetics by the very prolific researchers in this area. Yet Rushton compares the treatment of these researchers to the Inquisition and speaks of "an ideological war over human nature."

Garrett, Segregation, and Mankind Quarterly

The belief that the "equalitarian dogma" lies behind the alleged suppression of race differences research is crucial to Rushton's argument. Another researcher in race differences, Linda Gottfredson (1994), referred to the "egalitarian fiction" as a "collective fraud," "a great falsehood," and a "scientific lie."(p. 53). (4) Given that it is highly unusual in scientific discourse to refer to the alternative hypothesis as a "hoax" or "fraud," and given the rhetorical uses to which this phrase is put, it is important to inquire into its origins and context. Rushton (1994a) opened the abstract of his editorial in Intelligence, as follows: 

   Henry Garrett (1961), a president of the American Psychological Association claimed that 'the equalitarian dogma,' the belief that Blacks and Whites are genetically equal in cognitive ability, was the `scientific hoax' of the twentieth century. Since then, the dogma has become more ingrained, despite increased contrary evidence. The dogma has been perpetuated by intimidation as well as by pious thinking. Its long endurance is a scandal of great proportion (p. 263).

The invocation of Henry Garrett (1894-1973), Chair at Columbia for 16 years, president of the APA, Eastern Psychological Association, and the Psychometric Society, fellow of the AAAS and member of the prestigious National Research Council, seems to add respectability to this argument. Racial and group differences were a major focus of his research from early in his 30 year career at Columbia, (e.g. Garrett, 1929), and he published research on race differences in intelligence in Science and other journals during the 1940s. He is remembered among psychologists for a widely read statistics book and a volume called Great Experiments in Psychology. His other, related activities are not well known, but have recently been discussed by Tucker (1994), Popplestone and MacPherson (1994), and Lane (1994).

In 1959, Garrett and others founded the International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics (IAAEE). Their purpose was to disseminate research on genetics and race and secondarily, to fight school desegregation in the United States. Garrett and his associates had been very disturbed by the 1950 UNESCO statement on race, in which an international panel of scientists denied any scientific basis for genetically based differences in intelligence and affirmed that humans were one species (see Barkan, 1992). The UNESCO statement was blamed on Franz Boas and the influence of his students, such as Otto Klineberg (see Garrett, 1961a). Founding members of the IAAEE included (among others) Robert Kuttner, a prominent member of Willis Carto's Liberty Lobby, political scientist A. James Gregor who praised the notions of ideal racial archetypes from late National Socialism, and psychologist R. Travis Osborne, who would later become Rushton's co-author on a study of brain size (Rushton & Osborne, 1995). Alfred Avins, attorney for the Liberty Lobby, served as counsel (Tucker, 1994). The Liberty Lobby has been one of the most influential far-right organizations since the 1960s. While its membership included a spectrum of right-wing thought, Willis Carto and his organization have emerged as major proponents of white racial superiority, international Jewish conspiracies, and Holocaust denial, with many ties to neo-Nazi activity (Bellant, 1991; Lippstat, 1993; Mintz, 1985; Simonds, 1971).

Garrett and other members of the IAAEE led an open fight against school integration. Garrett gave extensive testimony in 1952 in one of the cases that was then appealed as Brown v. Topeka Board of Education (see Kluger, 1976). During this period Garrett had access to Science, to Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, and he was interviewed for U.S. News and World Report. He was able to present the following view in a letter in the prestigious journal Science: 

   No matter how low...an American white may be, his ancestors built the civilizations of Europe, and no matter how high...a Negro may be, his ancestors were (and his kinsmen still are) savages in an African Jungle. Free and general race mixture of Negro-white groups in this country would inevitably be not only dysgenic but socially disastrous. (1962, p. 984).

Such words suggest an a priori commitment to a racial hierarchy, rather than a conclusion based on data. If the "equalitarian dogma" was indeed in force, it is surprising that such a statement was possible in Science.

In 1962, Stell v. the Savannah Board of Education was brought as a suit to prevent carrying out desegregation in Georgia, eight years after Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. R. Travis Osborne testified on the genetic basis of lower test scores of black versus white students.. Garrett testified that the black white differences could not be changed by environmental intervention. Another IAAEE member, Ernest van der Haag, testified to alleged damage caused by integration for both black and white children. The judge made careful use of research by another IAAEE member, psychologist Frank McGurk, on racial differences before rendering a judgment that the damaging effects of integration had been demonstrated, a judgement soon overturned on appeal (see Tucker, 1994).

Despite this defeat, Garrett pressed on with a series of blatantly racist pamphlets often distributed by White Citizens Councils: "Children: Black & White" (see illustration in Popplestone & MacPherson, 1994 p. 167), "Breeding Down," "How Classroom Desegregation will work," and "IQ and Racial Differences." "Breeding Down," which according to Tucker (1994) was distributed free to hundreds of thousands of teachers, warned that the goal of the civil rights movement was to bring whites down to the Negro level though "mongrelization." Garrett testified at a 1967 Senate hearing on an omnibus civil rights bill that Negroes were "younger" in evolutionary terms, with lighter brains and less developed frontal lobes. He was introduced to the committee by William Hicks of the Liberty Lobby (Mintz, 1985). Thus Garrett's work through the early 1970s continued a cornerstone principle of early 20th century, "mainline eugenics" (Kevles, 1985): hybridization reduces the "higher" form to a lower level, therefore "race crossing" as it was once called, must be avoided.

This tradition of interest in policy issues such as school integration has continued into the present. Thus, Hans J. Eysenck, Rushton's mentor at the University of London, wrote in his introduction to Roger Pearson's (1991) Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe: 

   The evil consequences of ignoring scientific facts, and believing instead ideological preconceptions, are well illustrated by the American "busing laws," enforcing racial integration by busing white children to predominantly black schools, often many miles away, and equally, busing black children to predominantly white schools. These laws, spawned by unscientific thinking and wilful ignorance, have had predictable effects, which have been carefully researched by Ralph Scott, whose book Education and Ethnicity: The U.S. Experiment in School Integration (Council for Social and Economic Studies, 1987) summarizes the many studies which have been done on this topic. (p. 53).

Eysenck went on to quote two pages from Scott's book, which was published by Roger Pearson. What Eysenck may not have known was that Scott, professor of educational psychology at the University of Northern Iowa, had been vice president of the German-American National Congress, a group which publicized favorable discussions of the Third Reich. In addition, Scott had been a candidate for governor under the American Party, supported by the Liberty Lobby's Willis Carto (Bellant, 1991; Mehler, 1989; Tucker, 1994, p. 260). Scott contributed a number of articles to Mankind Quarterly promoting the scientific evidence for segregation.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Garrett helped to distribute grants for the now notorious Pioneer Fund, which later provided money for racial difference research by Rushton, Linda Gottfredson, Hans J. Eysenck, Richard Lynn, Thomas Bouchard, and Robert Gordon as well as providing funds to Roger Pearson, William Shockley, Ralph Scott, and anti-immigration groups (see Kühl, 1994). Garrett received Pioneer Fund money as well, partially through the Foundation of Human Understanding, an offshoot group of IAAEE directors, including R.Travis Osborne, Rushton's recent coauthor in a study of brain size (Rushton & Osborne, 1995). During the l950s, Wylcliffe Draper, the fund's founder, personally offered grant money for studies that would not only prove black inferiority but promote repatriation to Africa and, in his words, insure "racial homogeneity in the United States" (Kühl, 1994 p. 106, Tucker, 1994).

The members of the IAAEE also helped to found and promote the journal Mankind Quarterly . Begun in 1960, the journal was edited until at least 1974 by Robert Gayre, a Scottish physical anthropologist. Gayre argued that Black races were genetically suited to humour, music, art, community life, emotional religious experience, boxing and running, while Whites excelled in intellectual skills (see Linklater, 1995). He was a champion of apartheid (Billig, 1979), promoted the work of the premier Rassenhygienist of Nazi Germany, Hans Günther, and he joined Roger Pearson's Northern League for Pan-Nordic Friendship, discussed below.

Joining Garrett as honorary associate editor of Mankind Quarterly during these early years was eminent British geneticist R. Ruggles Gates; who actively opposed all racial intermarriage and argued that races were separate species (see Barkan, 1992). Robert Kuttner, important member of Carto's Liberty Lobby and co-founder of IAAEE with Garrett, joined as an assistant editor in 1962, along with IAAEE member Donald Swan, who was later accused of having ties to the American Nazi Party (see Sautman, 1995, note 45). Hans J. Eysenck appeared on the Honorary Advisory Board from 1975 until 1978, when it was described as being re-organized, and Raymond B. Cattell has been an advisory board member since 1980. In 1979, Hans W. Jürgens of Kiel, West Germany appeared, along with Richard Lynn, as the Associate Editors. Both have remained as editors through current issues.

German geneticist Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, the noted Rassenhygienist, was listed as a member of the Honorary Advisory Board from 1966 to 1978. (5) In a 1941 race hygiene textbook, he called for "a complete solution to the Jewish question"; by 1944 he could publicly declare that "the dangers posed by Jews and Gypsies to the German people had been eliminated through the racial-political measures of recent years" (quoted in Proctor, 1988, p. 211). During the war, in his position at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, von Verschuer had urged his former graduate student and assistant, Josef Mengele, to take up the opportunity for unique research possibilities at Auschwitz (see Kühl, 1994; Proctor, 1988). It is not trivial to mention Mengele in this context. Both Mengele and von Verschuer shared the view that the study of twins was the premier method of genetics. Accordingly, Mengele sent the results of his "experiments" at Auschwitz, including body parts, to von Verschuer for further analysis (see Proctor, 1988, p. 44.) Despite the supposed pervasiveness of the postwar "equalitarian dogma," von Verschuer was called to the prestigious chair of human genetics at Münster in 1951. His reputation as a "neutral scientist" was restored, despite that fact that a postwar German investigation described him as "one of the most dangerous Nazi activists of the Third Reich," and declared that he should not be permitted to teach (quoted in Proctor, p. 307).

Mankind Quarterly also became a place for Garrett to explain who was responsible for the "equalitarian dogma." The shift from an earlier consensus that blacks were inferior had been accomplished through the propaganda spread by Franz Boas, the noted anthropologist, and his students, such as Otto Klineberg. In his "equalitarian dogma" article, Garrett (1961a, 1961b) also blamed "Jewish organizations," most of whom "belligerently support the equalitarian dogma which they accept as having been `scientifically' proven" (p. 256). (6) Garrett was not alone in this view, which was more forcefully presented by Carleton Putnam (1961) in his widely read racist tract Race and Reason. Putnam also blamed the Jewish background of Boas and his group and even tracked down Ashley Montagu's Jewish origins (see also Pearson, 1995a). Putnam claimed that scientists who studied race were being "muzzled" (Tucker, 1994). Nor was this a new view in eugenics circles; according to Samelson (1975), Prescott Hall of the Immigration Restriction League wrote to Madison Grant, author of The Passing of the Great Race, in 1918 that "I am up against the Jews all the time in the equality argument" (see also Allen, 1986, note 51). In Mankind Quarterly, Garrett (1961c) argued that those who supported genetic equality of the races were "mostly members of minority groups" and "seem willing to destroy Anglo-Saxon civilization because of real or imagined grievances" (p. 106). The theme that Jews are "culture-destroyers" is a common one in both old and new antisemitic propaganda of the far right, including the publications of Willis Carto's Liberty Lobby (see Mintz, 1985). It may be useful to compare this tradition of blaming the Jews for the "equalitarian dogma" with Rushton's view in his (1995) book, which he attributed in turn to Degler (1991): 

   Among the refugees who fled Nazi persecution and entered Britain and the United States in the 1930s and 1940s, there were many who exerted a powerful influence on the zeitgeist of the social sciences, helping to create an orthodoxy of egalitarianism and environmentalism (p. 14) .

Rushton (1995a) also refers to Franz Boas as a "powerful ideologue" (p. 13). Roger Pearson (1995a) recently echoed this concern, and described Boas as having "forty-six communist front connections" as well as ancestors who were "intimately connected with the radical socialist revolutionary movement" (p. 345). Rushton and Pearson share the belief that the "equalitarian dogma" is a left-wing ideology.

I do not mean to imply or suggest that Rushton is antisemitic or that he can be held responsible for Garrett's work. Moreover, it is clearly true that many of the strongest critics of eugenics and racial research, both before and after World War II, were of Jewish background or held socialist or communist political views; the political inclinations of Richard Lewontin, Steven Rose, and others are well-known. The problem here is that Jewish background and leftist politics are said to account for, and permit dismissal of the criticism. While claiming scientific neutrality, those who decried the "equalitarian dogma" were clearly committed to preserving a segregated society. For the past 36 years, Mankind Quarterly has offered a steady stream of research and argument proclaiming the average genetic inferiority of Blacks and offering policy recommendations based on this assertion. Garrett and others were criticized, but hardly silenced; he even published the same article in two journals in the same year (1961a,b). Yet Roger Pearson (1991) has vociferously argued that the truth has been suppressed.

Science and Politics: Roger Pearson

In an article in Rolling Stone, journalist Adam Miller (1994) reported on an interview with Rushton. He showed Rushton a quote from Roger Pearson (1966a):"If a nation with a more advanced, more specialized, or in any way superior set of genes mingles with, instead of exterminating, an inferior tribe, then it commits racial suicide."(p. 26). According to Miller, Rushton 's reaction was "why should I pass value judgments on other people's political opinions?" When pressed, Rushton is reported to have terminated the interview.

Rushton might well wish to avoid discussion of Roger Pearson's views, and to avoid exploring Pearson's use of "race suicide," a concept used by early eugenicists and Nazi race hygienists. Pearson's (1991) Race, Intelligence, and Bias in Academe devoted an entire chapter to the treatment of Rushton, along with Jensen, Shockley, and Eysenck whom Pearson termed "scholar-victims." A similar article on Rushton's persecution appeared in Mankind Quarterly (Macgregor, 1995). It should be noted that Rushton contributed to Mankind Quarterly only once (Rushton, 1987). He drew on Richard Lynn's research in Mankind Quarterly for his (1995a) book, and he relied on data supplied by Mankind Quarterly editor Hans W. Jürgens for a recent study of race and cranial capacity (Rushton, 1994b).

Roger Pearson (1927- ) received a Master's degree in Economics and Sociology and a doctorate in Anthropology from the University of London (Pearson, 1991). In a short pamphlet called "Blood Groups and Race" (Pearson, 1959), he described the basic racial types as "sub-species," which he in turn defined as:"a distinctive group of individuals which are on their way to becoming separate species, but which have not been isolated long enough, or had time to become sufficiently diversified to lose the power to inter-breed."(p. 7). This hope that races would subdivide into groups that were biologically unable to interbreed was shared by the eminent psychologist, Raymond B. Cattell (e.g. 1987), whose recent works are published by Roger Pearson. Much earlier, Cattell (1937) had praised the eugenic laws of the Third Reich for promoting racial improvement (see Tucker, 1994 for a full discussion of Cattell). Pearson was clear about the problem of contact between races: 

   ...evolutionary progress can only take place properly amongst small non-cross-breeding groups. Always, a cross between two types meant the annihilation of the better type, for although the lower sub-species would be improved by such a cross, the more advanced would be retarded, and would then have a weaker chance in the harsh and entirely amoral competition for survival (1959, pp. 9-10).

This position was hardly unique, and was shared by noted geneticist R. Ruggles Gates (see above) and many other scientists (see Provine, 1973). Most critically, this view was a cornerstone of German Rassenkunde (race studies) and Rassenhygiene (race hygiene). As shown by Proctor (1988) and other historians, the 1935 German laws against intermarriage of Jews and non-Jews were conceived as measures for public health, and were said to be based on sound, scientific knowledge of the genetic defects of the Jews. One scientific view of the 1930s was that Jews could not be permitted to intermarry because Jews were partly African and partly Oriental, and this hybrid resulted in genetic weakness and susceptibility to disease (Proctor, 1988). Some years later, Roger Pearson (1966b) also suggested that Jews carried African blood, as evidenced by blood group research.

At the same time that he produced Blood Groups and Race, Pearson was also publishing a journal called Northern World, in which he was much more explicit about Nordic superiority. He urged Nordics to "develop a worldwide bond between our own kind" in order preserve racial purity and "not to be annihilated as a species" (1959, quoted in Tucker, 1994). Pearson did not merely write about these issues as scientific problems; he devoted himself to their political solution. In England, between 1957 and 1959 he formed the Northern League for Pan-Nordic Friendship, an organization to instruct those of Nordic descent about their biological heritage (see Anderson & Anderson, 1986; Billig, 1979) . Hans Günther, one of the most important Nazi race scientists, was a founding member, as was Robert Gayre, founder of Mankind Quarterly. (Billlig, 1979). Both Pearson and Gayre praised Günther's work. Günther's 1931 Rassenkunde des jüdichen Volkes proposed that Jewish ancestry could be detected by observing posture (Proctor, 1988, p. 110-111).

According to Valentine (1978) Pearson moved to the United States in 1965, and formed an alliance with Willis Carto, founder of the Liberty Lobby. Together they continued Northern World as Western Destiny, a periodical with articles of Nordic supremacy and the dangers facing the Nordic race from the "Culture Distorters," Carto's code phrase for Jews. According to Pearson, the Nordic race would only survive if the "Culture Distorters" could be prevented from "capturing the minds, morals, and souls of our children" (1965, p.3). The nature of Carto's position is best illustrated by the titles re-issued by Carto's Noontide Press of Costa Mesa, California: Germany Reborn, by Herman Goering, The Myth of the Twentieth Century, by the prominent Nazi ideologue, Alfred Rosenberg; The Inequality of the Human Races, by Comte Arthur de Gobineau, generally considered the "ur" text of Nordic supremacy. Noontide Press published the now classic Holocaust denial books: Paul Rassinier's (1978) Debunking the Genocide myth: a study of the Nazi concentration camps and the alleged extermination of European Jewry and the anonymously authored 1969 book, The Myth of the Six Million. In addition to classic Nazi works and Holocaust denial books, Noontide Press distributed books and pamphlets on race differences in IQ by IAAEE members Garrett, Osborne, and McGurk. Carto also founded the Institute for Historical Review, which published the Journal of Historical Review, a journal of "revisionist history" (see Lipstadt, 1993).

In 1978, Robert Gayre announced that he was retiring from the editorship of Mankind Quarterly, and that publication would continue in America under the editorship of Roger Pearson, although Pearson's name has never subsequently appeared on the masthead, except as a regular author. The General Editor was listed as "appointment pending" in 1979-80. After 1980, no Editor-in-Chief was ever listed, only the Editorial Committee of Hans W. Jürgens (who was the source for Rushton's 1994b head size data) and Richard Lynn, later joined by others. It is unusual for an academic journal not to have an Editor-in-Chief. In contrast, Pearson is clearly listed as editor of the Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies. As Tucker (1994) noted, the manuscript submissions, subscriptions and all business of Mankind Quarterly was handled at Pearson's Institute for the Study of Man, of which he was President.

In the mid 1970s, Pearson had set up the Council for American Affairs in Washington, which then became the publisher of a number of journals and monographs, including the Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies. The Council for American Affairs became the American representative of the World Anti-Communist League. The extent to which the World Anti-Communist League became a haven for ex-SS officers, members of the British National Front, ex-Ustashi, ex-Romanian Iron Guards, and other neo-fascists has been outlined by Anderson and Anderson (1986) and Valentine (1978). By the 1980s, Pearson was no longer associated with the World Anti-Communist League, and instead concentrated on publishing efforts.

Lest it be thought that the earlier quotations from Roger Pearson reflect his older thinking, and that his views on human "subspecies" (i.e., races) have softened, he wrote recently in Mankind Quarterly about the ways in which the Human Genome Project and other advances are opening up new possibility for eugenics, but he warned: 

   It has been said that when a species is reduced to a single subspecies (e.g.. panmixia), it is nearing extinction. Long term evolutionary survival is by way of speciation and this necessarily involves subspeciation. Evolution cannot occur unless "favorable" genes are segregated out from amongst "unfavorable" genetic formulae".....any population that adopts a perverted or dysgenic form of altruism - one which encourages a breeding community to breed disproportionately those of its members who are genetically handicapped rather than from those who are genetically favored, or which aids rival breeding populations to expand while restricting its own birthrate - is unlikely to survive into the definite future (p. 96) . . .The belief that humankind could benefit from being leveled into a single subspecies also flouts the laws of evolution, since evolution is rooted in differentiation (1995b, p. 97).

Thus Pearson's ideas seem unchanged from the 1950s, and are identical to the "race suicide" concerns expressed by American eugenicists at the turn of the century. In Pearson's analysis of the human condition, "race prejudice" is an evolved mechanism that is essential to discourage interbreeding and allow the necessary subspeciation. Rushton (1995a) takes a similar view of the biological basis of prejudice, but without the subspeciation concept.

Finally, it must be noted that Pearson (1991) placed quotation marks around the words "holocaust" (p. 246) and "death camps" (p. 248, although not on p. 250). I have seen no other use of quotation marks with these terms other than to suggest that these events are not real or are not as usually represented. The fact that Pearson was directly connected with Willis Carto, one of the foremost leaders in the distribution of antisemitic and Holocaust denial literature (Bellant, 1991; Lipstadt, 1993; Mintz, 1985; Simonds, 1971), makes the use of the quotation marks more alarming. The issue is particularly acute given Pearson's editorial work with Carto's Western Destiny. When one critic (Mehler, 1983) suggested that homosexuals might be at risk from extreme eugenicists, Pearson argued that this was a "figment of Mehler's imagination" and since "strict homosexual behavior can never lead to procreation," then "homosexuals would hardly be a target for even the most far-reaching of 'negative' eugenics programs" (p. 249). But the most far-reaching program, that of the Nazis, certainly did classify homosexuals as "sick" or "degenerate" and exterminated them in death camps.

Thus Roger Pearson's attack on "political correctness" for suppressing the truth about race has a complex context. The disturbing interconnections among Nazi Rassenhygiene, far right politics, holocaust denial groups, and contemporary eugenic and racial theorizing may sound melodramatic, but they should not be seen in terms of conspiracy, only as the activities of like-minded individuals. It is understandable that the memberships and boards of Mankind Quarterly, the IAAEE, the Liberty Lobby, and other groups overlap substantially, and that these individuals would engage in joint ventures. It would be unjustified to conclude that each shared all the views of the others.

The important point here is that writers such as Garrett and Pearson attempted to cloak themselves in the honorific mantle of "scientific neutrality" and to deny that their position of race was influenced by any broader political-social agenda. Such a strategy is often used in charges of "political correctness"- implying that your views are based on politics, but mine are not, my views are based on "value-free" scientific data. When such data consist of the intelligence test performance of Black South African children living under apartheid (e.g., Lynn, 1991) data used by Rushton in his analyses, then the problems are self-evident.

Conclusions

Rushton's discussion of the "equalitarian dogma" suggest that brave, politically neutral scientists resisted the attempts of powerful left-wing forces to control their work. However, when the history of postwar racial difference research is examined, the picture is one of a relatively powerful set of well-funded people, most of whom believed in the basic tenets of early 20th century eugenics (7) and were strongly opposed to both integration and intermarriage, fearing "race suicide." They used every scientific and public communication channel available to convince their colleagues and the public of their position. Far from suffering academic censorship, they had access to prestigious scientific journals and meetings, gave court and government testimony, and distributed pamphlets. Their "controversial" work received attention in every textbook. All retained their tenured positions, sometimes funded by the taxes of the very people they declared to be, on average, biologically inferior. They suffered protests and attacks in the popular press, and some deplorable assaults by protesters, with no serious injuries. Their research was often subjected to special scrutiny, and some were asked not to accept money from the Pioneer Fund. None were expelled from the American Psychological Association. Comparison of these events to the Inquisition, Stalin, and Hitler, is inappropriate, to say the least.

The continued criticism and concern over Rushton's work naturally flow from the view that his theory is one of racial superiority, albeit one in which Asian groups come out ahead of others. But Rushton (1996) explicitly disavows the terms "inferior" and "superior." The readers must judge whether Table 1, in which blacks are said to have, on average, smaller brains, lower intelligence, lower cultural achievements, higher aggressiveness, lower law-abidingness, lower marital stability and less sexual restraint than whites, and the differences are attributed partially to heredity, implies that they are "inferior." Readers must also judge whether Rushton's (e.g., 1995a) r vs. K theory in which the climate of Africa is said to have selected for high birth rates and low parental care suggests the "inferiority" of blacks. No one can doubt the uses that will be made of Rushton's research by such groups as David Duke's National Association for the Advancement of White People, whose newsletter advertised IAAEE's publications and Mankind Quarterly, alongside the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (see Tucker 1994, for an extensive discussion of the use of racial research by the far right).

Rushton explicitly disavows any policy implications of his research. In this sense, he cannot be considered a eugenicist, since eugenics always involved social policy. However, Rushton simultaneously argues in this journal that "if all people were treated the same, most average race differences would not disappear" (p. 3), a statement which in no way follows from his research and might be thought to carry policy implications for welfare, compensatory education, and employment equity. In contrast to Rushton's cautious approach Henry Garrett, Roger Pearson, T. Travis Osborne and especially Freiherr von Verschuer, quoted at the outset of this paper, embraced, and campaigned for the implementation of policy based on race difference research.

Philippe Rushton cannot be held responsible for the work of these men, and shares no "guilt by association." But those who maintain that a scientific theory cannot incite people to murder should review the history of scientific racism, the history of German Rassenhygiene, and the contemporary use of racial theory in Bosnia (see Kohn, 1995). Those who maintain that the data of racial research are "politically neutral" and "value-free" should understand the political commitments of those who conducted and promoted much of this research. Those who wish to promote open, honest discussion should contemplate the meaning of a book on worldwide race differences (Rushton, 1995a) in which "apartheid," "poverty," "colonialism," "slavery," and "segregation" do not appear in the index. Only then can an informed judgment about "political correctness" and racial research be made.

Notes

  • 1. Preparation of this paper was not supported by any grant, foundation, political or religious organization. I am indebted to the work of William Tucker (1994) for his outstanding analysis of many of the issues discussed here. I am grateful to Michael Billig for providing a copy of his 1979 pioneering work. I thank Judith Winston for comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Author's address: Dr. Andrew S. Winston, Dept. of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1. EMAIL: awinston@uoguelph.ca
  • 2. See Synderman & Rothman (1988) for a discussion of media responses to race difference research.
  • 3. Readers should remain cautious regarding the exoneration of Sir Cyril Burt (see Samelson, 1992). The evidence that the chimeric J. Conway "has been found" remains highly ambiguous. According to Samelson (1995), the J. Conway who was found never came forward to exonerate Burt while he was under attack, and never mentioned her work with Burt to her children. She is now deceased. The use of the word "hoax" (Rushton, 1994c) to describe the charges of Burt's dishonesty is noteworthy.
  • 4. Rushton's (1994) notion of the "equalitarian fiction" is that blacks and whites are genetically equal in cognitive ability. Gottfredson'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
  • 5. Von Verschuer died in 1969. However, it was common for editors and board members of Mankind Quarterly to be listed long after their death, usually with a cross.
  • 6. For a discussion of antisemitism at Columbia University and in psychology in general see Winston (1996).
  • 7. The diversity of thought within the eugenics community, even in the early 20th century is beyond the scope of this paper. See Kevles (1985).



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  • The article in the Wall Street Journal was not an editorial, as Victor Chmara has written, or a solicited article. This is how it appeared:

File:WSJ-Gottfredson.png

On page 558 of the Handbook of Intelligence (ed. Robert Sternberg), Robert Serpell writes [27]

The first, a multiauthored statement on "mainstream research on intelligence" was originally published as a paid advertisement in a daily newspaper that specializes in coverage of the stock market, The Wall Street Journal, and later reprinted with some contextual background in the academic journal Intelligence

This is unambiguous. I have just looked at two edits by Victor Chmara. Both are POV-pushing and contradict the sources. I will later look at the other edits he has made. He could of course self-revert and take a little more care in checking sources and making bold and unjustified statements, as he has done so far. Mathsci (talk) 21:55, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I've restored much of the sourced content deleted in victor's edits. aprock (talk) 22:16, 1 August 2010 (UTC)
  1. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference harvnb was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Shurkin 2006
  3. ^ Alland 2002, pp. 121–124
  4. ^ Roger Pearson's 1992 book "Shockley on Race and Eugenics" contains a foreword by Jensen, giving a lengthy assessment of Shockley
  5. ^ In Shurkin 2006, pp. 270–271, Jensen is reported as saying that Shockley's main contribution was to distract opponents and that "I have always been amazed that someone as bright as he could have contributed so little over so long a span of time".
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference Jensen1997 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
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