Talk:Institute for the Study of Academic Racism

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Arbitration Ruling on Race and Intelligence

The article Institute for the Study of Academic Racism, along with other articles relating to the area of conflict (namely, the intersection of race/ethnicity and human abilities and behaviour, broadly construed), is currently subject to active arbitration remedies, described in a 2010 Arbitration Committee case where the articulated principles included:

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Notability?[edit]

ISAR and Barry Mehler seem borderline in terms of Wikipedia's notability guidelines. Google searches for "Barry Mehler" and "Institute for the Study of Academic Racism" yield 594 and 463 hits, respectively. Google Scholar searches yield 42 and 8 hits respectively, with most of the yields not having significant citation. I think nomination for AfD would be unproductive, but they don't seem to have much influence by these measures and this should be acknowledged in the articles.--Nectar 23:36, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

He had enough influence to get Cattell's APA award postponed in 1997 (mentioned in the NYT) and prompted direct published responses from Roger Pearson, Glayde Whitney, and other Pioneer Fund recipients. It's of course kind of ironic that we're discussing quantifying his worth via constructed metrics in order to rate him against others. Jokestress 17:09, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re: ironic Ha. In defense of citation analysis, though, it is a pretty standard gauge of the presence of a topic in the academic literature. It seems in some contexts it's worth comparing figures' academic citations for a broad picture. Gottfredson, for example, who's much-maligned by Mehler, has on the order of 100 times his citations (1000 vs. 10 on ISI). (It's relevant to how much weight someone's opinion carries in the academic community.)--Nectar 06:01, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

However, the kind of criticism he does is of an entire academic field. This kind of criticism is rarely popular among people in the field, so the kind of credentialism valued by academics (especially those who believe in things like psychometrics) is a symptom of the kind of bias he criticizes. Hope that's clearer. At any rate, the question of notability seems clearly established. Jokestress 07:43, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The numbers above aren't just for psychometrics, but for the entire academic community. If the rest of academia hasn't taken significant note of an academic's work that's taken in citation analysis to mean low academic notability. My point is that Mehler's position in the academic hierarchy is relevant to considerations of prominence and undue prominence (per WP:NPOV) when comparing his opinion to the opinion of academics on the highest tiers (e.g. Eysenck, who was the most cited living psychologist at the time of his death and W. D. Hamilton, who has far more citations than any of the prominent scientists in the human sciences that I've looked at).--Nectar 08:09, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

ISAR has aided the compilation of some great sources.[edit]

I have had the pleasure of finishing a cover-to-cover read of

Tucker, William H. (2007). The funding of scientific racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-07463-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)

just recently, and note that several other thoughtful books that have recently come into my office from libraries in my town include acknowledgments of important research assistance from the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism. These books have been very eye-opening to me in explaining why point-of-view pushing pseudoscientists who conduct no research at all (having already made their minds up about what the facts are, before checking those facts) have gained so much attention on some issues in the United States. The further reading citations I have added to this article are great reads by meticulous scholars and examples of the scholarship inspired by ISAR. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 00:21, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

One-man Band?[edit]

Looking at the ISAR website and searching for peer reviewed articles from ISAR, there doesn't seem to be much evidence of any staff or faculty at the Institute beyond its Executive Director, Barry Mehler. Much of the data on the Institute's website is outdated, and as of this writing, ISAR's blog has only been updated once in 2012.

A recent FOIA request for funding information submitted to Ferris State University was denied because there was no funding information from the past five fiscal years to report.

Mr. Mehler's "Institute" gives every appearance of being a one-man band, existing on paper only, like Brian Levin's "Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism" at CSU/San Bernardino.

Richardkeefe57 (talk) 13:01, 19 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Source list of possible use for editing this article[edit]

You may find it helpful while reading or editing articles to look at a bibliography of Anthropology and Human Biology Citations, posted for the use of all Wikipedians who have occasion to edit articles on human genetics and related issues. I happen to have circulating access to a huge academic research library system at a university with an active research program in these issues (and to other academic libraries in the same large metropolitan area) and have been researching these issues sporadically since 1989. You are welcome to use these citations for your own research. You can help other Wikipedians by suggesting new sources through comments on that page. It will be extremely helpful for articles on human genetics to edit them according to the Wikipedia standards for reliable sources for medicine-related articles, as it is important to get these issues as well verified as possible. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 16:03, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]