Talk:Race and intelligence

I removed the following from the article:

There has been much speculation and debate (but not much research) on the relationship between race and intelligence. This article intends to report on:

the major opinions (attributed to their spokesmen), and
the clear and uncontroversial results of research studies

Ironically, section #1 will have to be much bigger than section #2.

I did so for three reasons. First, the first sentence is false; there has been a good deal of research on the relationship between race and intelligence (although many have questioned the quality and validity of this research). Second, the second sentence (this article intends to report on two things) seems unnecessary -- my sense is that all, or virtually all, Wikipedia articles try to delineate what is uncontroversial about a topic, as well as what are the major opinions in any controversy. Third, the third sentence seems unnecessary; I do not see any irony at all that a discussion of debates over race and intelligence would be bigger than a discussion of uncontroversial studies -- indeed, this is exactly what I would expect given the object of inquiry. SR

There is some evidence to support claim that people who identify themselves as "white" score higher on standard intelligence tests than those who identify themselves as "black" and "Hispanic" in the United States, and this fits a general pattern in which socially dominant groups tend to score higher in IQ tests than socially marginalized groups.

There's no such "general pattern". Some minorities, like Jews and Asians score higher than average. And while you could argue than Jews are in better situation than Blacks, it's hard to claim that in case of Asians. --Taw

A good example of the confusion of heritability is found in the statement of international scholars published in the Wall Street Journal (see web-link above): "If all environments were to become equal for everyone, heritability would rise to 100% because all remaining differences in IQ would necessarily be genetic in origin." This claim is at best misleading and at worst, false. First, it is very hard to conceive of a world in which everyone grows up on the exact same environment; the very fact that people are spatially and temporally dispersed means that no one can be in exactly the same environment (a simple example will illustrate how complex social environments are: a husband and wife may share a house, but they do not live in identical environments because each is married to a different person). Second, even if people grew up in exactly the same environment, not all differences would be genetic in origin. This is because embryonic development involves chance molecular events and random cellular movements that alter the effects of genes. Third, even as far as genetics is involved, heritability is not a measure of phenotypic differences between groups, but rather differnces between genotype and phenotype within a population. Even within a group, if all members of the group grow up in exactly the same environment, it does not mean that heritability is 100%. All Americans (or New Yorkers, or upper-class New Yorkers -- one may define the population in question as narrowly as one likes) may eat exactly the same food, but their adult height will still be a result of both genetics and nutrition. In short, heritability is almost never 100%, and heritability tells us nothing about genetic differences between groups. This is true for height, which has a high degree of heritability; it is all the more true for intelligence. This is true for other reasons besides ones involving "heritability," as Gould goes on to discuss.

Their statement is 100% true and you politically-correct pseudioscientists think that you may be "smart" without ever studying biology. Basic fact of population genetics is that if X and Y influence Z, the bigger is the diversity of X, the bigger is it's influence on Z. So among genetically similar population, IQ depends most on environmental differences, while among enviromentally uniform population, it depends mostly on genetic differences. --Taw

Taw: First, ad homeneim attacks on fellow contributors have no place in this endeavor.

Second, what you write still does not mean that heritability is 100%.

Third, even what you write is addressing the influence of genetic determinants WITHIN a population. That is not the same thing as BETWEEN populations. SR

I have restored the deleted paragraph. DO NOT delete it just because you disagree with it. Stephen Jay Gould, like him or not, is an important contributor to this debate and readers have a right to know what he says. The article does not present the restored paragraph as "fact" (even though all qualified scientists would agree with it) -- it presents it as Gould's argument. That is, it is presented in an NPOV way. Deleting it is vandalism. SR

Unfortunatelly the article presents utter methodological bullshit that no self-respecting biologist would agree with as a "fact". The WSJ letter confirms that.

And to answer your arguments:

One: There is way too much politics in Wikipedia articles. I don't care much about things like abortion or christianity, but when it starts to make problems in scientific aricles I easily get angry about that. Btw, have you ever met H.Jonat ? You would understand what I'm talking about. ;)
Two: It doesn't matter if it's 100% or 95% or 80%, what matters it that it rises, and saying "genetical differences have 100% of influence in case of perfectly equal enviroment" means no more and no less than "as envirement is more equal, genetical differences have more influence, with asymptote of 100% influence in perfectly equal environment".
Three: It doesn't matter at all. It works as well within "simple" population as within compound population. In fact there is no such thing as "simple" population. All big enough populations can be splited into subpopulations.

--Taw