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The "reception" section is longer than the content summary. I would propose the main points made by reviewers should be summarized more briefly, avoiding {{ quotefarm}}, while the main points made in the book, perhaps as chapter summaries, should be given in greater detail. -- dab (𒁳) 15:07, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
the self-description by the authorsand is brief enough not to require quotation marks. See the very first line of the letter: "This open letter was produced by a group of 67 scientists and researchers." It is also more in accordance with WP:SUMMARY style.
So far the tone of my comments has been thoroughly rationalNo, it hasn't.
The quotation marks were used because in fact it was a "quotation". You failed to read that point above.I admit should have phrased my question better, but assuming I failed to read the discussion after I said I'd read the discussion is very counterproductive. I had read that, and the fact that it's a quote doesn't actually explain why it was included. It makes it read as if Wikipedia is making sure to distance itself from the statement, which is something we do only when the statement is dubious, but nonetheless merits inclusion (think about one of Donald Trump's numerous false claims about the pandemic, for an example).
I don't see the harm in explicating Watson's relevant credentials.It's a textbook example of weasel words. It implies that Watson's authority needs to be stressed in comparison to the authority of these signatories, otherwise, what's the point of doing so? I might note this applies to Wade's credentials as well, even though they're less impressive than Watson's. By outlining their credentials and distancing Wikipedia from the credentials of the signatories of the letters, your edit reads as if we are implying that Wade and Watson are the more authoritative side of this disagreement, when in fact, they are not. In fact, Wade's book on the subject engendered a similar letter, only this one signed by 140 faculty who directly worked in the relevant specialty. I've read Wade's book, and it's very imaginative, but has a frankly horrible grasp of the science he purports to rely on.
I didn't do any edit warring.If you make an edit and it gets reverted, and you then revert that edit, you are edit warring. Generalrelative was, too, when they reverted you a second time, but as his first revert looks proper and his second returned the page to the state it should rest in while the issue is being discussed, it's slightly more justified (only slightly though).
I've given a plethora of reasons for my edits and you have failed to address my argumentsThis is untrue and unnecessary. Generalrelative has addressed your arguments above, and the ones you presented in this comment could not possibly have been addressed in the comment of mine it was in response to without a time machine being involved.
It isn't clever to throw terms around like "weasel words". I know what they are.There is no point to this other than to imply that you're smarter than I, which you really have no way of knowing. However, you can check our relative edit counts to see that I have over 47 times as much experience editing WP as you, which makes this come across as very immature. I wasn't trying to be clever, I was explaining why I thought your edit was worse than the status quo.
The question is which words are they and why?The obvious answer would be "the things I actually questioned in my comment," as I described above.
You fail to notice that the reason the primary edit is important is that "scientists and researchers" is a patently inaccurate statement.That is untrue. All but 2 of the signatories are scientists, there are several postdocs mentioned (all of whom would be considered researchers by any measure, as that's how postdoc positions work).
If you say "most" of them work in genetics, give me a number. What percent? You don't know.Here, we've arrived at a problem with my argument. I meant to say "anthropology or genetics," but owing to my own failure to proof-read my comment (and the similarities between this situation and another I've been involved in lately) "genetics" slipped through. That being said, this response isn't actually very useful. I do, in fact know how many anthropologists, how many geneticists, how many sociologists, how many psychologists, how many science historians and how many law professors are on the list, because 67 is not too many to easily count. And for the record, there are 9 geneticists on that list, 14 active anthropologists and 8 anthropologists working in sociology departments.
Unless you want to go through and tally up the credentials on your own, you really have nothing to say. And if you did, that would be Original Research.See WP:CALC, which is meant for exactly this sort of thing and is a very common exception to WP:OR. Also see WP:SYNTHNOT for an broader approach to things that might seem like OR, but really aren't. Also, I'm not suggesting that we include such a count in the article. Finally, original research is not just permitted, but strongly encouraged in talk page discussions. For example, without original research, how could we possibly know whether a source meets our criteria for reliability?
Let's stick to the truth.This is entirely unnecessary, and comes across quite disingenuous in a comment in which you denied edit warring in response to being shown irrefutable evidence that you had edit warred.
Separating a subsection on how to characterize the signatories to the letter.
Buzzfeed's description, 67 scientists and researchers is inflated and to some extent misleading, but passable in their article because the list of signers and their positions is included. For this article, the standard is to describe those who signed by WP:COMMONNAME and not to rely on readers fact-checking things at the source to learn the true distribution of expertise. "67 academics", or "67 scholars" as they described themselves (later using the words "scientists and scholars", indicating a distinction), is accurate, "dozens of scientists and researchers" might be OK if it really is that many after excluding the people not in a position to opine on Reich's scientific accuracy. Sesquivalent ( talk) 00:31, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
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Many thanks for taking this on. Chiswick Chap ( talk) 20:23, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
John Derbyshire is a self-described alt-right figure and has toyed with self-describing as a white supremacist (and has explicitly defended white supremacy) (see here: https://vdare.com/articles/john-derbyshire-who-are-we-the-dissident-right). He is the most heavily cited source in this article, his review of the book gets five full paragraphs devoted to it, and the guy is described merely as a "science writer." I'm inclined to delete any mention at all to him or his review, following Wikipedia's policy on balance being to weight sources in proportion to their prominence, but at the very least, any mention should be relegated to a short comment about alt-right figures criticizing the book for not being racist. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jlanef ( talk • contribs) 00:14, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
Ok, but there should not be a criticisms paragraph in the introduction, especially not one giving weight to a biased non-scientist decrying its "political correctness". It's fine to have that opinion in the reviews section, so long as you explain to the reader who the person is who is making this statement (in this case a known racist who is writing for a white supremacist website) and explain their bias. -- Hibernian ( talk) 22:11, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
In the introduction Khan is cited for the statement "It has also been criticised for its writing style" the only part of the review which mentions writing style is this section:
"If you read the prose it’s hard not to hear his precise and careful words echoing in your mind. Who We Are and How We Got Here is not rich with the same stylistic flourish and engagement as one might find in a popularization by Steven Pinker or Richard Dawkins. And I don’t think that was its intent, judging by how much space is given over to the four-population test! This is a serious book that is earnest in focusing on the substance of the science first, second, and last."
To summarize this paragraph as being 'critical of the writing style' seems inaccurate to the point of being false, deceptive or in violation of the neutrality requirement.
In the Reception section Khan's review is listed under the header "Unfavourable".
"I’ve talked to plenty of people who work in evolutionary genomics who are not totally up-to-speed on the ancient DNA revolution. They too would benefit from reading Who We Are and How We Got Here front to back. I know people who work in the field of cultural evolution, who would also benefit from reading Who We Are and How We Got Here. I know behavior geneticists who would benefit from reading Who We Are and How We Got Here. And so forth."
To conclude from this or any other paragraph that Khan has an "unfavourable" view of the book seems inaccurate to the point of being false or not neutral. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.18.12.28 ( talk) 21:11, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
I wonder if Doug Weller ( talk · contribs) or Snowded ( talk · contribs) might like to review the bold edits today to this article by an IP editor from Toronto. -- Sirfurboy ( talk) 22:12, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
I could not find anything about "nothing it says should give racists any comfort" in the Peter Forbes article. Am I just missing it? Truth Is King 24 ( talk) 03:36, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
To Doug Weller, who reverted my entry concerning chapter 11, thank you for taking an interest. I wonder if you could direct me to someplace in the Wikipedia guidelines that states that a properly referenced, true statement, in an existing article must have a secondary source cite to show its importance. For an article, importance should be shown. But a verified statement introduced as part of an article?? If that were the standard, articles would be a lot shorter. It seems to me that there is no standard like this, but if you can show me that there is, I will revise my view. But even if we were to need a secondary source cite, it seems to me that the open letter, signed by Kahn, the first citation in the article, serves admirably well in this capacity. Chapter 11 certainly drew the attention of those letter signers, showing its importance. Truth Is King 24 ( talk) 21:27, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
( edit conflict)::::This isn't meant to be a fictional book, there's a huge difference. Nor is it a band, a movie, etc. I thought as you did when I was new, that I could just write what I wanted about anything I could verify. Between User:Chiswick Chap and me we have 400,000 plus edits, vs your 64, who because of that have had the opportunity to learn more about Wikipedia works, often by being told by other editors. And in any case, you don't have WP:CONSENSUS for your edit. I see that you also had a problem when you were given advice by User:SounderBruce, another experienced editor. A major issue is that if we allowed editors to decide what was encyclopedic in a non-fiction book they could (and I admit I did when I was brand new) choose the bits that suit their point of view. To prevent this we try to use secondary reliable sources discussing the book. Doug Weller talk 14:05, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
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Should the following summary of Chapter 11, which has been contributed but has been repeatedly reverted, be permitted to be published, without further reversions: favor.
If you feel it should continue to be blocked: oppose.
Chapter 11 is entitled, "Fear of Race and Identity." At the beginning of this chapter Reich describes the hostile reception received by his work on prostate cancer, which showed that the higher rate of prostate cancer previously observed in African American men is largely genetic in origin. In a section of this chapter, entitled "Real Biological Difference" Reich further notes, "an orthodoxy that the biological differences among human populations are so modest that they should be in practice ignored ... ." He then states that the genome revolution is producing results that are "making it impossible to maintain the orthodoxy ... as they are revealing hard evidence of substantial differences across populations." He also observes that "traits shaped by many mutations (as is probably the case for behavior and cognition)" are "targets" of natural selection, just as are traits that are determined by fewer genetic differences, like skin color. [1]
Truth Is King 24 ( talk) 22:58, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
References
Comment - Summoned by FRS bot. Since the summary isn't currently broken down by chapter, there's no reason to cite a specific chapter when adding additional info. I haven't read the book, but if you integrated your additional info into the current summary, and made it flow seamlessly, I don't think you'd see as much objection. If Chapter 11 is particularly controversial, then if you have an example of it being discussed in a review, that could instead go in the reception section with the review. TimTempleton (talk) (cont) 00:01, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
Favor I noticed another editor who submitted an RfC weighed in, so I will too. I have been given no legitimate reason why my contribution should be removed. The first reason I was given was that I needed a secondary source to show the importance or encyclopedic quality of my contribution. In fact, there is no such requirement. But, even if there were, there is an article reference to a public letter by a man name Kahn, and having more than 60 other signatures, that criticizes the book based on the exact part I summarized, thereby showing its importance. The next reason I was given was that my summary gave the chapter undue weight. But my summary is all of 149 words long. Seriously, that is undue weight?? If that is undue weight, everything is. There is a policy against removing well sourced material, and the source for this material is unimpeachable. It is the book itself. It is unarguably true that the book says what I say it says. And that is all I'm saying, that the book says this. So if you weigh in with an "oppose" perhaps you can give me a reason, based in policy and/or guidelines, because I would really, and very sincerely, like to know what the legitimate reason is for removing my contribution. Truth Is King 24 ( talk) 21:49, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
All figures are misplaced here, because from outside sources, and thus not out of the book. This is completely misleading and the figures must immediately be removed!!! 2A02:8108:9640:AC3:F518:E6AD:604F:3B95 ( talk) 06:24, 8 August 2021 (UTC)
Who We Are and How We Got Here has been listed as one of the
Natural sciences good articles under the
good article criteria. If you can improve it further,
please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can
reassess it. Review: June 11, 2018. ( Reviewed version). |
This article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The "reception" section is longer than the content summary. I would propose the main points made by reviewers should be summarized more briefly, avoiding {{ quotefarm}}, while the main points made in the book, perhaps as chapter summaries, should be given in greater detail. -- dab (𒁳) 15:07, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
the self-description by the authorsand is brief enough not to require quotation marks. See the very first line of the letter: "This open letter was produced by a group of 67 scientists and researchers." It is also more in accordance with WP:SUMMARY style.
So far the tone of my comments has been thoroughly rationalNo, it hasn't.
The quotation marks were used because in fact it was a "quotation". You failed to read that point above.I admit should have phrased my question better, but assuming I failed to read the discussion after I said I'd read the discussion is very counterproductive. I had read that, and the fact that it's a quote doesn't actually explain why it was included. It makes it read as if Wikipedia is making sure to distance itself from the statement, which is something we do only when the statement is dubious, but nonetheless merits inclusion (think about one of Donald Trump's numerous false claims about the pandemic, for an example).
I don't see the harm in explicating Watson's relevant credentials.It's a textbook example of weasel words. It implies that Watson's authority needs to be stressed in comparison to the authority of these signatories, otherwise, what's the point of doing so? I might note this applies to Wade's credentials as well, even though they're less impressive than Watson's. By outlining their credentials and distancing Wikipedia from the credentials of the signatories of the letters, your edit reads as if we are implying that Wade and Watson are the more authoritative side of this disagreement, when in fact, they are not. In fact, Wade's book on the subject engendered a similar letter, only this one signed by 140 faculty who directly worked in the relevant specialty. I've read Wade's book, and it's very imaginative, but has a frankly horrible grasp of the science he purports to rely on.
I didn't do any edit warring.If you make an edit and it gets reverted, and you then revert that edit, you are edit warring. Generalrelative was, too, when they reverted you a second time, but as his first revert looks proper and his second returned the page to the state it should rest in while the issue is being discussed, it's slightly more justified (only slightly though).
I've given a plethora of reasons for my edits and you have failed to address my argumentsThis is untrue and unnecessary. Generalrelative has addressed your arguments above, and the ones you presented in this comment could not possibly have been addressed in the comment of mine it was in response to without a time machine being involved.
It isn't clever to throw terms around like "weasel words". I know what they are.There is no point to this other than to imply that you're smarter than I, which you really have no way of knowing. However, you can check our relative edit counts to see that I have over 47 times as much experience editing WP as you, which makes this come across as very immature. I wasn't trying to be clever, I was explaining why I thought your edit was worse than the status quo.
The question is which words are they and why?The obvious answer would be "the things I actually questioned in my comment," as I described above.
You fail to notice that the reason the primary edit is important is that "scientists and researchers" is a patently inaccurate statement.That is untrue. All but 2 of the signatories are scientists, there are several postdocs mentioned (all of whom would be considered researchers by any measure, as that's how postdoc positions work).
If you say "most" of them work in genetics, give me a number. What percent? You don't know.Here, we've arrived at a problem with my argument. I meant to say "anthropology or genetics," but owing to my own failure to proof-read my comment (and the similarities between this situation and another I've been involved in lately) "genetics" slipped through. That being said, this response isn't actually very useful. I do, in fact know how many anthropologists, how many geneticists, how many sociologists, how many psychologists, how many science historians and how many law professors are on the list, because 67 is not too many to easily count. And for the record, there are 9 geneticists on that list, 14 active anthropologists and 8 anthropologists working in sociology departments.
Unless you want to go through and tally up the credentials on your own, you really have nothing to say. And if you did, that would be Original Research.See WP:CALC, which is meant for exactly this sort of thing and is a very common exception to WP:OR. Also see WP:SYNTHNOT for an broader approach to things that might seem like OR, but really aren't. Also, I'm not suggesting that we include such a count in the article. Finally, original research is not just permitted, but strongly encouraged in talk page discussions. For example, without original research, how could we possibly know whether a source meets our criteria for reliability?
Let's stick to the truth.This is entirely unnecessary, and comes across quite disingenuous in a comment in which you denied edit warring in response to being shown irrefutable evidence that you had edit warred.
Separating a subsection on how to characterize the signatories to the letter.
Buzzfeed's description, 67 scientists and researchers is inflated and to some extent misleading, but passable in their article because the list of signers and their positions is included. For this article, the standard is to describe those who signed by WP:COMMONNAME and not to rely on readers fact-checking things at the source to learn the true distribution of expertise. "67 academics", or "67 scholars" as they described themselves (later using the words "scientists and scholars", indicating a distinction), is accurate, "dozens of scientists and researchers" might be OK if it really is that many after excluding the people not in a position to opine on Reich's scientific accuracy. Sesquivalent ( talk) 00:31, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
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Reviewer: Jaldous1 ( talk · contribs) 19:14, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
Many thanks for taking this on. Chiswick Chap ( talk) 20:23, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
John Derbyshire is a self-described alt-right figure and has toyed with self-describing as a white supremacist (and has explicitly defended white supremacy) (see here: https://vdare.com/articles/john-derbyshire-who-are-we-the-dissident-right). He is the most heavily cited source in this article, his review of the book gets five full paragraphs devoted to it, and the guy is described merely as a "science writer." I'm inclined to delete any mention at all to him or his review, following Wikipedia's policy on balance being to weight sources in proportion to their prominence, but at the very least, any mention should be relegated to a short comment about alt-right figures criticizing the book for not being racist. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jlanef ( talk • contribs) 00:14, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
Ok, but there should not be a criticisms paragraph in the introduction, especially not one giving weight to a biased non-scientist decrying its "political correctness". It's fine to have that opinion in the reviews section, so long as you explain to the reader who the person is who is making this statement (in this case a known racist who is writing for a white supremacist website) and explain their bias. -- Hibernian ( talk) 22:11, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
In the introduction Khan is cited for the statement "It has also been criticised for its writing style" the only part of the review which mentions writing style is this section:
"If you read the prose it’s hard not to hear his precise and careful words echoing in your mind. Who We Are and How We Got Here is not rich with the same stylistic flourish and engagement as one might find in a popularization by Steven Pinker or Richard Dawkins. And I don’t think that was its intent, judging by how much space is given over to the four-population test! This is a serious book that is earnest in focusing on the substance of the science first, second, and last."
To summarize this paragraph as being 'critical of the writing style' seems inaccurate to the point of being false, deceptive or in violation of the neutrality requirement.
In the Reception section Khan's review is listed under the header "Unfavourable".
"I’ve talked to plenty of people who work in evolutionary genomics who are not totally up-to-speed on the ancient DNA revolution. They too would benefit from reading Who We Are and How We Got Here front to back. I know people who work in the field of cultural evolution, who would also benefit from reading Who We Are and How We Got Here. I know behavior geneticists who would benefit from reading Who We Are and How We Got Here. And so forth."
To conclude from this or any other paragraph that Khan has an "unfavourable" view of the book seems inaccurate to the point of being false or not neutral. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.18.12.28 ( talk) 21:11, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
I wonder if Doug Weller ( talk · contribs) or Snowded ( talk · contribs) might like to review the bold edits today to this article by an IP editor from Toronto. -- Sirfurboy ( talk) 22:12, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
I could not find anything about "nothing it says should give racists any comfort" in the Peter Forbes article. Am I just missing it? Truth Is King 24 ( talk) 03:36, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
To Doug Weller, who reverted my entry concerning chapter 11, thank you for taking an interest. I wonder if you could direct me to someplace in the Wikipedia guidelines that states that a properly referenced, true statement, in an existing article must have a secondary source cite to show its importance. For an article, importance should be shown. But a verified statement introduced as part of an article?? If that were the standard, articles would be a lot shorter. It seems to me that there is no standard like this, but if you can show me that there is, I will revise my view. But even if we were to need a secondary source cite, it seems to me that the open letter, signed by Kahn, the first citation in the article, serves admirably well in this capacity. Chapter 11 certainly drew the attention of those letter signers, showing its importance. Truth Is King 24 ( talk) 21:27, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
( edit conflict)::::This isn't meant to be a fictional book, there's a huge difference. Nor is it a band, a movie, etc. I thought as you did when I was new, that I could just write what I wanted about anything I could verify. Between User:Chiswick Chap and me we have 400,000 plus edits, vs your 64, who because of that have had the opportunity to learn more about Wikipedia works, often by being told by other editors. And in any case, you don't have WP:CONSENSUS for your edit. I see that you also had a problem when you were given advice by User:SounderBruce, another experienced editor. A major issue is that if we allowed editors to decide what was encyclopedic in a non-fiction book they could (and I admit I did when I was brand new) choose the bits that suit their point of view. To prevent this we try to use secondary reliable sources discussing the book. Doug Weller talk 14:05, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
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Should the following summary of Chapter 11, which has been contributed but has been repeatedly reverted, be permitted to be published, without further reversions: favor.
If you feel it should continue to be blocked: oppose.
Chapter 11 is entitled, "Fear of Race and Identity." At the beginning of this chapter Reich describes the hostile reception received by his work on prostate cancer, which showed that the higher rate of prostate cancer previously observed in African American men is largely genetic in origin. In a section of this chapter, entitled "Real Biological Difference" Reich further notes, "an orthodoxy that the biological differences among human populations are so modest that they should be in practice ignored ... ." He then states that the genome revolution is producing results that are "making it impossible to maintain the orthodoxy ... as they are revealing hard evidence of substantial differences across populations." He also observes that "traits shaped by many mutations (as is probably the case for behavior and cognition)" are "targets" of natural selection, just as are traits that are determined by fewer genetic differences, like skin color. [1]
Truth Is King 24 ( talk) 22:58, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
References
Comment - Summoned by FRS bot. Since the summary isn't currently broken down by chapter, there's no reason to cite a specific chapter when adding additional info. I haven't read the book, but if you integrated your additional info into the current summary, and made it flow seamlessly, I don't think you'd see as much objection. If Chapter 11 is particularly controversial, then if you have an example of it being discussed in a review, that could instead go in the reception section with the review. TimTempleton (talk) (cont) 00:01, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
Favor I noticed another editor who submitted an RfC weighed in, so I will too. I have been given no legitimate reason why my contribution should be removed. The first reason I was given was that I needed a secondary source to show the importance or encyclopedic quality of my contribution. In fact, there is no such requirement. But, even if there were, there is an article reference to a public letter by a man name Kahn, and having more than 60 other signatures, that criticizes the book based on the exact part I summarized, thereby showing its importance. The next reason I was given was that my summary gave the chapter undue weight. But my summary is all of 149 words long. Seriously, that is undue weight?? If that is undue weight, everything is. There is a policy against removing well sourced material, and the source for this material is unimpeachable. It is the book itself. It is unarguably true that the book says what I say it says. And that is all I'm saying, that the book says this. So if you weigh in with an "oppose" perhaps you can give me a reason, based in policy and/or guidelines, because I would really, and very sincerely, like to know what the legitimate reason is for removing my contribution. Truth Is King 24 ( talk) 21:49, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
All figures are misplaced here, because from outside sources, and thus not out of the book. This is completely misleading and the figures must immediately be removed!!! 2A02:8108:9640:AC3:F518:E6AD:604F:3B95 ( talk) 06:24, 8 August 2021 (UTC)