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Frequently asked questions Is there really a scientific consensus that there is no evidence for a genetic link between race and intelligence?
Yes, and for a number of reasons. Primarily:
Isn't it true that different races have different average IQ test scores?
On average and in certain contexts, yes, though these differences have fluctuated and in many cases steadily decreased over time. Crucially, the existence of such average differences today does not mean what
racialists have asserted that it means (i.e. that races can be ranked according to their genetic predisposition for intelligence). Most IQ test data comes from North America and Europe, where non-White individuals represent ethnic minorities and often carry systemic burdens which are
known to affect test performance. Studies which purport to compare the
IQ averages of various nations are considered methodologically dubious and extremely unreliable. Further, important discoveries in the past several decades, such as the
Flynn effect and the steady
narrowing of the gap between low-scoring and high-scoring groups, as well as the ways in which disparities such as access to prenatal care and early childhood education affect IQ, have led to an understanding that environmental factors are sufficient to account for observed between-group differences. And isn't IQ a measure of intelligence?
Not exactly. IQ tests are designed to measure intelligence, but it is widely acknowledged that they measure only a very limited range of an individual's cognitive capacity. They do not measure mental adaptability or creativity, for example. You can read more about the limitations of IQ measurements
here. These caveats need to be kept in mind when extrapolating from IQ measurements to statements about intelligence. But even if we were to take IQ to be a measure of intelligence, there would still be no good reason to assert a genetic link between race and intelligence (for all the reasons stated elsewhere in this FAQ). Isn't there research showing that there are genetic differences between races?
Yes and no. A geneticist could analyze a DNA sample and then in many cases make an accurate statement about that person's race, but no single gene or group of genes has ever been found that defines a person's race. Such variations make up a minute fraction of the total genome, less even than the amount of genetic material that varies from one individual to the next. It's also important to keep in mind that racial classifications are socially constructed, in the sense that how a person is classified racially depends on perceptions, racial definitions, and customs in their society and can often change when they travel to a different country or when social conventions change over time (see
here for more details). So how can different races look different, without having different genes?
They do have some different genes, but the genes that vary between any two given races will not necessarily vary between two other races. Race is defined
phenotypically, not
genotypically, which means it's defined by observable traits. When a geneticist looks at the genetic differences between two races, there are differences in the genes that regulate those traits, and that's it. So comparing
Africans to
Europeans will show differences in genes that regulate skin color, hair texture, nose and lip shape, and other observable traits. But the rest of the genetic code will be essentially the same. In fact, there is much less genetic material that regulates the traits used to define the races than there is that regulates traits that vary from person to person. In other words, if you compare the genomes of two individuals within the same race, the results will likely differ more from each other than a comparison of the average genomes of two races. If you've ever heard people saying that the races "are more alike than two random people" or words to that effect, this is what they were referring to. Why do people insist that race is "biologically meaningless"?
Mostly because it is. As explained in the answer to the previous question, race isn't defined by genetics. Race is nothing but an arbitrary list of traits, because race is defined by observable features. The list isn't even consistent from one comparison to another. We distinguish between African and European people on the basis of skin color, but what about Middle Eastern, Asian, and Native American people? They all have more or less the same skin color. We distinguish African and Asian people from European people by the shape of some of their facial features, but what about Native American and Middle Eastern people? They have the same features as the European people, or close enough to engender confusion when skin color is not discernible. Australian Aborigines share numerous traits with African people and are frequently considered "Black" along with them, yet they are descended from an ancestral Asian population and have been a distinct cultural and ethnic group for fifty thousand years. These standards of division are arbitrary and capricious; the
one drop rule shows that visible differences were not even respected at the time they were still in use. But
IQ is at least somewhat heritable. Doesn't that mean that observed differences in IQ test performance between ancestral population groups must have a genetic component?
This is a common misconception, sometimes termed the "hereditarian fallacy".
[1] In fact, the heritability of differences between individuals and families within a given population group tells us nothing about the heritability of differences between population groups.
[2]
[3] As geneticist and neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell explains:
What about all the
psychometricians who claim there's a genetic link?
The short answer is: they're not geneticists. The longer answer is that there remains a well-documented problem of
scientific racism, which has infiltrated psychometry (see e.g.
[5] and
[6]). Psychometry is a field where people who advocate scientific racism can push racist ideas without being constantly contradicted by the very work they're doing. And when their data did contradict their racist views, many prominent advocates of scientific racism simply falsified their work or came up with creative ways to explain away the problems. See such figures as
Cyril Burt,
J. Phillipe Rushton,
Richard Lynn, and
Hans Eysenck, who are best known in the scientific community today for the poor methodological quality of their work, their strong advocacy for a genetic link between race and intelligence, and in some cases getting away with blatant fraud for many years. Isn't it a
conspiracy theory to claim that psychometricians do this?
No. It is a well-documented fact that there is
an organized group of psychometricians pushing for mainstream acceptance of racist, unscientific claims. See
this,
this and
this, as well as our article on
scientific racism for more information. Isn't this just
political correctness?
No, it's science. As a group of scholars including
biological anthropologists
Agustín Fuentes of Princeton and
Jonathan M. Marks of the University of North Carolina explain: "while it is true that most researchers in the area of human genetics and human biological diversity no longer allocate significant resources and time to the race/IQ discussion, and that moral concerns may play an important role in these decisions, an equally fundamental reason why researchers do not engage with the thesis is that empirical evidence shows that the whole idea itself is unintelligible and wrong-headed". These authors compare proponents of a genetic link between race and IQ to
creationists,
vaccine skeptics, and
climate change deniers.
[7] At the same time, researchers who choose to pursue this line of inquiry have in no way been hindered from doing so, as is made clear by this article:
[8]. It's just that all the evidence they find points to environmental rather than genetic causes for observed differences in average IQ-test performance between racial groups. What about the surveys which say that most "intelligence experts" believe in some degree of genetic linkage between race and IQ?
Is there really no evidence at all for a genetic link between race and intelligence?
No evidence for such a link has ever been presented in the scientific community. Much data has been claimed to be evidence by advocates of scientific racism, but each of these claims has been universally rejected by geneticists. Statistical arguments claiming to detect the signal of such a difference in
polygenic scores have been refuted as fundamentally methodologically flawed (see e.g.
[9]), and neither genetics nor neuroscience are anywhere near the point where a mechanistic explanation could even be meaningfully proposed (see e.g.
[10]). This is why the question of a genetic link between race and intelligence is largely considered pseudoscience; it is assumed to exist primarily by advocates of scientific racism, and in these cases the belief is based on nothing but preconceived notions about race. What is the current state of the science on a link between intelligence and race?
Please see
the article itself for an outline of the scientific consensus. What is the basis for Wikipedia's
consensus on how to treat the material?
Wikipedia editors have considered this topic in detail and over an extended period. In short, mainstream science treats the claim that genetics explains the observable differences in IQ between races as a fringe theory, so we use our own
guidelines on how to treat such material when editing our articles on the subject. Please refer to the following past discussions:
|
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I reverted the good-faith edit that added a quote from Quillette to the section "This article has been mentioned by multiple media organizations" at the top of the talk-page. Note that Quillette is listed at RSP as generally unreliable. Not surprisingly, part of the quote is untrue -- the part claiming that RS were replaced by newspaper articles. However, it's reasonable to criticize citations of media sources that should be looked at and possibly removed. I removed a citation to a piece in Vox, and other ac editors are of course welcome to remove other inappropriate uses of media sources if you find any. NightHeron ( talk) 18:53, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
I have literally no idea what you guys are talking about. What do you think is the point of the {{ press}} template? It's not an endorsement of the things that get linked in it. The main purpose is to indicate -- to us editors -- when our editorial processes and discussions have been the subject of attention by the media. It is to indicate, to the editors of the encyclopedia who comment on talk pages, if there is some high-traffic website that mentions the talk page, which is likely to be the origin of many people reading it and coming here to leave comments about it. Why are you acting like it's some kind of trophy that we should take away from people to punish them? It makes no sense. jp× g 🗯️ 04:34, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
Press on this article exists. Existence ought to be sufficient to list an item with the {{ press}} template. But no. WP:NONAZIS! This episode is some amazing meta-level commentary on the ideological corruption rampant in these parts of Wikipedia. Jweiss11 ( talk) 07:16, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
Use common sensewhen assessing inclusion. Sure, the normal rules for reliability do not necessarily apply, but this is far from a blanket call for the indiscriminate inclusion of any and all coverage. You may reasonably disagree with where MastCell, Doug Weller and I draw the line –– that linking an article by someone we've almost certainly banned from Wikipedia for disrupting this topic area goes against common sense –– but please don't pretend that our views are somehow beyond the pale, or that our arguments are of the "this suxxx" variety. The arguments we've presented are only compounded by the low editorial standard of Quillette; I see only one (very inexperienced) user arguing for exclusion solely on that basis. Generalrelative ( talk) 23:57, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
Use common senseentails in this instance, and that's fine. Frankly the only thing I find "annoying" is the mischaracterizations and uncivil behavior of some of our colleagues here. But that too is no big deal. Perhaps additional voices will care to weigh in and a consensus for inclusion will become clear. Otherwise, WP:ONUS will prevail and the link will go. Either way the encyclopedia will be served if we remain committed to civility, as you've done. Generalrelative ( talk) 22:57, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
The responsibility for achieving consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content.If you believe strongly in maintaining the link, you'll have to persuade others. I too am persuadable. And yes, I would support requesting closure at WP:RFCL. Generalrelative ( talk) 23:24, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
Be mindful of guidelineswhen assessing inclusion, and even suggests the Reliable Sources Noticeboard as a venue for discussing this. So even if the standards for inclusion in a press header are lower than for inclusion in article space, considering other guidelines like WP:PROFRINGE makes perfect sense.
This template automatically adds articles to Category:Wikipedia pages referenced by the press. Oftentimes, the purpose of this is to contextualize talk page discussions about ongoing coverage of editorial disputes, and press coverage listed here may come from sources otherwise considered unreliable.
Use common sense, and do not use this template to link to outing of Wikipedia editors (e.g. forum threads where people are trying to dox users). Be mindful of guidelines such as WP:LINKLOVE and WP:ELBLP, as well as the biographies of living persons policy (which applies to all pages, including talk pages). When in doubt, discuss the appropriateness of the template and sources on the article's talk page, or consider seeking input at the Biographies of Living Persons Noticeboard or the Reliable Sources Noticeboard.
I've asked for closure of this discussion at Wikipedia:Closure requests. Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 21:40, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
Only high quality sources may be used, specifically peer-reviewed scholarly journals and academically focused books by reputable publishers.That's what's being referred to.
I think that modern science has concluded that race is a socially constructed phenomenon rather than a biological reality,
would be better reworded to match the section on race further into the article.
From this article's 'Race' section:
The majority of anthropologists today consider race to be a sociopolitical phenomenon rather than a biological one, a view supported by considerable genetics research. The current mainstream view in the social sciences and biology is that race is a social construction based on folk ideologies that construct groups based on social disparities and superficial physical characteristics...
This wording, which present race's social construction as a consensus view among scientists, rather than something which has been shown or concluded by science, is more in line with the wordings and contexts of reliable sources, like the consensus reports by
National Academies of Science (
here) and the
American Association of Biological Anthropologists (
here), which present arguments to support their consensus, but not scientifically-derived conclusions that would be appropriately reported with the modern science has concluded...
verbiage. Similarly,
this SciAm piece presents race's social construction as a consensus view, again presenting arguments to support it, rather than as a scientific finding per se:
Today, the mainstream belief among scientists is that race is a social construct without biological meaning.
From Anthropologists' views on race, ancestry, and genetics:
Results demonstrate consensus that there are no human biological races and recognition that race exists as lived social experiences that can have important effects on health.
From Misrepresenting Race — The Role of Medical Schools in Propagating Physician Bias:
Most scholars in the biologic and social sciences converge on the view that racism shapes social experiences and has biologic consequences and that race is not a meaningful scientific construct in the absence of context.
All of these sources report race's social construction as a consensus view held broadly by scientists, and not as a finding that has been shown or concluded by science. None of them report it as a something that science has found, shown, or concluded. Among all of these, the current lede prose stands out—which, given that Wikipedia's role is to follow consensus of reliable secondary sources, it shouldn't.
I propose the following options, or similar:
...modern scientific consensus regards race to be a socially constructed phenomenon rather than a biological reality,
...modern scientific consensus considers race to be a socially constructed phenomenon rather than a biological reality,
...the consensus in modern science is that race is a socially constructed phenomenon rather than a biological reality,
...the prevailing view in contemporary science is that race is a socially constructed phenomenon rather than a biological reality,
...scientists generally agree today that race is a socially constructed phenomenon rather than a biological reality,
Zanahary (
talk) 23:44, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
Research in the 20th century found that the crude categorisations used colloquially (black, white, East Asian etc.) were not reflected in actual patterns of genetic variation, meaning that differences and similarities in DNA between people did not perfectly match the traditional racial terms. The conclusion drawn from this observation is that race is therefore a socially constructed system, where we effectively agree on these terms, rather than their existing as essential or objective biological categories. Some people claim that the exquisitely detailed picture of human variation that we can now obtain by sequencing whole genomes contradicts this. Recent studies, they argue, actually show that the old notions of races as biological categories were basically correct in the first place. As evidence for this they often point to the images produced by analyses in studies that seem to show natural clustering of humans into broadly continental groups based on their DNA. But these claims misinterpret and misrepresent the methods and results of this type of research. Populations do show both genetic and physical differences, but the analyses that are cited as evidence for the concept of race as a biological category actually undermine it.
The consensus view among geneticists, biologists and anthropologists is that race is sociopolitical phenomenon rather than a biological one, a view supported by considerable genetics research.For anyone stumbling upon this now, I've started this discussion with a more specific aim (matching reliable sources), and with sources to support my proposed verbiage, than my previous started discussion, which I'd initiated with less context and editing experience. Zanahary ( talk) 02:47, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
Hunt and Carlson disagreed...onward. I'm not sure what an ordinary reader is meant to take away from this. And is it really DUE to mention a disagreement among psychologists about how to read a genetics paper? In any case, if others think it is DUE, it should probably be revised for clarity. Generalrelative ( talk) 16:32, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
modern science has concluded that race is a socially constructed phenomenon rather than a biological reality,"appears to be succinct, clear and accurate, There is no need to try to water down the message here or muddy the waters. And as I said, let me get back to you on this. --- Steve Quinn ( talk) 00:13, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
– SJ + 00:57, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
In the lead there is this sentence: "Pseudoscientific claims of inherent differences in intelligence between races have played a central role in the history of scientific racism in many parts of the world.
" I think there is no need to for the added phrase "...in many parts the world
." The phrase seems to make this lead sentence too wordy and detracts from conciseness. Any agreement on this matter? ---
Steve Quinn (
talk) 00:54, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
I think this article should contain content about the well-covered stereotypes relating to race and intelligence, and social notions relating to race and intelligence. As it stands, the article seems to be ~only about the notions and controversies in science and pseudoscience relating to race and intelligence. Would these proposed additions be out of scope? Zanahary ( talk) 23:52, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
This is the
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The contentious topics procedure applies to this page. This page is related to the intersection of race/ethnicity and human abilities and behaviour, which is a contentious topic. Please consult the procedures and edit carefully. |
Arbitration Ruling on Race and Intelligence The article Race and intelligence, 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:
If you are a new editor, or an editor unfamiliar with the situation, please follow the above guidelines. You may also wish to review the full arbitration case page. If you are unsure if your edit is appropriate, discuss it here on this talk page first. |
Do not feed the trolls! This article or its talk page has experienced trolling. The subject may be controversial or otherwise objectionable, but it is important to keep discussion on a high level. Do not get bogged down in endless debates that don't lead anywhere. Know when to deny recognition and refer to WP:PSCI, WP:FALSEBALANCE, WP:WikiVoice, or relevant notice-boards. Legal threats and trolling are never allowed! |
Race and intelligence was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Frequently asked questions Is there really a scientific consensus that there is no evidence for a genetic link between race and intelligence?
Yes, and for a number of reasons. Primarily:
Isn't it true that different races have different average IQ test scores?
On average and in certain contexts, yes, though these differences have fluctuated and in many cases steadily decreased over time. Crucially, the existence of such average differences today does not mean what
racialists have asserted that it means (i.e. that races can be ranked according to their genetic predisposition for intelligence). Most IQ test data comes from North America and Europe, where non-White individuals represent ethnic minorities and often carry systemic burdens which are
known to affect test performance. Studies which purport to compare the
IQ averages of various nations are considered methodologically dubious and extremely unreliable. Further, important discoveries in the past several decades, such as the
Flynn effect and the steady
narrowing of the gap between low-scoring and high-scoring groups, as well as the ways in which disparities such as access to prenatal care and early childhood education affect IQ, have led to an understanding that environmental factors are sufficient to account for observed between-group differences. And isn't IQ a measure of intelligence?
Not exactly. IQ tests are designed to measure intelligence, but it is widely acknowledged that they measure only a very limited range of an individual's cognitive capacity. They do not measure mental adaptability or creativity, for example. You can read more about the limitations of IQ measurements
here. These caveats need to be kept in mind when extrapolating from IQ measurements to statements about intelligence. But even if we were to take IQ to be a measure of intelligence, there would still be no good reason to assert a genetic link between race and intelligence (for all the reasons stated elsewhere in this FAQ). Isn't there research showing that there are genetic differences between races?
Yes and no. A geneticist could analyze a DNA sample and then in many cases make an accurate statement about that person's race, but no single gene or group of genes has ever been found that defines a person's race. Such variations make up a minute fraction of the total genome, less even than the amount of genetic material that varies from one individual to the next. It's also important to keep in mind that racial classifications are socially constructed, in the sense that how a person is classified racially depends on perceptions, racial definitions, and customs in their society and can often change when they travel to a different country or when social conventions change over time (see
here for more details). So how can different races look different, without having different genes?
They do have some different genes, but the genes that vary between any two given races will not necessarily vary between two other races. Race is defined
phenotypically, not
genotypically, which means it's defined by observable traits. When a geneticist looks at the genetic differences between two races, there are differences in the genes that regulate those traits, and that's it. So comparing
Africans to
Europeans will show differences in genes that regulate skin color, hair texture, nose and lip shape, and other observable traits. But the rest of the genetic code will be essentially the same. In fact, there is much less genetic material that regulates the traits used to define the races than there is that regulates traits that vary from person to person. In other words, if you compare the genomes of two individuals within the same race, the results will likely differ more from each other than a comparison of the average genomes of two races. If you've ever heard people saying that the races "are more alike than two random people" or words to that effect, this is what they were referring to. Why do people insist that race is "biologically meaningless"?
Mostly because it is. As explained in the answer to the previous question, race isn't defined by genetics. Race is nothing but an arbitrary list of traits, because race is defined by observable features. The list isn't even consistent from one comparison to another. We distinguish between African and European people on the basis of skin color, but what about Middle Eastern, Asian, and Native American people? They all have more or less the same skin color. We distinguish African and Asian people from European people by the shape of some of their facial features, but what about Native American and Middle Eastern people? They have the same features as the European people, or close enough to engender confusion when skin color is not discernible. Australian Aborigines share numerous traits with African people and are frequently considered "Black" along with them, yet they are descended from an ancestral Asian population and have been a distinct cultural and ethnic group for fifty thousand years. These standards of division are arbitrary and capricious; the
one drop rule shows that visible differences were not even respected at the time they were still in use. But
IQ is at least somewhat heritable. Doesn't that mean that observed differences in IQ test performance between ancestral population groups must have a genetic component?
This is a common misconception, sometimes termed the "hereditarian fallacy".
[1] In fact, the heritability of differences between individuals and families within a given population group tells us nothing about the heritability of differences between population groups.
[2]
[3] As geneticist and neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell explains:
What about all the
psychometricians who claim there's a genetic link?
The short answer is: they're not geneticists. The longer answer is that there remains a well-documented problem of
scientific racism, which has infiltrated psychometry (see e.g.
[5] and
[6]). Psychometry is a field where people who advocate scientific racism can push racist ideas without being constantly contradicted by the very work they're doing. And when their data did contradict their racist views, many prominent advocates of scientific racism simply falsified their work or came up with creative ways to explain away the problems. See such figures as
Cyril Burt,
J. Phillipe Rushton,
Richard Lynn, and
Hans Eysenck, who are best known in the scientific community today for the poor methodological quality of their work, their strong advocacy for a genetic link between race and intelligence, and in some cases getting away with blatant fraud for many years. Isn't it a
conspiracy theory to claim that psychometricians do this?
No. It is a well-documented fact that there is
an organized group of psychometricians pushing for mainstream acceptance of racist, unscientific claims. See
this,
this and
this, as well as our article on
scientific racism for more information. Isn't this just
political correctness?
No, it's science. As a group of scholars including
biological anthropologists
Agustín Fuentes of Princeton and
Jonathan M. Marks of the University of North Carolina explain: "while it is true that most researchers in the area of human genetics and human biological diversity no longer allocate significant resources and time to the race/IQ discussion, and that moral concerns may play an important role in these decisions, an equally fundamental reason why researchers do not engage with the thesis is that empirical evidence shows that the whole idea itself is unintelligible and wrong-headed". These authors compare proponents of a genetic link between race and IQ to
creationists,
vaccine skeptics, and
climate change deniers.
[7] At the same time, researchers who choose to pursue this line of inquiry have in no way been hindered from doing so, as is made clear by this article:
[8]. It's just that all the evidence they find points to environmental rather than genetic causes for observed differences in average IQ-test performance between racial groups. What about the surveys which say that most "intelligence experts" believe in some degree of genetic linkage between race and IQ?
Is there really no evidence at all for a genetic link between race and intelligence?
No evidence for such a link has ever been presented in the scientific community. Much data has been claimed to be evidence by advocates of scientific racism, but each of these claims has been universally rejected by geneticists. Statistical arguments claiming to detect the signal of such a difference in
polygenic scores have been refuted as fundamentally methodologically flawed (see e.g.
[9]), and neither genetics nor neuroscience are anywhere near the point where a mechanistic explanation could even be meaningfully proposed (see e.g.
[10]). This is why the question of a genetic link between race and intelligence is largely considered pseudoscience; it is assumed to exist primarily by advocates of scientific racism, and in these cases the belief is based on nothing but preconceived notions about race. What is the current state of the science on a link between intelligence and race?
Please see
the article itself for an outline of the scientific consensus. What is the basis for Wikipedia's
consensus on how to treat the material?
Wikipedia editors have considered this topic in detail and over an extended period. In short, mainstream science treats the claim that genetics explains the observable differences in IQ between races as a fringe theory, so we use our own
guidelines on how to treat such material when editing our articles on the subject. Please refer to the following past discussions:
|
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I reverted the good-faith edit that added a quote from Quillette to the section "This article has been mentioned by multiple media organizations" at the top of the talk-page. Note that Quillette is listed at RSP as generally unreliable. Not surprisingly, part of the quote is untrue -- the part claiming that RS were replaced by newspaper articles. However, it's reasonable to criticize citations of media sources that should be looked at and possibly removed. I removed a citation to a piece in Vox, and other ac editors are of course welcome to remove other inappropriate uses of media sources if you find any. NightHeron ( talk) 18:53, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
I have literally no idea what you guys are talking about. What do you think is the point of the {{ press}} template? It's not an endorsement of the things that get linked in it. The main purpose is to indicate -- to us editors -- when our editorial processes and discussions have been the subject of attention by the media. It is to indicate, to the editors of the encyclopedia who comment on talk pages, if there is some high-traffic website that mentions the talk page, which is likely to be the origin of many people reading it and coming here to leave comments about it. Why are you acting like it's some kind of trophy that we should take away from people to punish them? It makes no sense. jp× g 🗯️ 04:34, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
Press on this article exists. Existence ought to be sufficient to list an item with the {{ press}} template. But no. WP:NONAZIS! This episode is some amazing meta-level commentary on the ideological corruption rampant in these parts of Wikipedia. Jweiss11 ( talk) 07:16, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
Use common sensewhen assessing inclusion. Sure, the normal rules for reliability do not necessarily apply, but this is far from a blanket call for the indiscriminate inclusion of any and all coverage. You may reasonably disagree with where MastCell, Doug Weller and I draw the line –– that linking an article by someone we've almost certainly banned from Wikipedia for disrupting this topic area goes against common sense –– but please don't pretend that our views are somehow beyond the pale, or that our arguments are of the "this suxxx" variety. The arguments we've presented are only compounded by the low editorial standard of Quillette; I see only one (very inexperienced) user arguing for exclusion solely on that basis. Generalrelative ( talk) 23:57, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
Use common senseentails in this instance, and that's fine. Frankly the only thing I find "annoying" is the mischaracterizations and uncivil behavior of some of our colleagues here. But that too is no big deal. Perhaps additional voices will care to weigh in and a consensus for inclusion will become clear. Otherwise, WP:ONUS will prevail and the link will go. Either way the encyclopedia will be served if we remain committed to civility, as you've done. Generalrelative ( talk) 22:57, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
The responsibility for achieving consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content.If you believe strongly in maintaining the link, you'll have to persuade others. I too am persuadable. And yes, I would support requesting closure at WP:RFCL. Generalrelative ( talk) 23:24, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
Be mindful of guidelineswhen assessing inclusion, and even suggests the Reliable Sources Noticeboard as a venue for discussing this. So even if the standards for inclusion in a press header are lower than for inclusion in article space, considering other guidelines like WP:PROFRINGE makes perfect sense.
This template automatically adds articles to Category:Wikipedia pages referenced by the press. Oftentimes, the purpose of this is to contextualize talk page discussions about ongoing coverage of editorial disputes, and press coverage listed here may come from sources otherwise considered unreliable.
Use common sense, and do not use this template to link to outing of Wikipedia editors (e.g. forum threads where people are trying to dox users). Be mindful of guidelines such as WP:LINKLOVE and WP:ELBLP, as well as the biographies of living persons policy (which applies to all pages, including talk pages). When in doubt, discuss the appropriateness of the template and sources on the article's talk page, or consider seeking input at the Biographies of Living Persons Noticeboard or the Reliable Sources Noticeboard.
I've asked for closure of this discussion at Wikipedia:Closure requests. Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 21:40, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
Only high quality sources may be used, specifically peer-reviewed scholarly journals and academically focused books by reputable publishers.That's what's being referred to.
I think that modern science has concluded that race is a socially constructed phenomenon rather than a biological reality,
would be better reworded to match the section on race further into the article.
From this article's 'Race' section:
The majority of anthropologists today consider race to be a sociopolitical phenomenon rather than a biological one, a view supported by considerable genetics research. The current mainstream view in the social sciences and biology is that race is a social construction based on folk ideologies that construct groups based on social disparities and superficial physical characteristics...
This wording, which present race's social construction as a consensus view among scientists, rather than something which has been shown or concluded by science, is more in line with the wordings and contexts of reliable sources, like the consensus reports by
National Academies of Science (
here) and the
American Association of Biological Anthropologists (
here), which present arguments to support their consensus, but not scientifically-derived conclusions that would be appropriately reported with the modern science has concluded...
verbiage. Similarly,
this SciAm piece presents race's social construction as a consensus view, again presenting arguments to support it, rather than as a scientific finding per se:
Today, the mainstream belief among scientists is that race is a social construct without biological meaning.
From Anthropologists' views on race, ancestry, and genetics:
Results demonstrate consensus that there are no human biological races and recognition that race exists as lived social experiences that can have important effects on health.
From Misrepresenting Race — The Role of Medical Schools in Propagating Physician Bias:
Most scholars in the biologic and social sciences converge on the view that racism shapes social experiences and has biologic consequences and that race is not a meaningful scientific construct in the absence of context.
All of these sources report race's social construction as a consensus view held broadly by scientists, and not as a finding that has been shown or concluded by science. None of them report it as a something that science has found, shown, or concluded. Among all of these, the current lede prose stands out—which, given that Wikipedia's role is to follow consensus of reliable secondary sources, it shouldn't.
I propose the following options, or similar:
...modern scientific consensus regards race to be a socially constructed phenomenon rather than a biological reality,
...modern scientific consensus considers race to be a socially constructed phenomenon rather than a biological reality,
...the consensus in modern science is that race is a socially constructed phenomenon rather than a biological reality,
...the prevailing view in contemporary science is that race is a socially constructed phenomenon rather than a biological reality,
...scientists generally agree today that race is a socially constructed phenomenon rather than a biological reality,
Zanahary (
talk) 23:44, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
Research in the 20th century found that the crude categorisations used colloquially (black, white, East Asian etc.) were not reflected in actual patterns of genetic variation, meaning that differences and similarities in DNA between people did not perfectly match the traditional racial terms. The conclusion drawn from this observation is that race is therefore a socially constructed system, where we effectively agree on these terms, rather than their existing as essential or objective biological categories. Some people claim that the exquisitely detailed picture of human variation that we can now obtain by sequencing whole genomes contradicts this. Recent studies, they argue, actually show that the old notions of races as biological categories were basically correct in the first place. As evidence for this they often point to the images produced by analyses in studies that seem to show natural clustering of humans into broadly continental groups based on their DNA. But these claims misinterpret and misrepresent the methods and results of this type of research. Populations do show both genetic and physical differences, but the analyses that are cited as evidence for the concept of race as a biological category actually undermine it.
The consensus view among geneticists, biologists and anthropologists is that race is sociopolitical phenomenon rather than a biological one, a view supported by considerable genetics research.For anyone stumbling upon this now, I've started this discussion with a more specific aim (matching reliable sources), and with sources to support my proposed verbiage, than my previous started discussion, which I'd initiated with less context and editing experience. Zanahary ( talk) 02:47, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
Hunt and Carlson disagreed...onward. I'm not sure what an ordinary reader is meant to take away from this. And is it really DUE to mention a disagreement among psychologists about how to read a genetics paper? In any case, if others think it is DUE, it should probably be revised for clarity. Generalrelative ( talk) 16:32, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
modern science has concluded that race is a socially constructed phenomenon rather than a biological reality,"appears to be succinct, clear and accurate, There is no need to try to water down the message here or muddy the waters. And as I said, let me get back to you on this. --- Steve Quinn ( talk) 00:13, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
– SJ + 00:57, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
In the lead there is this sentence: "Pseudoscientific claims of inherent differences in intelligence between races have played a central role in the history of scientific racism in many parts of the world.
" I think there is no need to for the added phrase "...in many parts the world
." The phrase seems to make this lead sentence too wordy and detracts from conciseness. Any agreement on this matter? ---
Steve Quinn (
talk) 00:54, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
I think this article should contain content about the well-covered stereotypes relating to race and intelligence, and social notions relating to race and intelligence. As it stands, the article seems to be ~only about the notions and controversies in science and pseudoscience relating to race and intelligence. Would these proposed additions be out of scope? Zanahary ( talk) 23:52, 1 March 2024 (UTC)