User talk:Rikurzhen/Archive 1

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Contents 1 peer review 2 discussion on race article 3 Hi 4 Race article 5 question about sex and IQ 6 recent [race] claims 7 race 8 concerning the arguments for and against 9 Social Construction, Validity, and other such subjects 10 race and intelligence 11 recent change to Race article 12 Human 13 Editing pages on VfD 14 Regression toward the mean 15 Thank you 16 Can you send me that citation? 17 Barnstar 18 Nonsense edits 19 New Arbitration case 20 IQ and popular conceptions of intelligence 21 apa and wsj 22 Page blankings 23 R&I to do list 24 Zen-master Arbitration case closed 25 Pun in username

[edit] peer review

Hi, there have been some suggestions that we need to start cleaning out the old requests posted to Wikipedia:Peer review. You are receiving this because you have posted one or more requests that have been there a long time. When you have a moment, please check it out and remove the request(s), along with any related material, if you have received adequate feedback. Thanks! -- Wapcaplet 23:19, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] discussion on race article

[P0M:] Hi, Have you followed the discussion on the Race article? I think that the articles for which you supplied URLs give a clearer picture of the phenomena that people who believe in [race] than those people themselves are generally able to give. People who see the very real differences between the "peaks" of differentiation are unable to admit to (or tend to ignore) the lack of a clear margin in the "valleys." Telling them they are wrong is not likely to work. Showing them more clearly what they are actually looking at should help them to be objective about it. But I don't see any support from Tannin, VV, or any of the others for following up on your suggestion. Are you satisfied with things as they stand? P0M 04:05, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'm back again. I just spent a rather large amount of money to order a copy of Cavalli-Sforza's magnum opus in the hope that I could put some specific detail into your idea of "extended families." I am rather puzzled by all of the furor over [race], all of the emotively based assurance that there are meaningful differences among these extended families other than the things that one would be more sure of simply by looking at the individual. I am trying to form a list of traits (with the genes involved when known), but most of the factors are medical, e.g., sickle-cell anemia. I am told that "pure white" Anglo types can carry this trait. (One of my colleagues said it would have been wonderful if it could have been proven that Jesse Helms carried it.) But to put things in perspective for people whose thinking betrays affective contamination it would be helpful to be able to say, e.g., "3% of the Irish have red hair, but the alleles that code for this trait are also present in 0.05 percent of Han Chinese where the trait is less easily observed because it is masked by the underlying black-hair alleles (rather than the blond-hair alleles of the red-headed Irish)." I'm sort of making that up, but I'm told that there is no population that fails to exhibit any given trait. (I'd like to see them prove that, but in principle it seems to be what one should expect.)

So far I have red hair, blue skin, alcohol metabolism differences, the usual diseases, and a claim by Peak that there was a mutation many thousands of years ago that produced the white skins of the NW Europeans that became useful once agriculture reduced dependence on animal foods. I don't have much else. The racists seem to want to concentrate on intelligence differences. (BTW I think the "race and intelligence" article is a mess. I'm working on it, but I'm trying to get a couple of the contributors to see why other people are not going to be able to understand what they have written rather than getting involved in an edit war.) I should think that if there were other meaningful differences to talk about then they would be talking about them. I do know of several high-frequency traits that nobody mentions. They are interesting because they are probably adaptations to climate and other environmental features, but that makes them "surface" features.

I lived in Taiwan for a total of 7 years, and the only traits that I ever noticed as being different are reactions to alcohol, lactose intolerance, skin color, epicanthal fold, nose shape, infrequency of curly hair, hair color and eye color being rarely anything other than brown/black... I never personally checked anybody for shovel-shaped incisors or genetic loss of wisdom teeth, but that is about it and all of these things are superficial (in both senses of the word) differences. Am I missing something? Is your extended family "closer" to my extended family than is a typical Chinese family? I guess it is if you trace back through family trees, but does that say anything material about traits other than those that are superficial?

So what am I missing? Please help as I am wasting hours scouting for information and can't even come up with things like the percentage of whites with sickle-cell anemia. P0M 17:38, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Hi, I just saw your message on my talk page, suggesting using the "dichotomy" idea on the race page. So much fury has flamed that page that it should be only ashes by now. I have been thinking of another way of getting at what I think is the nub of the issue that makes race such a compelling idea to some people. That is to isolate the facts of "extended families" and the facts of the filiation of languages and of cultures (which I take to be the main things that people are looking at when they say that somebody belongs to another race), and put them into a separate article. I still need a word for the network of genetic relationships that results when, e.g., 5000 people colonize a new planet and are occasionally visited by randy spacefarers once a decade or so. An analogous kind of thing happens with languages. Relatively airtight isolation produces dialects and then mutually unintelligible languages. But there can be a lot of borrowing between dialects and languages, which keeps, e.g., Mandarin Chinese from being totally unrelated to the languages of Fujian Province except through their common roots. Cultural elements go the same way. Everybody sings "Happy Birthday to You" in Taiwan, even if they have translated it into Chinese, and shamanism seems to have passed down to almost every culture from some prehistoric common source.

What makes "race" a compelling idea to most people is that they look at a Swede yodeling and Miriam Makeba singing "the click song" and using very different body languages and they imagine that they are "different kinds of creatures." They ignore the child of a Swede and a South African who is bilingual and bicultural, or they think that is some kind of rare anomaly that can safely be ignored.

I just got a copy of The History and Geography of Human Genes, and I wish I could steal a bunch of the maps of various traits (most if not all are blood traits, unfortunately). Rather than Africa being "populated" with one set of genetic traits and Australia being "populated" with a totally different set of genetic traits (which is the way the racist imagines things to be), there are not even any isopleths that are superimposed. That is, the geographical region in which trait A is found at a certain density is not the same region where any trait N is found at the same density. Traits are either present all over the globe or else they are densest in one or two regions and then they thin out gradually as distances from these centers increase.

I wonder whether anybody has figured out how long it would take a trait to propagate all the way around the world. For instance, if there were a continuous band of malaria from the Atlantic through India and on to the Pacific, and a new mutation on the shores of the Atlantic gave positive protection to those who possessed it, how long would it take to arrive at the Pacific (not counting somebody with the trait who moved there). In a world without horses it would probably take hundreds if not thousands of years, I would guess.

Imagine a species of tree that has a fairly high tendency for branches to graft themself together wherever they cross. Or maybe it has a special kind of auxillary structure a little like dodder that grows like a vine and ties limbs and twigs together sometimes. Then look at one main limb and all its connections. What could that be called? Unfortunately the biologists have alreade grabbed klados (as clade).

If I were to try to do this kind of an analysis within the Race article it would be the cause of another edit war because there are people who want to call race a folk taxonomy, people who want to say that "race" is by definition the same as "subspecies," people who want to say that "race" is a matter of culture and/or language, etc., etc. It is a wonder that we have quelled the edit war even temporarily after everything that has gone on over the history of that article.

The worst thing is that while I may be somebody who can see what is messing people up (as I've outlined above), and therefore may be able to see what misconceptions need to be addressed, at the same time I do not have the knowledge that somebody in the field must have and by looking at Cavalli-Sforza's book I can see almost immediately loads of places where I would go wrong. P0M 08:33, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I have no idea what is going on with the Race article, have you? I think I've put up all the captions that don't simply assume the existence of [race] on the talk page. So far, there has been no comment. As long as it's stuck in its present state the only thing that bothers me much is the strange paragraph on "Linne" by a Swede. Somebody panned it pretty badly. I think the main problem is caused by questions of idiom, etc., but I don't think there is anything essential. Anyway, I don't think it does very much harm.

---

I just saw your note. I think the Race article is probably better left as something that discusses the way that the ideas of race are constructed. I also think that the genetics information should be made available in an article. I think there actually is an article on "human variability" or something like that. If I were explaining ideas of [race] for myself I'd display all of the factors that people draw on, and then say, "Here is what is really in the objective world, and over there is what people construct on the basis of various selections of components plus their own creativity." I broached this idea once, I can't remember when, and somebody (possibly Slrubenstein) jumped all over it. Peak was unhappy with me too, I suspect, because he doesn't want "scientific racism." I can understand both of their positions.

Are you familiar with the work of Edward Hall? He wrote The Silent Language, The Hidden Dimension, and several other very worthwhile books. When you study his work it becomes clear that there are cultural things that go below our conscious radar but penetrate very deeply to influence our reactions to other people.That kind of thing makes people feel that "They don't behave right. There is something definitely wrong here." (And it is mutual, which only adds real negative vibes to the original skewed vibes.) Differences in language are potent sources of misunderstanding. Usually people get paranoid and imagine that others are talking about them in the other language. (Sometimes I will go somewhere and listen with a blank expression on my face to people speaking in Chinese about me. It's generally reassuring, even when they are mildly ticked off at me.) And the third thing is just the physical appearance. Of the three, I think the physical appearance is the least important in determining people's reactions.

What I'd like to do is to is expand on what Cavalli-Sforza has done in Genes, Peoples, and Languages by bringing in the cultural differences. I had a really interesting experience in Taiwan once. I was in a fruit stand run by people who were very friendly with an American friend of mine, and who accepted me very readily on that account. We all ended up watching an interview with a young Chinese man who had grown up in the U.S. He spoke good Chinese, so on 2 counts he was just another Chinese guy. But his body language was extremely discordant. He moved the way white people move. I don't recall that he hunched his shoulders (something my friends couldn't believe we actually do), but he gestured a lot and his face was very mobile -- both definitely atypical to say the least. And I had a similar experience one day when I went somewhere by bike to visit somebody and had paused to try to figure my map out. What I took to be an American teenager rode his bike up, and I wondered what the "Army brat" was doing so far from the American enclave. Then he open his mouth and called up in Chinese to an open window on the second floor, in a 100% Chinese way, "Mama, I'm back." It left my head spinning.

Putting "klados" information, language information, and cultural information all on one map might get really difficult. There aren't enough colors, but maybe colors and shapes could make it work. For instance in Ireland the actual language of everyday use is pretty much all English. But the way people do things there remind me of the way my 3rd generation father did things, and I felt very much at home there -- much more at home than I felt in my home town. So the map of Ireland would get coded with mostly green circles for people with mostly Irish ancestry (maybe blue-green considering all the Viking genes, etc.) and mostly green circles for cultural features, but with blue triangles for the English language with maybe a sprinkling of green triangles in those peripheral areas that have managed to keep the original language in currency.

I went to dinner at a Chinese colleague's house last winter. He had two guests who sat at the table and argued vociferously (with my friend and I chipping in a remark from time to time) for about an hour. I was thinking that if this discussion were taking place in the faculty club or someplace like that then the other people would wonder what in hell was going on -- because it is a style of communication that they would not be familiar with. But to me it was quintessential Chinese behavior. It is that kind of vivid difference that creates the "sensation" of alienness when widely separated groups first meet. Add a different language (especially a tona language!), and a markedly different appearance, and the impression that is formed is, "These people couldn't possibly be like me."

Reading Edward Hall's work before I went overseas saved me a lot of trouble because I was prepared for things to not mean what they meant back home. But as far as mapping is concerned, it might turn out to be very difficult. I don't think anybody has ever made a taxonomy of cultures before. It's fairly easy to see that the Chinese culture is pretty self-consistent and not much influenced by external inputs before the 18th century, and really not very much after that time. And it's fairly easy to see how Japanese culture is almost a polar opposite of Chinese culture except for some aspects of material culture (chopsticks, etc.), some religious and philosophical ideas (Confucianism and Zen Buddhism), and the basis of their writing systems plus some technological terms to match the chopsticks, etc. But some cultural commonalities cut across language groups. For instance, the culture of the "bride with commercial value" and hence "the virgin bride" seems to spread from southern Europe all the way to China, whereas the virgin bride in northern Europe was a relatively late incursion and the old culture standardized on cohabitation until fertility was proven, and marriage came after that. A great deal has been learned about the relationships of language families in the last 50 years. As far as I know, study of cultural filiation has not been carried forth with any great degree of diligence. But ideally a picture of human variation would cover at least those 3 main factors.

As Hall points out, if one group stands close and talks loud to demonstrate friendliness, and if the other group interprets standing close and talking loud as a prelude to conflict, then the two groups are going to have trouble getting along, and each group will perceive the other as unfriendly -- although for different reasons. Making these causes of turbulence in inter-group communications more commonly known would, I suspect, make for an improvement in human relations planetwide. P0M 05:18, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC) Please see [1]. I'd prefer to keep this discussion private for now.

[edit] Hi

Wanted to introduce myself. I'm a new contributor to Intelligence (trait) and you appear to have been an important steward over the past year. I'd love to hear your ideas about how to productively expand the article and curate the existing content. -- DAD 05:27, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

---

You might enjoy this. --DAD 09:19, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Race article

Hi,

I am in the strange position of wanting to change the first line of the race article back close to something Slrubenstein used back near the time when I first got into this discussion. I could not accept the exact expressions that he used then, and I could never get him to see what my objection was. What he did that was good was to make it clear that race is not a thing but is a way of looking at things. What is your reaction?

He and I have pretty profound differences in temperament, as you can probably tell. But I find myself agreeing with him in substance much of the time. And I think that you and I have the same basic take on the phenomena that are being categorized, but we have very different ideas about questions like "How straight is straight." I think Slrubenstein is getting impatient with my trying to check out my own comprehension of all of the details. None of our differences in conceptual style should matter if we can get to the point that we all realize that we are basically saying the same thing. I haven't seen any more comment from Orionix, but I think he is basically on the right track too. I hope he is still there and is finding my rewording and reworking of some of the things you have said helpful in understanding what you really mean.

I think the basic organization should be:

(1) People categorize organism (including humans) by means of many contending schemes and call the resulting groups "races."

(2) The principle schemes of categorization are (as you have listed).

(3) Difficulties presented by each scheme. (For example, a system that has a limited number of categories defined by readily apparent "marker" characteristics can leave many people in an unofficial "none of the above" category.)

(4) Benefits to be gained from some objective system of categorization that has predictive value in medicine.

(4) These schemes of categorization have historically become problematical when people have drawn incorrect inferences from them. (All Irish are red-haired, angry, drunkards, etc., etc.) P0M 06:08, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] question about sex and IQ

Hi. I saw that you originally made this addition to the IQ page: "There is also some reason to supect that the variance in IQ scores among males is greater than than the variance among females. This pattern is seen in other cognitive tests." I am very interested in that fact. Do you know of a reference where I could pursue it further (e.g., the papers that document that claim)? (Please reply to my email: benjamin at fas.harvard.edu. I hope I'm not breaking wikipedia etiquette by suggesting that.) Thanks! -Dan

I took the liberty of sending this on to Dan:

I happen to have a reference in front of me.

I'm going to go waaay out on a limb and assume that, because you're from Harvard and your prez is taking flak for making comments including one similar to what you ask about, that you're in particular interested in the results on mathematical ability. Please forgive me if I'm wrong.

Here's a (long and complete) quote from A. R. Jensen's "The g Factor" (p. 535), which I find to be a very reliable resource and which also quotes primary sources.

"Mathematical Reasoning Ability

"Because mathematical or quantitative reasoning is a prominent feature of many scholastic and employment aptitude tests, including the most widely used of all such tests (the SAT), the repeated finding of a rather marked sex difference in this aptitude has given rise to a great amount of research. In recent years, this topic has even become a prominent research specialty of behavioral scientists.[7]

"...The sex difference favoring males does not include ability in arithmetic calculation, in which females slightly excel males, but exists for quantitative "thought problems" and especially for themore advanced and complex aspects of mathematics taught in high school and college. The sex difference in math ability in the general population is not large, with d values mostly between .10 and .25 for various tests given to nationally representative samples. Much larger differences appear in subject samples that were selected from the upper-half of the distribution of math ability; the further above the general population mean, the larger the sex difference. One reason for this is the considerably greater variance of males in math ability. The variance of males' math test scores averages about 1.1 to 1.3 times greater than the variance for females. Almost twice as many males as females fall in to the upper tail (>90th percentile) of the bell-curve distribution of math scores. However, males also outnumber females in the lower tail (<10th percentile) of the score distribution. This phenomenon of greater male variance, which is most conspicuous in the extreme tails of the distribution, is generally found for most psychometric abilities. But it is more extreme in both math and spatial abilities than in any other broad ability factors. Data collected between 1970 and 1990 or so suggest that there has been a slight decrease in the sex difference in math ability in representative population samples.

"Causal theories of the math sex difference are still tentative and debatable, pending further investigation. Some theorists attribute the math difference to the somewhat larger sex difference in spatial ability, in part because some types of math problems can be visualized graphically or in terms of spatial relations. But the moderate correlation of math ability with spatial ability (independent of g) is generally too small to account for more than a minor fraction of the sex difference in math ability. Space and math have indepdnent determinants besides the source of variance they share in common. Biological and evolutionary psychologists have proposed theories similar to those for spatial ability, explaining the well-substantiated sex difference in math ability in terms of natural selection for teh different roles performed by males and females in the course of hominid evolution and their genetically transmitted neuropsychological and hormonal mediators.[7a,b]"

"...Notes...

"7. (a) Benbow, 1988; (b) Geary, 1996; (c) Lubinski & Humphreys, 1990. The references and peer commentaries for these key articles provide a fairly comprehensive bibliography of the modern research on sex differences in mathematical ability."

The references cited are:

Benbow, C.P. (1988). Sex differences in mathematical reasoning ability in intellectually talented preadolescents: The nature, effects, and possible causes. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 11, 169-183; Peer Commentary, pp. 183-232.

Geary, D.C. (1996) Sexual selection and sex differences in mathematical abilities. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 19, 229-247; Peer Commentary, pp. 247-284.

Lubinski, D. & Humphreys, L.G. (1990) A broadly based analysis of mathematical giftedness. Intelligence, 14, 327-355.

Jensen also goes into detail on sex differences in g, the general mental ability factor which IQ tests measure well. His summary is that there is little difference, but the studies on g (as opposed to specialized abilities such as math ability) are fraught with methodological problems and are scarce to begin with.

Hope this helps. Even if you're not looking for this particular information, I hope it makes its way into the Summers debate somewhere.

Thanks, I also sent him a ref to Jensen's book and this PDF [2]. I tickles me to no end that someone read that line and decided to look for more info. --Rikurzhen 05:28, Jan 19, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] recent [race] claims

Do you have any idea of what Slrubenstein's first point (of the ones that Jalnet2 and I have attacked) is supposed to be about? I am both astounded and dismayed by Slr's reasoning when he suggests that it doesn't matter of these 4 are not true. P0M 21:14, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I just wrote a note to Peak remarking that if somebody misclassified a newly found population of black rat snakes somewhere as black racers and then somebody else found out the newly found ones weren't black racers after all, then given how well black racers are known (and how well black rat snakes are known), I'd call that bad herpatology, not the realization that two supposed subspecies were actually two species. I have trouble imagining a scenario where people could be long confused by two supposed subspecies. Black racers and black rat snakes can fool somebody like me who hasn't had two of them together in the same lab, but when have the experts ever gotten confused like this? And what is the relevance to [race]? If there are such confusions and they are deemed relevant to [race], then it would suggest that some presumed [races] of humans are something other than Homo sapiens. It would be bad enough to claim that they are something other than Homo sapiens sapiens. Pure racist biobabble, in my opinion. P0M

I rather dislike siding up with Jalnet2 because of his/her abrupt style, but Slrubenstein's rationalizations don't give me much room to find another course. If you see me getting my ego involved or becoming personally abusive, please let me know. I see a potential for getting rougher in tone because "a meek response" is only gathering moss. (Sorry to mix sayings in mid stream. ;-) P0M 21:49, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] race

Thanks for your patience while I was working on the article. I would like to know if you think the sections on cladistics and the lineage model of race could be merged, or if there is a way to reorganize them, or do some editing at transition points so that they flow together more effectively. I am not sure whether this would be a good idea, but if you think it would be, I am sure that you'd do a better job on this than I could. Slrubenstein 21:43, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

When you say "the validity sub-article," you mean the actual article -- not the subsection that I worked on today, right? If you still think the section I worked on in the race article (which I retitled "the rejection of race") is a mess -- and I have no doubts that it can be improved, let me know where you think the major problems are. If you are remarking on the separate article, well -- could anything I added to the race article be added there? Do we need a separate article?

By the way, concerning POM's being astounded about my point that it doesn't matter if a claim is untrue, what matters is that someone made the claim -- it simply represents my insistence that we conform to the Wikipedia:Neutral point of view policy. Slrubenstein 22:15, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Look, I have a concern with the "recent trends" section. I have already added enough material to secure NPOV, in my opinion, but you should look at the changes I just made. The thing is, I think more changes are necessary, because it is evident that while some people use the data in this section to develop a "lineage " notion of race, there are others who do not. My point is, even the people who do not -- the people who reject the lineage model of race, still accept the basic data from mitochondrial and other research. Here is what I propose: dividing it into two or three parts; one providing the empirical data, which provides important information on our genetic history, and then either one providing an account of the different ways of interpreting this data in regards to race, or one section on each major view.

Also, I do think that even though it is unpopular we should add a brief account of the multiregional view of Wolpof and others -- it is in the minority, but it gives some scientists even more reason to believe in race. Slrubenstein

I won't quibble over what quote is better, as long as we add citations rather than remove them. DO you want to take a first stab at dividing up this section, or do you want me to do it? I may not get to it until tomorrow, but I am willing to give it a try or see what you come up with. I see you cite Templeton -- in an account of different ways of interpreting the mitochondrial data (and I guess the y-linked stuff too) should we quote, or provide a more detailed account, of his argument? Also, you know I think he wrote another article in which he used a different algorithm to interpret the data and suggested that the case againsts the multiregional model is not quite as strong as people thought ... Slrubenstein

[edit] concerning the arguments for and against

It seems to me that what you put in the section "arguments for lineage-race" wasn't really about arguments for, but rather a thoughtful observation on how important the debate is. I moved this into the preceeding section so it would serve as a transition to the arguments, But this left the "arguments for" section empty. I wrote something simple. As you may know, I don't really buy the lineage model of race, so I am not well-disposed to write more. Nevertheless I certainly feel it is important to provide a good account of the arguments for. Can you do this at some point? I can look for the Templeton article ...

Also, although I personally happen to agree with much of the material you put in the section "arguments against," much of it seems to me to be inappropriate -- these seem to go back to general arguments against race that were developed long before the mDNA research. I would hate to sacrifice them in their entirety, but don't you think they belong in the section on the move away from race to populations and clines? I can do that, if you want, but perhaps you have another idea of where to place this material. In any event, I think this section should limit itself solely to arguments against the lineage interpretation of the cladistic research. It is for this reason that I put some of the Lieberman stuff back in -- it seems to relate more directly.

I hope I haven't misunderstood either your intentions or the research behind it. Let me know if what I have done is off base. Slrubenstein 23:33, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Oh. Slrubenstein 23:34, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Did it. I am glad you didn't have any strong objections to the reorganization I did earlier, and I feel very, very good about what we accomplished this evening. I hope it lasts at least a while!

There are two last things I see that could use work. First, can you put some info on the mDNA research in the cladistics section -- or do you not think it fits/is necessary? Let me know because if you think it is appropriate but don't have the time, I can try tomorrow. Second, I really wish we could find another photo. I am half inclined to put the mugshots at the bottom as examples of how law-enforcement (but not necessarily scientists) use "race." Slrubenstein

[edit] Social Construction, Validity, and other such subjects

I am beginning to wonder what your understanding of "validity" and of "social construction" really is. I don't think that I can get away with having a long discussion with you on this subject on the race/discussion page. There are some lingering "debating points" from a week or two ago, but no way for me to address them there without arousing negative comment. Would it work for me to set up a "sandbox" page in my own user space? P0M 09:07, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It is really inconvenient to try to handle this discussion by jumping back and forth between pages. It's too late to explain why (I think) I disagree with what you just wrote. Are you rejecting the idea of a page somewhere we could both contribute to and put on our watchlists? P0M 10:20, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] race and intelligence

I will try to moderate between you and U -- I have to tell you, although I understand what the Flynn effect is, it is not within my expertise, so I may need a fair amount of explanation from both U and you to help.

As to my issue. It seems to me that the article is dominated by the views of psychologists and psychometricians. U seems to think that since Jensen is a psychologist, criticisms of him must come from psychologists (or, people looking asking similar questions of similar data, who get different answers). I do not oppose any of this. But I do think that there are many others, coming from different disciplinary backgrounds, who have their own critiques of Jensen or Rushton or other psychologists. Their criticism sometimes is directed at the data Jensen uses, and the his use of statistical methods to analyze it. But many times, their criticisms are of a whole other order -- challenging fundamental assumptions Jensen and others make. At this level, the controversy cannot be settled through experiments and statistical analysis, because some of the criticisms raise issues that cannot be tested experimentally. U says that these criticisms are of no interest to "modern researchers" by which he means psychologists. Well, of course they are of no interest to psychologists -- psychologists are committed to the assumptions that are taken for granted within their discipline. But if this is a reason for excluding such views from the article, then we have a sewrious NPOV problem. I do not mean that the point of view that dominates is substantive (race determines IQ vs. race does not determine IQ), I mean a point of view that is disciplinary (only psychologists are qualified to address this debate vs. many disciplines have different takes on this debate). Well, this is the main issue as best I can tell.

U makes a very specific criticism too, although I think it is ridiculous. Rushton published a predictably negative review of Gould's book. U says, "unless Gould has responded to these charges, his views cannot be put in the article." I hope you see the absurdity of this view. Let me turn it around. Let us say that Rushton (a psychologist) has never responded to criticisms by evolutionary biologists like Gould or Lewinton. This is not sufficient reason to exclude Rushton from the article. You just provide Rushton's views, and then opposing or alternate views -- that is how you achieve NPOV.

(by the way, I can't put words into Gould's mouth but I would bet he never responded to Rushton because virtually all of Gould's colleagues -- I mean, evolutionary biologists and anthropologists -- consider Rushton a crank, and it is clear from Rushton's writings that he does not understand basic points Gould has made, the most obvious one being about the misuse of the concept of heritability)

For the cultural and physical anthropologists I know, Gould's Mismeasure of Man is still a powerful critique of attempts to quantify human intelligence because of conceptual issues it raises. I certainly don't think Gould is the last word, but he is still important. To remove his points from the article leads to a serious bias. Please let me know if you have any questions about what I have written, Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 17:24, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] recent change to Race article

Hi,

You made some changes recently, and, at least on my screen the changes have gone awry. Please take a look. Thanks. P0M 23:47, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Human

Hi Rikurzhen, I just tried to e-mail you with this query but you haven't specified an address, so I'm leaving it here instead. Someone has added a section on skin color and race to Human, and I'm not sure whether it's accurate, or whether it might be original research — that is, putting together (possibly accurate) material in a way that builds a case. Would you mind taking a look at it? The edit is here [3] and a couple of editors queried it here. [4]. Any input would be much appreciated, though please don't go to any trouble. You can e-mail me if you prefer; just click on "e-mail this user" to the left of my user page. Many thanks, SlimVirgin ^(talk) 22:04, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Editing pages on VfD

Greetings! Your recent reversion of the changes on Religiousness and intelligence appears from your edit summary to come from a misunderstanding. Editing of articles on VfD is allowed; deletion of material is often an improvement, when objections to the article are its containing unsourced POV material. Deletion of material to make the page appear worse than it is is discouraged, but improvement of any form is encouraged. I am restoring the changes on the assumption than your revert was because you thought it out-of-process rather than an editorial decision. If you wish to reinstate the material because you believe as an editor that it should be there, I won't concern myself with it further. Regards, Mindspillage (spill yours?) 19:55, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Regression toward the mean

Hey Rikurzhen, if you have time, I have a question I was hoping you might have some insight on regarding the regression toward the mean in IQ heritability. In a discussion at Talk:William Shockley, the question was posed: how much of the tendency for regression is thought to be due to environmental regression toward the mean, and how much to genetic regression? Do you have any thoughts on this? Thanks! Nectarflowed ^T 09:19, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

Thanks for your persistence in the face of adversity with regard to the Race and intelligence article. I find it both amusing and disheartening how quick the public is to discount science and attempt to undermine and obsfucate it when it gives answers they don't like, while hailing its rigorous logic and impartiality in other fields. Remember that some of us out there are very appreciative and impressed with the quality of the work you are producing. Keep it up! --Malathion 18:35, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Can you send me that citation?

Please shoot me the Sternberg text you cite to jokestress at gmail dot com and I'll look it over next week. Sounds like he sums up my points pretty well. Jokestress 02:11, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Barnstar

I hereby award you this Barnstar of Science (imagine heavy echo. . .) for all you hard work in Race and intelligence and other topics. I know it can be thankless work, and I'm sorry the article didn't make it to being featured. I hope you'll contribute much more here. – Quadell ^{(talk) (sleuth)} 15:54, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Nonsense edits

Hi. Could I impose upon you not to experiment in the article space? Thanks. Best, Lucky 6.9 02:47, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

That wasn't an experiment, but obviously nothing important was lost. Thanks. --Rikurzhen 04:25, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New Arbitration case

Heya,

I have now opened the requested Arbitration case in which you are involved, here; please add any evidence you think would be useful to us in coming to our judgement onto the evidence sub-page.

Thank you very much in advance for your efforts,

James F. (talk) 19:15, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] IQ and popular conceptions of intelligence

Hey Rikurzhen, I remember seeing a paper showing that popular conceptions of intelligence are actually fairly similar to what is represented by IQ. I don't see it in the references for IQ or race and intelligence. Do you remember this paper and have any info on it? Seems like it could contribute to some of the discussion at race and intelligence talk. . . Also, my best wishes for your flight home.--Nectarflowed ^T 21:41, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] apa and wsj

Hadn't seen that. Going through the consensus statements point by point is a good approach, as on Talk, is a very good approach. --DAD ^T 15:12, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

I removed your "Seriously" from the talk:race and intelligence page per removing offensive comments. If you'd rather have a strikethru, we can do that too. Please stop taking these passive-aggressive jabs and try to be cool. Jokestress 06:08, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

I certainly apologize for assuming the worst and will not do so in the future. Jokestress 06:26, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Page blankings

Hi, please provide some reasons for you page blanking, or they'll be regarded as vandalism and reverted. Dan100 (Talk) 07:54, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] R&I to do list

Thanks for the kind words. Despite the fits and starts of this kind of collaboration, I think the trend has been toward a much better series. There are a bunch of topics I want to add as well. Because I do not have access to academic papers, I am focusing on getting profiles of the major players started, as well as key terms and historical context. Due to some other commitments, I won't be participating as much as I have of late, but know that my goal is to get the NPOV dispute settled as quickly as possible. The Pioneer Fund page is a little acrimonious at the moment, so I would rather fix all the red links there in anticipation of teaching that controversy. I agree that the longitudinal and large-scale studies are an important next step. Keep up the good work yourself. Jokestress 18:58, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Hi Rikurzhen, thanks for the offer to upload the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study pdfs to the Wikigroup. For myself, I do have access to ScienceDirect, so I'll look at it there. Best, Nectar ^T 23:09, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Zen-master Arbitration case closed

The Zen-master Arbitration case, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Zen-master, which you commented on, has been closed, with the following remedies:

• Zen-master is placed on Wikipedia:Probation for one year from the date of closing this case. Should any sysop feel that it is necessary that Zen-master be banned from an article where they are engaged in edit warring, removal of sourced material, POV reorganizations of the article, or any other activity which the user considers disruptive, they shall place a template {{Zen-master banned}} at the top of the talk page of the article, and notify them on their talk page. The template shall include the ending date of the ban (one year from this decision) and a link to Wikipedia:Probation. The template may be removed by any editor, including Zen-master, at the end of the ban. If Zen-master edits an article they are banned from, they may be briefly blocked from editing Wikipedia, up to a week for repeat offenses.
• Zen-master is banned for one week for making personal attacks.

Yours,

James F. (talk) 16:13, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pun in username

Just curious, is this just your actual name, or is it the mathematico-phonetic pun that slowly occurred to me? Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 18:33, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

it's a pun on recursion. --Rikurzhen 19:43, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Good... did you miss my effort to exemplify the pun in my question itself? (look at the link). Well, OK, it's a bit forced, but I wasn't sure how better to do it. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters

I missed that. Most people don't get the pun. --Rikurzhen 20:16, 11 November 2005 (UTC)