Talk:J. Philippe Rushton/Archive 6

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Biological support for a biological explanation?

Given that Rushton is offering an explicitly biological explanation for his (disputed) data, with an explicitly ecological and evolutionary biological/anthropological foundation, I find it odd that he appears to have so little support among biologists, anthropologists and ecologists. I'm sure that there are more on both sides than documented here, but would be surprised if I'm found to be mischaracterising the overall balance of opinion. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 04:14, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Biologists, anthropologists, ecologists, and the like criticising Rushton's claims

  • Lewontin's fallacy
    appear to support Rushton's work, or claim that "'Oriental,' 'Black,' and 'White'" is a useful schema.)
  • ISSN 1463-4996
    .
  • JSTOR 682972
    .
  • Francisco Gil-White, Resurrecting Racism, Chapter 10
  • Anderson, Judith L. (1991). "Rushton's racial comparisons: An ecological critique of theory and method". Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne. 32 (1): 51–62.
    ISSN 1878-7304
    .
  • Douglas Wahlsten (2001) Book Review of Race, Evolution and Behavior
  • Leslie, Charles (2002). New Horizons in Medical Anthropology. New York: Routledge. p. 17.
    ISBN 0415277930
    .
  • Kuznar, Lawrence (1997). Reclaiming a Scientific Anthropology. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press. p. 104.
    ISBN 076199114X
    .

HrafnTalkStalk(P) 04:14, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Biologists, anthropologists, ecologists, and the like supporting Rushton's claims

HrafnTalkStalk(P) 04:14, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

I noticed that every critic of Rushton you listed save for Lewontin are being cited in the article, yet the article doesn't include Harpending. Does Harpending need to be left out? We shouldn't exaggerate how much the scientific community disapproves of Rushton by excluding the few researchers who support him. Unless someone provides a good reason for Harpending to be excluded, I'll add his perspective to the article.Boothello (talk) 03:24, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
The statement made was that "his work has been heavily criticised by the scientific community", which appears to accurately reflect the balance of opinion, and
WP:DUE. A citation to Harpending neither substantiates, nor refutes, that statement, so I did not see it as relevant. I would certainly object to what is currently a 'lone dissent' being given any more weight than any of the individual critical opinions, lacking a demonstration that it is more prominent than them. It might however be worth documenting this dissent in the footnote. Addendum: I was unable to get the linked pdf to download to review it (I can't remember if I reviewed it before copying it here, or just copied it from a related article that claimed it was supportive). The first page of this multi-book review can be found here. It states "The result is not very satisfying to me, but Rushton's provocative attempt to bring the methods of science to the data deserves serious attention and respect." That strikes me as fairly ambiguous praise -- but it's possible that there's more 'meat' in the review body. HrafnTalkStalk(P
) 04:54, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
I didn't mean I'd add Harpending to the lead section, but just add a paragraph on his viewpoint in the "favorable opinions" section. I wouldn't give Harpending any more weight than is given to Brace or Tucker in the "unfavorable" section. I have Harpending's review on my computer so I can quote parts of it here if there's anything you want to verify.Boothello (talk) 05:52, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
As long as the proportions of the favorable & unfavorable 'Academic opinion' subsections roughly reflect the relative number and prominence of opinions, I don't have any problem with that. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 05:37, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Is the POV tag still needed on this article?   Will Beback  talk  18:25, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
I have removed it on the grounds that the discussion appears to be dormant. William Avery (talk) 12:50, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

RfC

Light bulb iconBAn RfC: Which descriptor, if any, can be added in front of Southern Poverty Law Center when referenced in other articles? has been posted at the Southern Poverty Law Center talk page. Your participation is welcomed. – MrX 16:48, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

J. Philippe Rushton page edit

I made the addition to the page about J. Philippe Rushton describing David Suzuki as a "media personality," because for over the last decade that best describes his activities. Originally, the page described Suzuki as a "geneticist," but Suzuki has done no recent science in the field nor has he published any papers on the subject. Instead, he has published a series of general science books, many of which are children's books.

Suzuki is best known for hosting the CBC television show "The Nature of Things" (which I often watch and enjoy), in which he reads from a script and does voiceovers for wildlife footage. Prior to that, he hosted the CBC-AM programme, "Quirks and Quarks," in which he interviewed scientists in the news. As the host of television and radio shows, I think that the description "media personality" is quite appropriate, since it covers more than one medium.

To describe him as a "geneticist" is, I believe, highly misleading (as if he were Craig Venter), because he does no work in genetics, but I did not wish to contradict the opinion of whoever wrote the original article, so I added "media personality." If you object to that term, how else would you describe the host of television and radio shows and someone who is frequently interviewed on television? What term would you prefer? "Popular recognizable figure"? "Voiceover artist"? "Canada's answer to Bill Nye"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ybravura (talk • contribs) 04:45, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

According to
WP:TP to learn about signatures. Johnuniq (talk
) 07:45, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
Umm, someone not locked out please do notice that good Mr. Rushton is still in the land of the "Living People", according to the tag!71.192.35.64 (talk) 19:12, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 4 October 2012

Sad news. Phil Rushton died on October 2. YuryD (talk) 05:59, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Already done. —KuyaBriBriTalk 22:10, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

HIS NEIM WAS JOHN NOT JEAN WTF! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Þjóvar (talk • contribs) 22:34, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Remove the smear

"He is frequently described as a white supremacist, a white nationalist, an anti-semite, a neo Nazi, a Ku Klux Klan member, a Holocaust denier, a hater, promoting hate speech, a terrorist, a fascist, and a racist."

This is vicious smear and it also lacks a citation. Do descriptions like this belong on Wikipedia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.196.162.107 (talk) 21:39, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, this article is immensely biased. Saying that "His work was heavily criticised by the scientific community,[2] and it has been widely described as racist" is only part of the truth: it ignores the large number of scientists that recognize the high quality of is research. As any scientist reaching conclusions that go against mainstream theories, Rushton is criticised by some and praised by others. Mentioning only the criticisms is a political statement that does not belong to an encyclopaedic article. --Jacques de Selliers (talk) 10:52, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Although important to note the "large" number of scientists that "recognize" the high quality of his research (this language hints at the bias of the editor above in my view) is indeed worthy of inclusion, this page, in it's current manifestation, is far too even handed and represents a "show the other side" mentality of credit to opposing positions despite their widespread invalidation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.255.12.19 (talk) 23:22, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Intelligence citations bibliography for updating this and other articles

I see several editors are commenting on this article about the late Professor J. Philippe Rushton. The best way to improve this article, which surely needs improvement just as most Wikipedia articles do, is to refer to reliable secondary sources that examine his life and work and that set the context of the research issues he wrote about. You may find it helpful while reading or editing articles to look at a bibliography of

Wikipedia standards for reliable sources for medicine-related articles, as it is important to get these issues as well verified as possible. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit
) 23:33, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Neo-Nazi sympathies

I'm not sure how to cite this, but Rushton had clear sympathies with Neo-Nazis, and not just through the Pioneer Fund:

(When we first met, Rushton rather graciously signed my copy of the abridged Race, Evolution, and Behavior. Unfortunately, it was one of those books I constantly loaned out, and I lost it. But in karmic compensation I was given the copy that Rushton sent, with a signed reviewer’s slip, to Sam Francis, complete with Francis’ underlining and annotations.)

I first met Rushton in February of 2002 at an American Renaissance Conference. I found him even more impressive in person than in print. He was a brilliant lecturer and conversationalist. I had a number of questions about Race, Evolution, and Behavior. Since he was eager to welcome another Ph.D. into “this thing of ours,” he was very generous with his time.

I remember a conversation about immigration quite vividly.

First, I asked him his opinion of Francis Parker Yockey’s somewhat apodictic claim in Imperium that a political system will find ways to generate the population that it needs, thus if a society does not encourage immigration from without it will find ways to encourage the existing population to reproduce itself. The population gains due to immigration may, moreover, be partially illusory, since the disruption and competition caused by immigrants suppresses the reproduction of the native population.

As I recall, Rushton thought this was interesting and could be formulated as a testable scientific hypothesis.

Second, I offered the argument that perhaps America would have been better off if it had not allowed in progressively more heterogeneous European and non-European immigrant groups to settle the continent, for immigration depressed wages and created social disruptions that made it more difficult for the original founding stock to reproduce itself. If immigration had not been allowed, the continent would have been peopled more slowly, surely, but the resulting society would have been more homogeneous and more egalitarian, since labor would have been scarcer and thus workers would have had greater bargaining power against capital.

Rushton thought this argument made sense, but he believed that my concerns were ultimately trumped by higher concerns of Darwinian Realpolitik: the United States was not the only contender for control of the North American continent. Mexico was also a contender, and he thought it was better for the white race as a whole that the United States rather than Mexico populated the West, regardless of the costs in ethnic homogeneity or social justice, which were real but less pressing issues that could be sorted out later.

Third, I asked Rushton if he thought the that the rising tide of non-white immigration into white countries could be explained as the result of businesspeople looking for cheap labor and welfare statists looking for needy constituencies, without any consideration of the common good or long-term demographic consequences. Thus white dispossession is merely a ghastly mistake, the unintended consequence of selfish and short-sighted policies.

Rushton thought this was an inadequate explanation and stated flatly that he believed that mass non-white immigration was also driven by a conscious purpose: the extermination of the white race. Good old Phil. What I admired most about him was his manner of stating the most radical claims in a calm and unapologetic way. His manner conveyed both moral certitude and openness to reason.

He also suggested that if I wanted to know who was behind non-white immigration, and why, I needed to read chapter 7 of Kevin MacDonald’s The Culture of Critique. (I had already been there, of course, but I wanted to see if that’s where Rushton would go.)

WARNING: Neo-Nazi site: http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/10/remembering-r-philippe-rushton/#more-32157 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.162.212.191 (talk) 08:37, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Why do you think the author Greg Johnson or the website are connected with Neo-Nazis? I didn't find anything typically Nazi on the first few pages I opened there. Lokalkosmopolit (talk) 11:58, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Clarification

A part of this article was worded "His theory was that Muslims have an aggressive personality with relatively closed, simple minds, and were less amenable to reason." I changed "Muslim" to Arab, because "Muslims" are obviously represented by peoples of varying ethnicity. Orasis (talk) 23:40, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Do you have a source for what the late Professor Rushton thought, which is what is really at issue here? Maybe he used one term (or the other) intentionally; the source citation appears to point to "Muslim" as the group of people being spoken about. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 03:46, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Melanocortin theory

Should this article mention his papers on melanocortin theory? One of his last published works was an argument that dark pigment caused black people to behave in a violent and sexually aggressive manner(alongside dropping IQ). From what I've seen of melanocortin studies it doesn't seem like it's valid but I think this should mention what appears to be his final work. Turtire (talk) 17:42, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

I am fine with it. And regarding the topic, I am pretty sure animal studies have shown that is correct. Ohh well.

talk
) 16:18, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

BLP violation?

The comment added by an IP here contains what appears to be a violation of

talk
) 19:44, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Category "Scientific Racism"

I find there is no consensus to include this article within
Scientific Racism (which oddly enough contains limited reference to the subject of this article and is, together with the controversy evident from this RfC, a possible indication that a separate article is appropriate). Altogether, these circumstances led me to conclude that there is no consensus at this time. Ncmvocalist (talk
) 04:59, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

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.

This RfC asks if this article should or should not be within category "Scientific Racism"?

Survey

Support
  • Support. There are numerous reliable sources from various authors and publishers (and more than one country) that describe Rushton as a participant in a movement of scientific racism. This is not seriously in dispute in any of the reliable sources. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (Watch my talk, How I edit) 20:57, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Support as per Maunus.
    talk
    ) 21:18, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Oppose

]] User talk:Comatmebro 17:53, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

  • Oppose - Per all above. Scientific racism is oxymoron. I came here based on invitation of RfC bot. --Antidiskriminator (talk) 21:29, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
Discussion
  • Dorpater (talk · contribs) claims that the sources for the claim are cherry picked. Rushton is mentioned prominently in all recent books about Scientific Racism - Including C. Loring Brace's "Race is a four letter word", Graves' "The Emperor's new clothes", Alland's "Race in Mind", Tucker's "the Funding of scientific racism", Jackson and Weidman's "Race, racism and science", Sussman's "the myth of race". I challenge Dorpater to find one book on the topic of scientific racism in the 20th century that does not include mention of Rushton. Rushton was by no means a great scientist, many would question whether he was a scientist at all. And in all cases, the sources support including him as one of the most prominent proponents of scientific racism in the second half of the 20th century.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 00:08, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
  • NickCT (talk · contribs), Rushton is not a living person. And we are discussing the addition of a category, not a label in narrative voice. The label in narrative voice would also be justified though, since literally dozens of reliable source use that label. The category is necessary because as Rushton is probably the single most prominent proponent of scientific racism in the second half of the 20th century - the category itself is meaningless if he is not in it.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 16:08, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
  • @
    WP:BLP. Putting people in categories is de facto labeling them in narrative voice. Might be helpful if you point to the sources. Frankly, I think we might want to consider deleting that category, or removing all the biographies from it. In general, we're pretty cautious about inferring people are racist. I hate to bring up a "Hitler" analogy, but notice that Adolf Hitler isn't in any categories for racism or antisemitism. There are lots of other folks who most of us would agree were famous racists (e.g. George Wallace), and yet they're not in racism categories. Why do you think that is? NickCT (talk
    ) 18:48, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
The Hitler analogy is a valid point - though one that I disagree with.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:22, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Deleet (talk · contribs)'s claim that "scientific racism" is not well defined is incorrect - the only one's who question its clear cut definition are those who don't like the fact that their own research falls under the definition. Scientific racism is the use of pseudo-scientific argumentation to legitimate claims about racial hierarchies. Rushton's research falls squarely within that definition.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:22, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
"Scientific racism is the use of pseudo-scientific argumentation to legitimate claims about racial hierarchies." - if that is the case, then why do numerous scientists cite Rushton, as pointed out by Deleet? Are they all also 'pseudoscientists', like Rushton?Dorpater (talk) 22:35, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Most of them do so to point out that he is a pseudo scientist and a scientific racist. Except for those who share his belief that there is a biological hierarchy of races, and dont care about the fact that is methods are pseudoscientific. Then a bunch of them cite him because their research was funded by Rushton's pioneer fund. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 00:00, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
Much of the anti-Rushton&co. argumentation is also based around William H. Tucker and his Institute for the Study of Academic Racism. Those circles aren't necessarily much larger than Pioneer Fund. --Pudeo' 00:42, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
That is simply not true, as any serious survey of the "anti-rushton" argumentation will demonstrate. And even if it were the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism has a very different history and academic standing than the pioneer fund had.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 00:50, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Regarding Comatmebro's comment above: the category cannot possibly violate

talk
) 00:14, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

The discussion above 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.

White and Protected

This man is a racist, but he is White. Had this been Frances Cress Welsing, or Farrakhan racism would be everywhere in the lead (ADL and SPL) and they would be tagged as Black Supremacist. But this racist is a respected White scholar and despite all the evidence is giving the pass.

The Canadian press reported that in interviews

The references go nowhere and the statement is therefore just hearsay?Yonk (talk) 02:43, 10 October 2016 (UTC).

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Bias?

As a reader it worries me that this article tries too hard and not very successfully to discredit the author. Wikipedia should have higher standards for objectivity.

For example by starting the bio with: “Rushton's controversial work was heavily criticized by the scientific community for the questionable quality of its research”

I’m afraid that genetic differences in races is far from “controversial” but rather the opposite. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:14BB:41:9606:C1BB:3D82:B7F4:A68D (talk) 16:57, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Biased article

A hugely biased article which gives credit only to Rushton's critics, almost all of whom appear to be Jewish, without also giving his answers and his supporters in the scientific world, of which there were many, equal status. You may not like his research and conclusions but in an encyclopedia absolute neutrality in issues like this must prevail. Eugenics, for instance, is a British theory, adopted across the world notably in California and Sweden, before the "Nazis" even mentioned it. This kind of obvious smear denigrates your article. 2A00:23C4:B63A:1800:29F9:6A5:3A66:160A (talk) 11:43, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Hey, guess what? You deep-sixed any credibility you might have had with this comment - "all of whom appear to be Jewish", hmmm? Geddoutta here, you anti-Semitic bigot, Wikipedia has no use for you. Beyond My Ken (talk) 11:51, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

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Deleted. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:13, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
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