Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 338

consensus below is that this is not a valid RfC as if fails to make any brief and neutral statement of the issue.

Last year, a consensus was reached in a RFC that the hereditarian hypothesis is a fringe theory. This is the hypothesis that there is a non-zero genetic contribution to variation in average IQ scores between racial or ethnic groups, as opposed to it being caused 100% by environmental factors. Last year's decision is generally understood to require about 45 otherwise reliable sources to be removed or excluded from Wikipedia articles, and also to require the inclusion of material that several editors consider to misrepresent the sources that it cites. As explained in this edit summary, these conclusions about required or prohibited material are based on the authority of the sources that were the basis for the previous RFC decision (8 sources).

The question that needs to be answered is: Do the 8 sources that are the basis for last year's RFC supersede the other ~45 sources listed below, sufficiently to justify the decision that the other sources must be removed, excluded, and possibly misrepresented? The decision to classify the hereditarian hypothesis as a fringe theory needs to be re-examined with respect to whether these consequences of the classification are compatible with Wikipedia's sourcing policies, particularly

• Option 1: The hereditarian hypothesis is mainstream.
• Option 2: The hereditarian hypothesis is controversial but not fringe, as is it was classified from 2010 until a year ago (see this discussion).
  WP:WEIGHT
  describes this type of theory as a "significant minority" view.
• Option 3: The hereditarian hypothesis is a fringe theory (i.e. how it has been classified for the past year).

See below for further details regarding the specific sources at issue, as well as the material whose verifiability is disputed. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 23:30, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Detailed overview

Issue 1: Source removal/exclusion

The decision to classify the hereditarian hypothesis as a fringe theory has required most books and papers that give credence to this hypothesis to be removed or excluded from Wikipedia articles, amounting to about 45 sources. In this RFC I'm using the term "excluded" for cases where someone tried or proposed to add a source to an article, and was prevented from doing so. It should be emphasized that classifying the hereditarian viewpoint as a fringe theory has rendered these sources are inadmissible per

These ~45 sources are not a complete list of the sources prohibited by last year's RFC, because this list does not include source removals for which no diffs can be provided, due to the removals having occurred on an article that was subsequently deleted (Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence). I also have not attempted to list every publication by Murray and Rindermann affected by the judgment that all of these authors' works are unreliable sources, or any other sources sympathetic to the hereditarian view—and presumably prohibited for that reason—beyond those that have been directly removed or blocked from inclusion.

The sources that the previous RFC outcome was based on—and consequently, the sources that are the basis for removing or excluding the other 45 sources—were listed here. The following is a complete list of the sources the previous RFC outcome is based on that discuss race and intelligence. (Note this qualifier: this list does not include two sources that were misleadingly presented as supporting the RFC outcome but that argued only against racial discrimination or racial essentialism, without mentioning intelligence or IQ.)

Issue 2: WP:Verifiability concerns

The outcome of last year's RFC is generally understood to require the inclusion of content that several editors consider to misrepresent the sources it cites. The disputed sentence (which is present in multiple Wikipedia articles) states: "The scientific consensus is that there is no evidence for a genetic component behind IQ differences between racial groups." The most-discussed source for this sentence is Earl B. Hunt's widely used 2010 textbook Human Intelligence. The most relevant passage from this source (on pages 434–435) is as follows:

This part of Hunt's textbook is available at Google books. I strongly encourage everyone voting in this RFC to examine the full context of the excerpt quoted above, including Hunt's preceding summary of the hereditarian arguments he is reviewing here, and evaluate for themselves whether "The scientific consensus is that there is no evidence for a genetic component" is an accurate summary of this book's position.

This issue was recently discussed at the No Original Research noticeboard. The consensus in that discussion, as I understand it, is that the disputed sentence is required by the outcome of last year's RFC regardless of whether it is supported by its sources or not. Some recent examples this argument being used to shut down WP:Verifiability based objections to the material can be found here, here, and here. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 17:32, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Survey (race and intelligence)

• Option 2: controversial but not fringe.

The race and intelligence article is under a sourcing restriction that allows only "peer-reviewed scholarly journals and academically focused books by reputable publishers", and prohibits misrepresentation of sources. Of the eight sources that the "fringe" classification is based on, there are only three that satisfy this requirement and were published in the past twenty years: the Joseph, Smedley & Smedley, and Weiten sources. As noted in the second collapsed section above, in the case of Weiten's book the previous RFC quoted an outdated (2004) edition of this book, and every subsequent edition of Weiten’s book does not support the argument that was cited to it. The sourcing restriction technically only applies to the article itself, not to talk pages and RFCs, but it is going against the spirit of the restriction to use these sources as a basis for removing or excluding material published in eighteen peer-reviewed journals (Personality and Individual Differences, Perspectives on Psychological Science, Intelligence, PLOS One, Psychological Review, Psychological Assessment, Frontiers in Psychology, Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, Nature Neuroscience, Scientific Reports, Journal of Biological Research-Thessaloniki, Human Genetics, International Journal of Neuroscience, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Journal of Biosocial Science, Mens Sana Monographs, Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and Human Nature), as well as from six books published by Cambridge University Press (Hunt 2010, Sternberg 2011, Flynn 2012, Rindermann 2018, Sternberg 2018, and Warne 2020).

Sources presented in more recent discussions to justify the removals have mostly followed a similar pattern: older sources, newspaper opinion articles and blog posts, and passing mentions of one or two sentences in sources that are mostly about something else (such as a single sentence in this 2017 editorial). This is roughly equivalent to classifying a physics theory as "fringe" based primarily on decades-old sources, blog posts, and books and articles from popular publishers, and then using that decision as a basis for removing all support for the theory that had been cited to recent physics journal papers and textbooks. I think that the standard of sourcing applied to other Wikipedia articles about science topics, which are based primarily on the most up-to-date and high-quality sources by professionals in the relevant fields, should be applied to the R&I topic as well.

With respect to the WP:Verifiability issue, I agree with the summaries given by by Literaturegeek, Gardenofaleph and Stonkaments that the contested sentence misrepresents the sources it cites, and that the argument made by Hunt's textbook in particular (quoted above) is very close to the opposite of what Wikipedia is citing this source to say. I also think the editors who are preventing this sentence from being changed have tacitly acknowledged that the wording "there is no evidence for a genetic component" does not represent this book's actual position, because when the same editors removed most of the material cited to this book, they justified some of those removals on the grounds that Hunt’s book is in favor of the hereditarian viewpoint.

Past discussions have repeatedly concluded that this sentence cannot be changed or removed as long as the hereditarian hypothesis is classified as a fringe theory, so if this sentence in fact violates the verifiability policy, these violations cannot be corrected unless the outcome of last year’s RFC is overturned. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 22:28, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

• Option 2 Per Ferahgo the Assassin. I hadn't previously been aware of the comment in which NightHeron argued (with the support of many other editors) that the material from Hunt's book had to be removed because this book was a pro-hereditarian source. That comment is quite damning, in light of the subsequent arguments that "there is no evidence for a genetic component" is an accurate summary of this book's position. Removing citations to a book on the grounds that it is a pro-hereditarian source, and subsequently claiming the same book supports the statement that there is no evidence for the hereditarian viewpoint, is an example of trying to have your cake and eat it.

Over the past year, whenever I or other editors have complained that this sentence is not supported by its sources, one common aspect of the response has been to add more sources, which usually are also misrepresented. My comment here explained how the sentence is not supported by any of its original four sources (Hunt, Mackintosh, Nisbett and Kaplan), and I pointed out here that one of the more recently added source does not use the phrase "no evidence" or any similar phrase. (It also is a paper that was published 51 years ago.) The statement now cites nine sources, the most recently added being a Vox blog post which fails the article's sourcing restriction.

If this approach continues at its current pace, eventually no Wikipedia editor will have time to sift through every one of the sources that have been added for this sentence, and point out how each one is either misrepresented, unreliable, or far too be old to indicate anything about the present consensus (or some combination of the three). The editors defending this material will be able to simply say, "your objections aren't valid unless you can explain how all twenty of the sources are misrepresented or unreliable." This brute-force approach should not be an acceptable way to win a sourcing dispute.

I may add more to this comment later. There is something I know about last year's RFC and its results that seems like it ought to be mentioned here, and I need to decide whether I should mention it or not. Gardenofaleph (talk) 23:27, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

It is Hunt, not me or other WP editors, who is "trying to have his cake and eat it". On the one hand, Hunt makes several statements that there is no scientific evidence showing a genetic component in the Black/white IQ difference. On the other hand, he says (without evidence) that the view that 0% of that difference is genetic "has virtually no chance of being true". He gives his personal opinion that a small amount, perhaps as little as 3% (a value he claims that opponents of racial hereditarianism would not object to), of the 15-point advantage of whites over Blacks is due to genetics. Despite Hunt's acknowledgment about the lack of evidence, for ideological reasons he seems intent on positing a white-over-Black genetic advantage (although not a large one) in intelligence. He also says that Jensen and Rushton are not completely wrong. So, despite what Hunt says about the lack of evidence, he's normally classified with the scientists who support hereditarian positions. Hunt's somewhat contradictory views were discussed at great length at last year's RfC, on the R&I talk-page, and elsewhere.

Hunt's speculation about 3% genetic influence would mean that, if it weren't for a genetic racial difference in intelligence, the Black/white IQ difference would be only 14 1/2 points rather than 15 points. What I find strange is Hunt's tacit assumption that a small, not-yet-detected racial genetic difference would necessarily favor whites. Why isn't it equally likely that, if it weren't for a slight genetic superiority of Blacks, the racial IQ difference would be 15 1/2 points rather than just 15 points? How does he know that the tiny, undetected difference doesn't favor Blacks? In other words, if whites rather than Blacks had been subjected to 350 years of brutality, slavery, whippings, rape, lynchings, segregation, police brutality, inferior schools, and so on, perhaps the average white IQ would be less than the Black IQ by more than 15 points. NightHeron (talk) 01:40, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

There is something I know about last year's RFC and its results that seems like it ought to be mentioned here, and I need to decide whether I should mention it or not. It's probably worth calling out how profoundly inappropriate it is to throw around vague insinuations like this. Generalrelative (talk) 05:19, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

• Option 2 makes the most sense of them all. Yes, it is controversial, but that does not mean it has no evidence whatsoever. Nerd271 (talk) 14:09, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

• Option 1: Mainstream. All respect to Ferahgo the Assassin for her efforts to address the problem of excluded and misrepresented sources, but she is under-selling her point. Ultimately, judgments about what is mainstream or not mainstream can only be based on the balance of viewpoints that exist in reliable sources. Looking at reliable academic sources published on this topic over the past few years, option 1 is the only defensible position. (By "on this topic" I mean reliable academic sources that discuss the topic in some depth, not in only a few sentences.)

Here I'll focus on books published by Cambridge University Press as an example, because even though other academic publishers have also covered the topic, CUP is the only such publisher where a clear consensus has been established that its books on this topic satisfy

WP:RS

. In the past four years CUP has published five books that discuss race and intelligence:

1. The Neuroscience of Intelligence (2017) by Richard Haier
2. The Nature of Human Intelligence (2018) edited by Robert J. Sternberg
3. Cognitive Capitalism (2018) by Heiner Rindermann
4. Human Intelligence: An introduction (2019) edited by Robert J. Sternberg
5. In the Know (2020) By Russell Warne

The Sternberg 2018, Rindermann 2018, and Warne 2020 sources all are currently disallowed as sources due to their including of material in favor of the hereditarian view. The Haier 2017 source has not been discussed in that context, but it is mildly in favor of the hereditarian view as well. Of the five books related to this topic published by Cambridge in the past four years, only the Sternberg 2019 source is critical of the hereditarian view, arguing that the available evidence supports environmental causes over genetic ones, but that "the 'perfect data' that would definitively prove either conclusion do not exist." In summary: looking at sources published on this topic in the past four years from this reliable and high-quality academic publisher, three of the five sources are currently classified at Wikipedia as pro-hereditarian, one is mildly in favor of the hypothesis, and only one is against it.

The same pattern exists in all academic journals that cover this topic with some amount of regularity and technical detail, such as Intelligence and Personality and Individual Differences (both published by Elsevier) and Psych (published by MDPI). In every journal that regularly covers this topic in depth, scholarship in favor of the hereditarian view outnumbers scholarship against it. The response by Wikipedia editors has typically been to try to declare these journals unreliable sources, although the only sources to support this classification are a few popular magazine articles in the case of Intelligence, and no sources at all in the case of Personality and Individual Differences and Psych. (Not to be confused with OpenPsych, which has an entirely different publisher and editorial board. Numerous sources have called the reliability of Openpsych into question, so that journal apparently does not satisfy WP:RS, but as far as I'm aware no published sources have claimed that Psych is similarly unreliable.)

Wikipedia:SCHOLARSHIP says, "Material such as an article, book, monograph, or research paper that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable, where the material has been published in reputable peer-reviewed sources or by well-regarded academic presses." Last year's RFC has resulted in an explicit rejection of that policy in this particular topic area, but perhaps that problem can be addressed now. --AndewNguyen (talk

) 07:28, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

I just spot checked those books, and at least two of them explicitly argue against the genetic explanation. Both include passaged explaining why it's a meaningless hypoethesis, not founded in real science. The ones that don't are written by walled gardeners, so I didn't bother, as I already know what they say. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 22:03, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

I assume the researchers you are calling "Walled gardeners" are Haier, Rindermann and Warne, so that the two books you checked are the two Sternberg books. If that's correct, see the discussion here. The Sternberg 2018 book contains chapters by Richard Lynn and Linda Gottfredson, who have been explicitly disallowed as sources due to being hereditarians. You can verify this for yourself here; Gottfredson is the author of chapter 9 and Lynn is the author of chapter 16. I have no idea what part of the book you're referring to by "passaged explaining why it's a meaningless hypoethesis", but at any rate whether you think the material from this book deserves to be disallowed as pro-hereditarian is beside the point. In the case of this source, that's the decision that has already been made. --AndewNguyen (talk) 22:33, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Your assumption is incorrect. The Rinderman book deconstructs the underlying assumptions behind your position.

Tell me all about it.

12:39, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Even if you think it does, that source (along with all of Rindermann's other work related to this topic) has also been classified as pro-hereditarian and declared therefore unreliable sources. See here: "My understanding of these discussions is that Rindermann's work is seen as unreliable for any content on Wikipedia related to race and intelligence." --AndewNguyen (talk) 16:07, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

• I'm not ready to cast a vote myself as I don't know enough about the topic, but a cursory glance at the previous RfC shows it was quite controversial and definitely not a
  WP:SNOWBALL. Therefore it appears that a new RfC to gauge the community's consensus is legitimate, considering the significant effect the old RfC has had. Alaexis_¿question?
  11:13, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

The Nature of Human Intelligence (2018), edited by Robert J. Sternberg is a collection of essays from the most cited researchers in the field of human intelligence. Sternberg invited all these scholars to contribute, even if they disagree with one another on certain points, which is inevitable given that human intelligence remains an active research topic. These people are professionals and they acted professionally. It would be nice if we were to include information on both environmental and genetic effects. It does not make sense to categorically or religiously reject expert opinions just because we happen to disagree with it. This is understandably a controversial subject, but that does not mean it should be censored on Wikipedia. We just need to attribute the sources properly. People are not sheep and we are not their shepherds. We have no business telling people what to think; we should only expose people to information and let them think for themselves. Nerd271 (talk) 14:06, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose I fundamentally disagree that the community can say that publications that advocate for a link between race and intelligence are unreliable because they advocate for a link between race and intelligence. Arguments for fringe positions can be reliable, the community simply must expect a stronger burden of proof. On the other hand, the suggestion that because there are "45 sources", some must be reliable is hokum and bunk. Some of the authors (Rindermann is the one I am most familiar with) in those sources are not people I would consider reliable. One of the papers mentioned, [76] is not research, it is Rindermann saying that many of his friends agree with him. Regarding the question: I've never heard the exact phrase hereditarian hypothesis (which is a redlink) but it seems to refer to the claim that there are measurable differences in intelligence between populations caused by hereditary factors. There certainly isn't convincing evidence for the theory. There is some evidence against it, but not so much that I am convinced there is "consensus" that the hereditarian hypothesis is false. My view based on sources I have read is that we are unable to measure intelligence well enough to make a truly definitive statement on the topic, though there is certainly no obvious difference in intelligence (by comparison, there is an obvious difference in the average skin color of various populations). As a result, I oppose everything in the RFC. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 04:38, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

• Invalid RFC. There is a clear consensus for this below but it may as well be stated here as well. This RFC is patiently non-neutrally-worded (nor is it brief, but the fact that it laboriously makes the argument for a clear position - to the point of essentially presenting key points of the dispute as fact - is more pertinent.) To be clear, a neutrally-worded question would be something like Is the claim that there are genetic differences in intelligence along racial lines a fringe viewpoint?, as in the previous RFC - it may require some slight tweaks to its wording, but it should not be substantially longer than that and should not make any arguments or present any evidence whatsover in favor of either position; that is what our !votes and comments are for. Furthermore, while this RFC is framed as an
  WP:FORUMSHOPping. --Aquillion (talk
  ) 08:26, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
• I think this is incorrectly framed and posted. It seems to be framed as a content dispute (wrong place). However, if this is really about sources (and therefore posted here), then I can only suggest to follow
  WP:MEDRS would not be applicable. My very best wishes (talk
  ) 14:51, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

• Invalid RFC / Oppose. Per Aquillion and 力 above (and numerous comments below, including my own). Generalrelative (talk) 14:52, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

• I just requested that an uninvolved admin close this RfC, preparatory to someone opening a new RfC at the R&I talk-page. Hopefully the formulation of the new RfC will be very clear, neutral, and simple, for example, yes or no on the following statement in the close of last year's RfC: the theory that a genetic link exists between race and intelligence is enough of a minority viewpoint in the scientific consensus that it falls under Wikipedia's definition of a fringe theory. NightHeron (talk) 16:25, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Discussion (race and intelligence)

Please use this section for all threaded discussion and/or comments on the !votes. Also, please remember that this RFC is not about our personal opinions on the scientific merits of the hereditarian hypothesis - it is about whether the consequences of classifying this hypothesis as a fringe theory are compatible with

There is a recently published paper that addresses the quality of some of these sources: "Cognitive Creationism compared to Young-Earth creationism".

This paper does not take a position on the cause of group differences in average IQ scores, except to say there is no consensus about their cause, but it brings up several of the sources that the "fringe" classification was based on. It mentions the Saini, Kamin, and Gould books, as well as the Sussman and Gillborn sources that were cited later in the discussion [77] to discredit one particular hereditarian author. It points out that these sources all reject basic concepts in the fields of

This recent paper discusses the overall pattern of the arguments made by these types of books, but many of the same issues have been previously pointed by authors such as Bernard Davis, [78] Eric Turkheimer, [79] and Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate (which discusses the Gould and Kamin sources, along with another one of Kamin's books). Turkheimer's review of the Jay Joseph book is particularly significant, because Turkheimer is quite opposed to race research, so one might have expected him to approve of these books; the harshness of his criticism is a good demonstration of how far removed these sources are from the psychology and genetics mainstream.

It remains to be discussed whether the older sources—including the Kamin and Gould sources, as well as contemporaneous writings by hereditarians such as Richard Herrnstein, Hans Eysenck and Arthur Jensen—should be considered reliable sources for more than just historical perspectives. Whatever is eventually decided about that question, it is important that any standards of recency be applied consistently to all sources across the board. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 22:29, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

I am in half a mind to close this thread outright. This is a blatant attempt to relitigate a well attended RfC from March last year Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard/Archive_70#RfC_on_race_and_intelligence that found the hereditarian position to be fringe. What does opening this thread accomplish? Hans Eysenck is not a credible authority on anything, given the recent retractions. User:Hemiauchenia 22:46, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Eysenck isn't one of the sources whose removal is at issue here; I only mentioned him as an example of my point about applying a consistent standard about whether sources from the 1970s and 1980s should still be considered reliable.

If you'd been following the history of the articles over the past year, you might understand why this RFC is necessary. Classifying the hereditarian hypothesis as a fringe theory has resulted in some sourcing problems that couldn't have been anticipated a year ago. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 23:05, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Okay, THIS looks like the thing that I've been waiting for over the past year. Depending on the outcome of this RFC, perhaps it's time for me to become active again. --AndewNguyen (talk) 06:59, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

• Yes, I'm sure more
  Wikipedia make statements that are directly and explicitly contradicted by reliable sources. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it.
  22:52, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

• (ec) This RfC is improper for several reasons. Instead of a brief, neutral statement of or question about the issue per
  WP:AN [81] to overturn the close, and right afterwards participating in a complaint to ArbCom (initiated by another no-voter on the RfC) about the conduct of the RfC's yes-voters. This improper RfC is the latest example of refusal to accept consensus, forum-shopping, and civil POV-pushing by opponents of last year's RfC who want to give credence to racialist hereditarian views. NightHeron (talk
  ) 23:52, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

• To the above highly pertinent reasons why this RfC shouldn't exist mentioned by Hemiauchenia, MPants and NightHeron, I'll just add that it seems quite improper for Ferahgo to have started it without informing any stakeholders (other than a single sympathetic one [82]) or the community at e.g.
  FTN or R&I. Generalrelative (talk
  ) 01:35, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Ferahgo the Assassin]] is being a little too tactful to say in so many words: Wikipedia has it wrong. Science is not subject to voting. Scientific cnclusions are reached by scientists, and we have to follow current science. The consensus that Wikipedia has adopted is either completely besides the point or absolutely upside down. what we have adopted as the scientific consensus is the consensus from 1950 or 1960. It's what I was taught, it's what everyone was taught. That was 70 years ago. The sciences of anthropology , and especially of genetics have found out a good deal in the last 70 years, and it is that there are significant difference between human groups due to heredity. (It would in fact have been rather impossible ift here were not--everything humans do is fundamentally controlled by their evolution, by their biology, and this includes the way they organize society. We are just the same as all other animals that way. if genetics weren't true, we wouldn't be here. If genetics was as we imagined it to be rather than what it is, we wouldn't be the humans we are.) The view of the 1950s that some WP ignorantly thinks is still correct, that there is no significant heritary factors, is old science, now superseded. It was superseded by the hypothesis that looking at overall h is not relevant, and one must look at individual genes. That's what I thought twenty years ago; its what most biologists probably thought. That was pretty much the scientific consensus at the end of the 20th century.

This is not the twentieth century. Much to the surprise of many biologists, we can now already look at number of individual genes and know what they do in terms of neurochemistry. . We can look at their effect individually, we can look at the overall genomes. The consensus of the 1990s is also old science. If we claim to be scientists, we must follow the scientific resutls as they are, not thee results we had been taught in the past, or the way we would like them to be.

I'm not going to explain the science. Ferahgo knows it better than I, and knows how to explain it. She's done a start above, and her references will lead you further. That is, they will lead you further, if you look at them. MjolnirPants, have you looked at them? If you have, what do you think is wrong with them? If you have not, why do you think you are qualified to make a judgment? You , and others who will be making the same argument, are arguing we should continued to say what we have previously agreed to say, because we have previously agreed to say it. It doesn't seem to matter that it might be wrong. WP can decide what scientific truth is, not scientists. WP can decide which scientists are still correct, even though their results have been superseded. WP can teach people who come here for verifiable science, what used to in the past be the state of science, even though it is no longer.

There are those who deny the validity and relevance of science. I think Ferahgo has discussed one analogy. There are many others, going back centuries and continuing today, who think that what ought to be true is true, and that this can be decided by their own opinions, or by general opinions, or by looking at a sacred text, or treating one source, however old, as if it were a sacred text. They think that the world is determinedby their internal feelings, and that those feelings are a better guide for human life than the objective world of science. I suppose people have the right to believe that, but an encyclopedia does not.

I assume that the peoplee here at WP do want to try to write a true encyclopedia . Then why do they think that what used to be true remains true, without looking at the evidence and without seriously trying to determine what the present consensus of actual scientists is? There are 3 possibilities: For one, they might think that they personally know more than the experts. For another, they have the reluctance to change that is sometimes a feature of moribund academic science, and stay with what they learned in college, and see no needto think about in again (see Thomas Kuhn for further analysis along this line. For a third, they might be choosing what scientific results they believe by what they want to believe for social reasons (and that might have been true even in the 50s, when it may have seemed that the need to combat Naziism and racism was so important, that one could choose the science to meet the social need, just like Stalin and Khrushchev adopted Lysenkoism ). If I weren't a scientist, I too might prefer to select results to match my politics. But if I thought that way, I'd have no business trying to write an encyclopedia to teach people science. DGG ( talk ) 23:53, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

(ec) Science is not subject to voting. Science has consensuses. The consensus on this subject was the subject of 1995 report by the APA, in which it stated in very clear terms that the "hereditarian" position is the one least supported by evidence. That same consensus (that genetics does not explain it) had been referred to directly as early as 1970, and as recently as 2017, by widely acknowledged experts in the field. The question of the scientific consensus is, as you say, not subject to voting by Wikipedians. But, (and this is, contrary to what some here insist, good news about Wikipedia) when we put it to a vote, we agreed with the consensus. Not one source has been presented from a widely acknowledged expert in the field claiming that the scientific consensus is that the difference is predominantly genetic, or even that there's convincing evidence that the difference is partially genetic. In fact, no such expert has ever even proposed a mechanism by which such a genetic component might operate (rather unsurprisingly, given how little we know about genetics and intelligence).

Moreover, one thing almost all (approaching 100% of those outside the walled garden of scientific racism, that is) experts agree on is that race is a biologically meaningless convention. The total genetic difference between two typical individuals of the same race is greater than the mean genetic difference between two races. The "races" as we know them are defined by collections of traits, none of which are exclusive to any particular ethnicity.

The likelihood of ever finding some genetic, or even an epigenetic component that's not related to environmental factors is highly unlikely, and grows more unlikely every time we learn something new about genetics.

And that's a serious problem with this suggestion. Because the arguments presented aren't actually arguments that we've misinterpreted the scientific consensus. They're arguing that the scientific consensus is wrong, and that is absolutely not something that has any business being litigated here. We follow the sources, and not only are the best sources quite clear on the question of what the scientific consensus is, those few which are actually used to argue that it's somehow different are all the products of a relatively small group of scientists who've shown time and time again their unwillingness to admit their mistakes, and their willingness to engage in dishonesty to win the debate. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 00:05, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

DGG, the argumentum ad Kuhniam is essentially nihilistic. The issue here is that those who purport to study racial determinance of intelligence have never come up with a racially neutral measure of intelligence. Guy (help! - typo?) 14:09, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

This comment is to respond to the edit that conflicted with my last comment.

MjolnirPants, have you looked at them? Yes, multiple times is some cases.

If you have, what do you think is wrong with them? It varies from source to source.

• Hunt 2010 It's being misinterpreted. Hunt cites 3% as an example that would not alarm anyone: 3% of the difference between black and white IQs is smaller than the expected difference between two almost-identical IQ tests taken by the same person at the same time. It's nothing more than an artifact of the normal heritability of IQ.
• Sternberg 2011, Flynn 2012, Rindermann 2018, Sternberg 2018, and Warne 2020 No claims about what they say are given, so I can't comment on them. As for the general claim that they support the genetic hypothesis: Flynn has been one of the more vocal opponents of it. Whatever quote is being cited is thus almost certainly either cherry-picked or misinterpreted, a la Hunt 2010.
• Tezuka 2020 Completely off topic. This argument is pure
  WP:SYNTH
  . As if that weren't bad enough, it's not even clearly an RS, as this is a brand-new journal made specifically for publishing fringe views with no reputation to speak of. In fact, I can't even say for certain that Tezuka exists, as the journal permits pseudonymous and anonymous publication.
• Davis 1981 No claim is made here, but this source explicitly refutes numerous axioms of the genetic hypothesis.
• Turkheimer 2015 This is a non-sequitur. It's entirely possible to critique work that purports to support one's own view of the science.
• Pinker 2003 No claims are made about what this says, so I can't evaluate them, but Pinker has stated "My own view, incidentally, is that in the case of the most discussed racial difference – the black-white IQ gap in the US – the current evidence does not call for a genetic explanation."
• general references to Herrnstein, Eysenck and Jensen This rather undermines the rest of their argument, given what we know about those figures.

I would note that all of those sources have one thing in common:

None of them argue that the scientific consensus is anything but the environmental view. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 00:38, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

You might take a look at [83] "Gene discovery and polygenic prediction from a 1.1-million-person GWAS of educational attainment" from Nature Genetics. That's what really convinced me. -- (& as a (former) biochemist, I found especially interesting but not directly relevant, the supplementary material section 5 , Biological mechanisms. )

I agree with you that the material on traditional races is extremely surprising--very different from when I last taught this material in 1975. It's so unexpected that it certainly needs to be confirmed by other approaches, though it does not contradict the current views on human migrations and gene flow. (But that's not the central point here. )

But Ferahgo can explain most of this much better than I. She's the next scientific generation. DGG ( talk ) 06:30, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

The source from Nature Genetics convinced you of what? The R&I article agrees with it. The section "Heritability within and between groups" states that "Psychometricians have found that intelligence is substantially heritable within populations." Within-group heritability is not what last year's RfC or the current RfC is about. The same section of the R&I article also explains why within-group heritability does not imply any genetic cause of inter-group differences at all. The source that convinced you has absolutely nothing to do with the claim that there are genetic differences in intelligence between races. NightHeron (talk) 07:39, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

You might take a look at [84] "Gene discovery and polygenic prediction from a 1.1-million-person GWAS of educational attainment" from Nature Genetics. Let's ignore analysis of this source for now and assume this is, in fact, evidence for a genetic cause. The fact that a fringe claim is not 100% devoid of evidence does not answer the question "what is the scientific consensus." It doesn't even address that question. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:34, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

MjolnirPants, I think you got the number of negations wrong here. Didn't you want to say "None of them argue that the scientific consensus is the hereditarian view"? --Hob Gadling (talk) 05:27, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing that out. I didn't get the wrong number of negations, but I absolutely got the wrong word (a critical mistake, no less, and one corrected now). My point was that none of these sources argue that the scientific consensus is anything but the environmental view. Most "hereditarian" sources which have been presented in these countless discussions argue for the hereditarian view, while occasionally acknowledging that the environmentalist view is the current consensus. This question about the scientific consensus is a red herring. The pattern of argumentation (and a large number of direct statements) establishes quite clearly that editors supporting relitigating this are actually pushing to make the article agree with the hereditarian view, and it's my opinion that we should always reject any motivated reasoning in discussions on how to run this project. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 05:48, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

• Last year's RfC lasted 5 weeks and about 50 editors participated. Sources, including numerous ones proposed by opponents of a yes-vote on the fringe question, were discussed at length. Before the RfC, the R&I article was heavily reliant on sources that promote racial hereditarianism. In the version at the beginning of 2020 Jensen's name appeared in the text or reference list 61 times, and Rushton's name appeared 36 times.

The OP's explanation for "why this RFC is necessary" is the claim that "Classifying the hereditarian hypothesis as a fringe theory has resulted in some sourcing problems that couldn't have been anticipated a year ago." This makes no sense. Participants in the RfC obviously knew, or should have known, that a consensus that racial hereditarianism is a fringe viewpoint would have a major effect on the sourcing of the R&I article and related ones. Per

WP:FRINGE, sources that promote homeopathy, creationism, or climate change denialism are not RS for most purposes related to those topics, and the same is true for sources that promote the view that some races are genetically superior to others in intelligence. NightHeron (talk

) 07:14, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

• @
  reliable? — Newslinger talk
  09:06, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

  @

  WP:FRS until a shorter statement is provided. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk

  ) 12:02, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Newslinger, should notice of this RfC be added to Centralized discussion and VPP, or has it already been added? Atsme 💬 📧 12:19, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

fringe theories noticeboard. — Newslinger talk

12:45, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Y Atsme 💬 📧 12:46, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

@Newslinger: I opened this discussion at the RS noticeboard because the details of the RFC are entirely about sourcing. As I said in the initial RFC question, there is a consensus that classifying the hereditarian hypothesis as a fringe theory has a specific meaning with respect to what sources may or may not be used, and also with respect to the necessity of including material that appears to misrepresent the sources it cites. For example, as mentioned here, here and here, one result of last year's RFC is that all work by Charles Murray and Heiner Rindermann related to this topic is now considered unreliable regardless of where it's published. The question that needs to be answered by the current RFC is whether these decisions are compatible with WP:RS and WP:V, and the RS noticeboard seems the most appropriate place to ask about that.

I recognize that since this RFC relates to multiple issues, it was a subjective decision whether the most appropriate venue was this noticeboard,

WP:FTN

, but I consider the issue of otherwise high-quality sources being declared unreliable to be the central underlying issue. So my preference would be to keep the RFC where it currently is, with notifications posted at the other two noticeboards, as you've posted at the Fringe Theories Noticeboard already.

With respect to the length issue, I can try to reduce the length of my summaries, but I don't think I can remove either the lists of sources or the quote from Hunt's textbook, because both of those are completely central to what this RFC is asking about. It isn't unprecedented for a RFC question about a complex issue to be this long; see the initial RFC question here: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/RFC_on_medical_disclaimer Would it be a workable solution for me to split the initial two paragraphs into its own statement, and turn the subsequent detailed explanation into a separate statement, as Redrose64 suggested? -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 14:45, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

The medical disclaimer RFC that you link did have a brief statement (although I'm not keen on the big boldface styling of the question, it's kinda

WP:SHOUTy) - at the time that the {{rfc}} tag was placed it was only 805 bytes, including timestamp. It did not change throughout the RfC's 30-day period that it was listed, and it displayed just fine in the listings until it was eventually delisted. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk

) 15:11, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

feedback request service, so it is essential for the RfC statement to be compatible with Legobot. One way to address the length issue would be to move the "Summary" part directly under the {{rfc}} tag (without the "Summary" heading) and keep your signature at the end of the summary – this shortens the RfC statement, which is defined as the text between the {{rfc}} tag and the first timestamp. The remainder can be placed into a new "Background" subsection, with a new signature at the end. You may also want to move the "During last year's RFC [...] a decision about sourcing." and "I'm deliberately not notifying [...] article's talk page." parts to the "Background" section. — Newslinger talk

15:32, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

I restructured the RFC question in the way you suggested. Thanks for the advice, and sorry about the length. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 18:21, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

The OP's claim that the revised formulation of the RfC now conforms to WP policy (brief and neutral) is absurd. It's not brief. Moreover, the OP states the central question in bold type as follows: "Do the 8 sources that are the basis for last year's RFC supersede the other ~45 sources listed below, sufficiently to justify the decision that the other sources must be removed, excluded, and possibly misrepresented?" That's about as far from neutral as you can get. Then the OP gives editors three choices for voting that are related to the fringe question, not to the question in bold type. NightHeron (talk) 18:55, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

@Ferahgo the Assassin: Neutrality aside, the statement is now down to 3,157 bytes - which is still too big. Try halving it - or better still, get it right down to 50 characters. RexxS (talk · contribs) was a wizard at writing a neutrally-worded RfC statement in no more than six or seven words. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:47, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Really sorry about this—I pared back the intro the best I can. Hope it's readable now, as I will be afk tomorrow. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 23:37, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Now 2,307 bytes - still way too big. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:26, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Surely you must realize not everything can or should be reduced to the level of consumer plastics or soundbites. This is a big and controversial topic, so of course she is going to need a lot of words to explain herself properly. Nerd271 (talk) 13:42, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't make the rules: I am trying to explain why this RfC was not being processed by Legobot, and so was not described at

doesn't apply to me" about. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk

) 20:54, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

The Fifth Pillar of Wikipedia states there are no firm rules. It therefore follows that we can relax certain restrictions if doing so helps us improve or maintain Wikipedia. Our ultimate purpose here is to inform the general public, not to follow rules. She is working on improving her case. That's good to see. Nerd271 (talk) 03:34, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

But those rules are in place for very specific reasons; ignoring them here has nothing to do with improving or maintaining Wikipedia. Specifically, you are not supposted to present an argument for any one position in the RFC statement. For example, a simple, neutrally-worded summary of the question here would be Is the position that there is a genetic component to racial differences in scores on intelligence tests

WP:FRINGE or not? - or words to that effect. Everything else that Ferahgo added is an attempt to - as you conceded yourself! - make her case in the RFC statement, which taints the RFC and renders it invalid from the start. Given that it has already attracted significant discussions it is certainly no longer salvageable. --Aquillion (talk

) 08:15, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

• The existing consensus on the weight that should be given to these sources has indeed made it harder for advocates of racial determinance of intelligence, to reflect their views as fact in the article. This is a feature, not a bug. Theere is no agreed objective racially neutral measure of intelligence, and at that pointt he scientific discussion more or less ends, apart from a handful of activists who we decided to minimise as fringe, and who the OP now wants to ask the other parent if they can include again. Guy (help! - typo?) 14:04, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

The existing consensus on the weight that should be given to these sources has indeed made it harder for advocates of racial determinance of intelligence, to reflect their views as fact in the article. This is a feature, not a bug. I want to second this. This is both a deliberate and a damn good thing, and these attempts to relitigate it are disruptive. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:34, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

In case anyone needs a source for this, see this 2020 statement by a group of prominent scholars including biological anthropologists

drop the stick and walk away from this stinky, stinky corpse. Generalrelative (talk

) 16:43, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

In some of the past discussions of this topic (for example, at FTN and AfD) there's been a problem of on-wiki and off-wiki canvassing by civil POV-pushers. If that occurs here, that tactic will be much more effective if few legitimate editors have been notified.

Unless this ill-conceived RfC is withdrawn or closed on procedural grounds, I propose that the OP be asked to notify all participants in last year's RfC (except IPs, blocked users, and those who are already here). Anyone could do this, but it's really the job of the OP. NightHeron (talk) 14:02, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

She did inform at least one editor sympathetic to her cause [87]. I am also curious how AndewNguyen heard about this after almost a year away from the project [88]. Generalrelative (talk) 17:10, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Maybe I'm missing something, but the RfC from last year consisted of a large number of the "yes it's fringe" !votes being based solely on personal opinion, and didn't even consider the plethora of sources provided by people arguing it was not fringe. The closer of that RfC then carefully crafted a "self-review" (

put their personal vendetta against anything potential racism above science and sourcing - which is really a failure of the closer to adequately view !votes in light of that obvious purpose. As an example, some comments from people who !voted that it was fringe include: Race is a sociological construct; It is well known that racial categories don't have genetic basis. To claim otherwise is fringe; race (whatever that is supposed to mean); Race is a social construct; the concept of "race" is a failed hypothesis; Away with the apologetics - these 6 comments make clear that those !votes were not primarily based on analysis of sourcing, but based on those people's personal opinions as to the topic - which means they should've been discounted and at best a no consensus result found. And unfortunately, we are seeing the same type of comments in this discussion - which are derailing it again. I think DGG puts it well in his comments here, and on last year's RfC having read it - it is not encyclopedic to put our personal opinions on a topic ahead of actually looking at the sources and evaluating them on their own merits - and not from the eye of "this source disagrees with me personally so I must find a reason it's not acceptable". I won't comment in this RfC because I think it's crafted very poorly and should be worked on by a number of editors before it's "published" - compiling sources, forming arguments, etc. But I do think that the result of last year's RfC is not a "consensus", but a failure to "weed out" activism and actually evaluate the merits of an argument - and as such I don't see it disruptive at all to attempt to revisit the topic now. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!

) 01:18, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

There is, in fact, not a single "yes" !vote that references personal opinion, directly or indirectly. Every single one either makes new arguments, repeats previous arguments or reference previous arguments.

However, here's an actual true claim: The vast majority of "yes" !votes came from a broad swathe of mostly experienced Wikipedians. The vast majority of "no" !votes came from sockpuppets, SPA accounts and accounts which have (before or after) sanctioned for their editing in this topic. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 04:25, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Just want to add my concern about the format of this RfC. It is shorter now, but the framing still emphasizes Option 2, which is supported in the description of the option itself by a WP citation and an exhortation to an overturned consensus, unlike the other two options. I also agree that this noticeboard is a confusing placement for this RfC, since RSN usually considers whether a single source of publisher of sources "are reliable in context", not comparing reliability across sources, which the RfC question seems to call for. —Wingedserif (talk) 18:46, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

• There are some dreadful scientific inaccuracies being peddled above. The widely acknowledged problems with IQ scores and their ilk have been discussed by others, so I want to focus on a specific issue here; the conflation of race with heredity. It is true that the extent of influence heredity has on intelligence is still a matter of debate, and the argument that there's some influence is a mainstream one. The trouble is the leap from there to arguing that racial gaps in IQ scores have a hereditary aspect. That is a completely fringe argument, not because a link between heredity and intelligence has been disproven, but because race is a social construct that frequently has only a tenuous link to heredity, and because racial biases in intelligence testing are widespread. The assumption, repeated above and in previous RfCs on this subject, that hereditary differences may be used to argue for racial differences, is utter nonsense. Vanamonde (Talk) 19:21, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

• I've been checking sources since this was posted, and there's a rather telling fact that's become clear to me. The majority of the sources presented by those pushing for the acceptance of the genetic explanation don't support their arguments. I just want to make this clear. If you are reading these arguments and finding them convincing, check the sources, so you can understand just how poor and dishonest this argument is. It's also worth pointing out that I haven't seen a single source actually supporting the argument that the genetic hypothesis is the scientific consensus. Just a couple sources arguing in favor of the genetic explanation, and a whole bunch of source which people claim argue for the genetic explanation, but actually don't. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 22:07, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Just to be extra clear about this, since there has been some confusion on this point, by "genetic explanation" we are talking about hypothesized genetic explanations for differences in average IQ test performance between racial groups. Such explanations are rightly considered

WP:FRINGE. Genetic explanations for at least some of the difference in IQ test performance between individuals, on the other hand, are considered mainstream science. Anyone unsure as to why this isn't a contradiction should read Heritability of IQ (and, if skepticism persists, the articles it cites). Generalrelative (talk

) 22:24, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Thediscussion here is challenging whether it is actually a fringe view or whether that position is obsolete. The reason there are so any sources for it is exactly the evidence that it is in fact mainstream. DGG ( talk ) 18:14, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

• Blink*... Ideas can be both
  WP:MAINSTREAM at Wikipedia. jps (talk
  ) 19:43, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

DGG, which has nothing to do with the reliability of the sources. Source reliability, here, is a wholly pretextual argument. Guy (help! - typo?) 10:57, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

• comment Excuse my ignorance, but I have not been very wiki-active ately, but I'd like to know how and when did Ferahgo the Assassin end up being allowed to edit these topics again, so that she can proxy-edit for Captain Occam - meaning we now all have to take aother round in this R&I circus? ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 14:53, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

See this request. I think this RfC is pretty convincing evidence that the ban should be re-instated. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:41, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

this is basically saying, give a topic ban to the peopley ou disagree with. I agree it has a certain convenience, because you then no longer have to bother even opposingtheir views, you can just ignore them. DGG ( talk ) 18:14, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

No it is not. I believe the idea is that this RfC is improper for all the reasons mentioned above. Whether it calls into question the veracity of claims Ferahgo made about her views and intentions during the unban discussion cited by MPants I will leave to others to determine. Generalrelative (talk) 19:11, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Or, alternatively, it's saying, "Give a topic ban to people who

insist on beating the dead horse." YMMV. jps (talk

) 19:40, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

@DGG: Regardless of what you believe on this matter, I find it hard to believe that you can't see how this behavior is disruptive, especially given that Ferahgo has previously been subjected to a topic ban for exactly this behavior, which they have (falsely, it seems) since promised to stop. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 00:22, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

DGG, it's not about "people you disagree with". It's about people who Never. Ever. Give. Up. An RfC forms a consensus, and, as we see here, one of the losing parties continues the argument elsewhere, ad infinitum. This ends up one of three ways: everyone gets bored and the POV-pusher succeeds, everyone gets angry until they are banned and the POV-pusher succeeds, or the POV-pusher gets topic banned. Which they did in this case, for some time.

Steadfast refusal to accept a consensus that goes against you is antithetical to a collegial approach. Guy (help! - typo?) 11:00, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Steadfast refusal to accept that consensus can change is not an objective approach. Unless one is a believer in infallible revelation, nothing is ever final, in the world or in wikipedia.. There is, however, no point in repeating an argument too frequently. This question needs to be revisited, but perhaps this was too soon. If it had been up to me , I would have waited a while longer. DGG ( talk ) 06:18, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

If consensus changes it should not be because a tiny group of dogged editors using all sorts of methods licit and illict eventually manage to get everybody else to give up arguing...·maunus · snunɐɯ· 10:06, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Highly irregular and problematic RfC

Despite repeated reminders that WP requires the statement of an RfC to be brief and neutral, the OP has refused to revise her formulation of the RfC to make it neutral. In the preamble to the 3 choices given editors, she states that voting to uphold last year's RfC means giving a yes-answer to the following question written in bold type: "Do the 8 sources that are the basis for last year's RFC supersede the other ~45 sources listed below, sufficiently to justify the decision that the other sources must be removed, excluded, and possibly misrepresented?" In other words, voting for option 3 means that you're in favor of cherry-picking 8 out of 53 sources and misrepresenting sources. That's an absurd mischaracterization of what happened in last year's RfC and the subsequent edits of R&I and related articles that implemented the RfC.

The OP's long presentation of the RfC is full of partisan distortions, especially in the claims concerning sources and other issues in the collapsed portions. She presents editors with a straw man to knock down.

Until MPants gave a link to the OP's tban removal appeal in 2019, I had been unaware of the OP's editing history before the 2020 RfC on R&I. The discussion of her appeal is relevant to the problems we're having now. Her tban from topics related to R&I was caused by her inability to separate her strong personal opinions on the issue from her editing work. The tban was lifted, but some editors expressed skepticism about her promise not to resume POV-pushing in disregard of WP policies. Their doubts were caused by her editing history and by her membership in ISIR (an echo-chamber led and dominated by promoters of the theory of white genetic superiority in intelligence). I agree with MPants that this RfC shows that the skeptics were right.

Where do we go from here? NightHeron (talk) 09:22, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

As I wrote above, a cursory glance at the previous RfC shows it was definitely not a

WP:SNOWBALL. Therefore it appears that a new RfC to gauge the community's consensus is legitimate, considering the significant effect the old RfC has had. Alaexis_¿question?

11:15, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

You seem to be saying that all non-snowball RfCs should be repeated again and again... until the result is different? Or until they become snowballs? --Hob Gadling (talk) 12:06, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

If one discounts !votes from SPAs and socks, it's damn near snowball status. There were maybe 3-4 experienced Wikipedians who haven't been topic banned !voting against the consensus there; compared to well over a dozen !voting with the consensus. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:47, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

The RfC has apparently had a significant impact on the sources in use in the article in question. One year is a long enough period to assess it and make sure that the changes due to this RfC reflect the community consensus. I don't like the alternative of not being able to challenge a past RfC. Alaexis_¿question? 14:27, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

The sourcing has been discussed at length on talk-pages, and that's the normal way to determine what decisions on sourcing agree with consensus. Of course sourcing was greatly affected by the RfC, since sources promoting a fringe POV are handled very differently from sources that are accepted by scientific consensus. As in other cases, fringe sources are reliable for describing what the fringe promoters say, but should not be used to create a

WP:FALSEBALANCE. On the other hand, I don't see anything wrong with a new RfC, as long as it's presented neutrally, all participants in last year's RfC are notified, and it's held at the R&I talk-page, where there's EC protection that prevents most socks and prevents SPAs and IPs from being recruited off-wiki. I just hope that such an RfC can be wrapped up more quickly than last year, when the whole process was "expensive" as measured by editors' time. NightHeron (talk

) 16:49, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

NightHeron, A second RfC, and then, if Feragho refuses to accept consensus there, ArbCom. Guy (help! - typo?) 11:27, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

JzG, How about a second RfC that's held at the R&I talk-page, which is now EC-protected against socks and new arrivals from off-wiki canvassing? If we do that, I should obviously not be the OP again, nor should Feragho. There should also be very broad notification, including all participants in last year's RfC (except IPs & banned users). Perhaps the fairest way for a new RfC to be a review of last year's is for it to consist of a single sentence asking for a yes-or-no vote on the statement from Tony Ballioni's closing of last year's RfC that "the theory that a genetic link exists between race and intelligence is enough of a minority viewpoint in the scientific consensus that it falls under Wikipedia's definition of a fringe theory". NightHeron (talk) 13:32, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

NightHeron, yes, that is the correct venue in my view. And conducted on a strict "no hectoring" rule. Guy (help! - typo?) 17:30, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

By the time I had read to the end of the RfC, I was wanting to say pretty much what

talk

) 22:05, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

For anyone not yet familiar, we do have an essay about precisely this:

Fruit of the poisonous tree. Generalrelative (talk

) 22:14, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

The problem lies in convention, since Wikipedia has an issue neither fringe, controversial, nor mainstream. Consider Frankenstein's experiments. If those experiments violate ethics or seek outcomes predicating on a specific ethical bias, the sources scientific or not will carry biased grammar. If few sufficiently deep ethics apply, then so too will few balancing sources. While reliably scientific, such sources pose an ethical information hazard. Fruit of a poisonous tree, indeed. Unfortunately copy law makes exorcising information hazards illegal in many cases. So what will you do Wikipedia ?

For example, one might want to rewrite my post according to the grammatical perspective of a Wikipedian, for less hazard to Wikipedian agency.

2600:1700:8B85:110:B6D7:E829:397A:CED6 (talk) 06:13, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

The OP's approach is flawed, so is "the hereditarian hypothesis" as it's not a black and white thing. If "the hereditarian hypothesis" is that individual or family or group genes, absent a condition, affect intelligence more than environmental context, it's falsified. If "the hereditarian hypothesis" means that a small influence is possible in individual or family variation, understanding that the environment has more influence, less so. What is fringe: 1) IQ reliably assesses latent intelligence, 2) human genetic variation has a significant effect, 3) that group/population as used here is "race". What's not fringe: 1) IQ can be a useful metric even if understood not to be an ideal evaluation of intelligence, 2) IQ scores can vary between groups, 3) environmental context and population health are understood to have a significant effect on IQ scores, 4) more individual variation exists, 5) IQ scores will vary for the same people or groups over time especially if general health varies, 6) it's not impossible that family heredity could play a minor role. —PaleoNeonate – 02:18, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

What's so confusing (or misleading) about the term "hereditarian hypothesis" is illustrated by the above comment. In fact, none of these is what the OP is referring to. In this context, the "hereditarian hypothesis" means something very specific. It refers to the hypothesis that genetics explains a significant portion of the observed gap in average IQ test performance between racial groups. This conversation is not about difference in IQ test performance between individuals or families. See the very pertinent comments by jps below on the inherent racism of this whole argument. Generalrelative (talk) 02:32, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

If so, that particular hypothesis was falsified by experiments that have demonstrated that environmental factors explained group variation significantly... —PaleoNeonate – 02:41, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Exactly. This RfC is the definition of

WP:STICK. In addition to the massively overwrought formulation of its question and the fact that the OP failed to notify stakeholders, that's why many of us are questioning the validity of the process here. Generalrelative (talk

) 02:53, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Where we go from here is simple: ignore the improperly-formatted, clearly-slanted RfC. Policy and guidelines, not to mention tradition and practice, make clear that an improperly-formatted RfC can have no validity for determining consensus. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 05:17, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

I agree with just about everyone in this section that this RfC was ill-posed and misplaced, and that this is not repairable after the fact. --JBL (talk) 11:20, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

The crux of the problem is racism

What people don't seem willing to engage with is the weirdness that is the racism undergirding the OP's wall-o-text. There is this fear on this website that actually calling out racism where it is will lead to a form of

jps (talk) 11:12, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

ජපස, well of course it is. The root of the race and intelligence debate has always been racism. And the problem has always been trying to tease out what genuine science there is on the side of the racists (because we can't know that every advocate for racial differences in intelligence is doing so to advance a racist cause, only that this is plainly the case for many historical examples).

In as much as Feragho has a legitimate point, it is how much weight should we give to literature promoting a cause beloved of racists and not taken terribly seriously by science generally, which is nonetheless diligently promoted by a handful of individuals with a very prolific output.

In as much as Feragho should be excluded from this topic, it's because he wants to not just increase the weight given to these people, but entirely reverse the weight of the article to represent their views as the mainstream and the dominant view as the minority. Guy (help! - typo?) 11:25, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

If it all came down to weighing sources on "inheritability of intelligence", the question would not be asked in the context of race and intelligence since those with a "prolific output" are promoting a cause that is not related to race unless you also make the leap that all inheritable characteristics can be tied to race. This canard has been thoroughly debunked, but it may be worth re-emphasizing. I note that racist arguments propose that, for example, because race is used to make risk determinations in medicine, it should be legitimate to entertain racist hypotheses. This is basically a fallacy of the undistributed middle. jps (talk) 11:40, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Arguing that hereditarianism is mainstream based on individual papers is pointless. You cannot assess what is mainstream by cherry picking several dozen papers out of the many hundreds, probably thousands that have been published on the topic, and declaring them to be representative. This is not how science works. A lot of the pro-hereditarianism people aren't arguing for what the actual concensus of psychologists is, but for what they personally believe is true, which is irrelevant. Feragho has a COI as she is on the board of the society that runs the journal Intelligence, a notable promoter of hereditarian views. Hemiauchenia (talk) 12:28, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

"a notable promoter of scientific racism" - fixed that for you. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:32, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Hemiauchenia, fuck, really? I had no idea. That's repugnant. Intelligence is a racist rag. Guy (help! - typo?) 18:45, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

JzG Yup, see https://isironline.org/our-board/ , 3rd from left on 2nd row. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:59, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

A hypothesis that East Asians have a heritable tendency towards IQs substantially higher than those of white people, cannot be a function of 'white supremacy'. Quite the opposite. 2407:7000:9BC3:C800:9031:E137:F227:B905 (talk) 13:32, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

That depends if your goal is to a)claim there are inherant differences in intelligence between races or b)continue the ongoing primary goal of scientific racism - attempting to say black people are less intelligent. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:48, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

This is the dumbest argument ever. I know out-and-out white supremacists in real life because I am, unfortunately, related to some. You can speak to any neo-nazi, "great replacement" believer or any other variety of white supremacist about this subject and they will readily admit that Jewish and Asian people might be "slightly" more intelligent than white people right before the launch into a rant about "inherent morality" and "physical prowess" "cultural ascendancy" and other such nonsense that has no basis in reality. Every time someone say that "saying Jews and Asians being smarter than white people proves it's not white supremacy," they're either announcing that they have no idea what white supremacist beliefs are, but aren't afraid to defend them, or that they know damn well what white supremacists believe and are lying to support that cause. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:42, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

No, the crux of the problem is that many people falsely equate human intelligence with human worth when in reality, life outcomes also depend on other factors, such as nutrition, education, motivation, and other things. It should further be noted that different groups of humans are different because their ancestors evolved in different environments after humanity migrated out from Africa. There is nothing wrong with humans being different, no more than Darwin's finches being different. Put another way, people are differently talented. Let's not forget that over on the page on the heritability of IQ, the score for the heritability of intelligence as measured by IQ (among adults but not children) is rather high, about 0.80. It is therefore not too surprising that the environment does not entirely shape differences in human intelligence. It of course does not mean that it is 100% genetic. The question should not be 'nature or nurture' but rather 'how much of each'. Nerd271 (talk) 13:56, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

As discussed in our article Heritability of IQ, Although IQ differences between individuals have been shown to have a large hereditary component, it does not follow that mean group-level disparities (between-group differences) in IQ have a genetic basis. For an easy-to-understand explainer on this issue, I recommend "Why genetic IQ differences between 'races' are unlikely" by the geneticist Kevin Mitchell: [89]. Generalrelative (talk) 15:36, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

No, the crux of the problem is that many people falsely equate human intelligence with human worth when in reality, This is the very first mention of human worth, or anything that could be reasonably interpreted as referring to human worth in this entire discussion. This fact literally only makes sense if you are completely and utterly wrong. I'll tell you right now that I have no trouble grokking that a person with a severe mental handicap is worth the same amount as a genuis, and someone describing the former as "less intelligent" than the latter doesn't bother me in the slightest. Again, this only makes any sense if you are completely and utterly wrong. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:42, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Nerd271, Bzzzt! You mentioned IQ. Go to the back of the class. IQ is heavily culturally biased. Guy (help! - typo?) 18:49, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Yes it absolutely can, if IQ is a metric where people from majority-whit cultures score higher. Spoiler: it is.

In the absence of a proven, objective, racially neutral measure of intelligence, this is all in the world of Rick Santorum dismissing Native American culture as insignificant because white Christians all but wiped it out. Guy (help! - typo?) 18:48, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

It never ceases to amaze me that those who are partial to white supremacist arguments think the myth of the model minority is somehow an ace in the hole -- as if their opponents have never heard of the trope before. jps (talk) 21:45, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

@MjolnirPants: Personal anecdotes about the beliefs of individual white supremacists are not relevant here. The race and intelligence debate is global and not limited to racial dynamics within, for example, the United States. A scientist who claims that 'white' people have innately inferior average intelligence to another race or other races (I am not supporting the idea that race is a valid way to categorise humans) is not necessarily promoting a white supremacist narrative. A scientist who claims that as a group sub-Saharan Africans have better motor skills or more fast-twitch muscle fibres than other races, is not necessarily pushing a black supremacist narrative. 2407:7000:9BC3:C800:280B:2978:F34F:22F1 (talk) 23:01, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

What this person said. Different peoples are different. There is nothing wrong with pointing that out. The politics of a certain country is irrelevant. Human intelligence is a general and cross-cultural topic. Nerd271 (talk) 03:21, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

"Different people are different" is not the same thing as bringing out the canard about fast-twitch muscle fibres and then ignorantly attributing these well-worn racialist theories to "black supremacists" when they function perfectly well within the white supremacist narrative. jps (talk) 03:30, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Here's a review in Nature linking these two perennial racist canards: "Sports and IQ: the persistence of race ‘science’ in competition" [90] Generalrelative (talk) 03:48, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Your inability to distinguish real world experiences from "personal anecdotes" is your problem, not mine. You could confirm what I said just by reading our article on

Tell me all about it.

12:33, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't see how a post saying "I am right and anyone who disagrees is racist" has anything to do with Reliable Sources. If you're suggesting that we assess whether sources are reliable based on their political content, I'm afraid I cannot and will not agree with you. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 03:27, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

To whom is this addressed? jps (talk) 03:33, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

To you. Why is this discussion on this board? It seems to have a lot to do with what you think is "racist", and very little about reliable sourcing. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 03:37, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

@力: When one reads the opinions of people like Richard Lynn and J. Philippe Rushton who are cited as authorities by the opener of this RfC, and the role of the Pioneer Fund in bankrolling these people, it's hard to argue racism isn't involved in this. Hemiauchenia (talk) 03:46, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

@力: Why is this discussion on this board? The entire RfC doesn't belong on this board, and is also very clearly improperly written. Both of these points have been discussed at length above. As far as I understand we're just waiting for someone uninvolved to take it upon themselves to close it. Generalrelative (talk) 04:05, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

That is what I thought. I saw how Ferahgo phrased their question to be on-its-face about reliable sources, but agree with the crowd above that it was improperly done. I'm not sure why so many people insist on continuing the conversation here, though. other than the obvious detail that the topic is so controversial that it induces comment User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 04:10, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

On second thought, this shouldn't be closed, it should just be moved, probably to

Lol, perhaps that will be a less contentious debate. But if anyone here is genuinely curious as to why the genetics that contribute to determining height are so unlike the genetics that contribute to determining intelligence, see "Why genetic IQ differences between 'races' are unlikely" by the geneticist Kevin Mitchel (I've cited it above too): [91]. He contrasts the two explicitly and in a way that is very informative for understanding this entire issue. Generalrelative (talk) 04:49, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

• I think that given the other problems (especially the non-neutral statement), a new RFC would be needed, rather than just moving this one... assuming people want to move forward at all. I'd suggest
  WP:FRINGEN instead of Talk:Race and intelligence, since that's where the most recent RFC took place and this one is asking for that one to be directly overturned, and since the core question is whether an aspect of a topic is fringe or not; additionally, it does have some relevance outside of just that article. --Aquillion (talk
  ) 08:33, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

@Aquillion: The reason I suggested the R&I talk-page rather than FTN is that the former is now EC-protected, and the latter is not. Given past problems caused by SPAs, socks, IPs, and off-wiki canvassing, I'm hoping that, if we decide to go through another RfC, having it EC-protected would prevent most of the distortions and waste of time caused by the tactics that are sometimes used by civil POV-pushers. I agree with you that a new RfC would make more sense than moving this one. NightHeron (talk) 11:25, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

• Arguing that I am causing the issue here when I didn't bring up the white supremacist argumentation is rather rich. If you wanted to close this entire discussion, that would be one thing, but it is clear that the OP is forum shopping to avoid having to discuss the racism inherent in their position, and it seems that pointing this out makes you uncomfortable perhaps because you are afraid that some of your approaches to this subject may be identified as having racist tinges? (N.b. If you think race has anything to do with a comparison between the heights of people, I presume you also have an explanation as to whether and how the same thing applies to blue eyes versus brown eyes.) I dunno, I think my argument is clear and the relevance to sources is unmistakeable to me. jps (talk) 10:14, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

@jps. You either misread or are deliberately misrepresenting what I have written. I specifically pointed out that 'fast-twitch muscle' claims CAN NOT be naturally attributed to black supremacism.

I agree with the above. This is about sources, the rejection of sources, and misuse of sources. This 'racism' section needs shifting.2407:7000:9BC3:C800:280B:2978:F34F:22F1 (talk) 07:50, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

You are the one not understanding. This idea is also

WP:FRINGE in the sense that the sources which make it are used to prop up the racism of white supremacism. The problem here is that people advocating for the white supremacist position, like whoever this New Zealand account is, either wittingly or unwittingly argue in favor of accommodating sources that are explicitly supporting white supremacy. To me, the irony is the brazenness with which this is done. jps (talk

) 10:14, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

I agree with this. Any sources we label racist and white supremacist are simply unacceptable. Races are the same because anything else is racist. QED. Furthermore any sources which can be used to support racism and white supremacy must be removed. In fact after this I will be deleting mathematics and engineering articles since these disciplines were used to construct Hitler's panzer divisions. Maximum Justice (talk) 12:25, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

This is an example of why, if we hold a new RfC, it should be at the EC-protected R&I talk-page, where SPAs and probable socks such as this one (Maximum Justice has no edits other than the above) can't disrupt the discussion and waste the time of legitimate editors. NightHeron (talk) 12:47, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

+1 to this. The longer we keep this open the more SPA disruption and meatpuppetry we can expect. Generalrelative (talk) 15:10, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

I'd like to follow up on the suggestion made by several editors above (as well as by the closing admin) that a new, better structured RFC is needed. I agree with this suggestion. A properly structured RFC about the issues raised here will need to address three questions:

1. Is it correct to classify the hereditarian hypothesis as a fringe theory?
2. If the answer to (1) is yes, does this require the various sources that give credence to this hypothesis to be removed, excluded and/or declared unreliable?
3. If the answer to (1) is yes, does this require the inclusion of the sentence that various editors have argued is not supported by its sources?

Any of these questions may be re-worded. My main proposal is that a properly structured RFC should separate these three issues into three questions, instead of combining them all into a single question as Ferahgo's RFC tried to do.

Second, I suggest that the correct venue for such a RFC is the NPOV Noticeboard. Question (1) above relates to fringe theories, question (2) relates to RS policy, and question (3) relates to Verifiability policy, but all three questions relate to NPOV policy.

I disagree with the suggestion that the RFC should occur on the talk page of any individual article, because these questions are not specific to any one article. The articles affected by last year's RFC decision include Race and intelligence, Nations and IQ, Heritability of IQ, Flynn effect, Ashkenazi Jews, List of Jewish Nobel laureates, and the deleted Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence article. The most appropriate venue to discuss questions that span multiple articles is at a noticeboard.

I am not sure about the details of exactly how a properly formatted RFC on these questions should be structured, so I'm open to advice from other editors about that, especially from Berchanhimez, whose comment above suggests that he has some ideas about how to prevent the discussion in such a RFC from being derailed. --AndewNguyen (talk) 17:29, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

What happened to the discussion above? Most of it suddenly disappeared. --AndewNguyen (talk) 17:38, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

• Someone tried to archive the discussion and messed it up. I would HIGHLY suggest you hold this discussion on the article talk page rather than here, which is what I stated in the closure I made above, or at NPOVN as you noted. Please do not hold it here, immediately after the above discussion. It will not be successful. --Jayron32 17:45, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

By "Please do not hold it here", do you mean please don't hold another RFC about these questions here? Is it acceptable to discuss here about how such a RFC should be structured, if the RFC itself will occur elsewhere? --AndewNguyen (talk) 18:01, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Whatever. Forget I said anything. Vaya con dios. --Jayron32 18:04, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure everyone would understand what is meant by "hereditarian hypothesis" in the same way, but overall I support the proposal. Alaexis_¿question? 18:25, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

• No, we don't need another confusing and badly formulated RfC. There will be plenty of opportunity for those opposed to last year's RfC to talk about sources in the course of the discussion. Among the many problems with this new complicated formulation, let me mention one. Many sources are reliable for restricted purposes, including sources that promote fringe theories. Thus, a citation of Jensen or Rushton or Herrnstein/Murray might be appropriate in a section on the history of racial hereditarianism as part of an explanation of what those people wrote. But, per []WP:FRINGE]], such sources must not be used to provide a
  WP:FALSEBALANCE
  .

Secondly, the RfC should not take place at

WP:NPOV. The predominant opinion expressed above was that it should be held on the article talk-page. This is indisputably an appropriate place for it. In addition, in view of the EC-protection on that talk-page, it will be less likely that the RfC would be disrupted or corrupted by off-wiki canvassing, SPAs, and socks, as has been a problem in the past with this topic. NightHeron (talk

) 18:59, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

The argument against holding an RfC on the talk-page makes no sense. The RfC will be just as easily accessible to editors, no matter what page they're editing, as last year's RfC is from the FTN archive. Assuming that none of us here are planning to engage in off-wiki canvassing or to comment and vote from multiple accounts, it seems that all of us, no matter what our view of the topic may be, should be able to agree on the usefulness of EC-protection during the RfC. NightHeron (talk) 19:14, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't agree on the usefulness of EC-protection during the RfC. EC-protection only allows users to participate who have 500 or more edits, and I don't have that many. Among the legitimate users on these articles who have under 500 edits, most are in the "not fringe" camp, so excluding all of those users from the RFC would tend to skew the result.

Regarding your concern about sockpuppetry, even if sockpuppets do show up during the RFC, they're very unlikely to affect the eventual outcome. Any competent closing admin would disregard comments from sockpuppets when evaluating what the consensus is. --AndewNguyen (talk) 19:45, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

The EC-protection for both the article and talk-page was discussed at

WP:AE [92], where the decision was to protect both, in view of the persistent problems caused by SPAs and sockpuppets. The EC-protection of a talk-page is quite unusual, but was deemed to be necessary in this case. The difficulties are not just for the closing admin. Legitimate editors waste a lot of time responding to ill-informed and often hostile and disruptive comments by IPs and SPAs, because letting comments go unanswered can have the effect of legitimizing them. We can remove a comment only for a very good reason. Of course, everyone realizes that EC-protection does bar newbies, good-faith IP-editors, and a few others. But the history of R&I gives overwhelming evidence of the need for this level of protection. NightHeron (talk

) 20:17, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

• Yes, another RfC is sorely needed. Especially to address questions 2 and 3, which have been points of frequent contention and disruption recently. I also agree that the RfC shouldn't take place on an individual article's talk page, as this determination affects numerous articles, as mentioned. Stonkaments (talk) 20:00, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

  Stonkaments, well, up to a point. It turns out that a lot of the "frequent contention" was from vested interests and sockpuppets. Guy (help! - typo?) 20:31, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

• I would word the first question as "Is the claim that there are genetic differences in intelligence along racial lines a fringe viewpoint?" or words to the effect of the previous RFC, since the plain intent is to overturn that one and nobody has raised any concerns about its wording. I would word the second as Should the lead contain the sentence "Today, the scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain differences in IQ test performance between racial groups, and that observed differences are therefore environmental in origin"? It is a straightforward yes / no question; there is no need to say anything else in the RFC statement. And the second question is invalid - it contains a lot of assumptions that I'm not sure reflect the actual practice on that page, but in any case an RFC at Race and Intelligence cannot change the way we treat fringe topics. If the first question has a "yes" then nothing in the second question can allow inclusion of that theory; and if it is a "no" than the point is moot. Beyond that it feels vaguely like a push-poll question in the sense that it tries to discourage people from giving a yes answer to the first question by hammering them with what the results would be under policy and by insinuating that usable sources disputing the first question exist - arguments like that shouldn't be in the RFC statement, at the very least. I would repeat the question from the past RFC verbatim, and see how clear the result is; then decide if additional followup questions are necessary or make sense after that. But the crux of the matter is always going to be "is this fringe?"; if some people are unwilling to accept that based on the results of the previous RFC, then we need a clear-cut RFC asking only that question in as neutral a manner as possible, before proceeding with anything else. --Aquillion (talk) 20:02, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

  Aquillion, The second formulation is a good question for the lede, but in the end if we don't address the fringe nature of the idea that (a) IQ is a valid, objective, and culturally neutral measure of intelligence and (b) differences in IQ are influenced by race, then we will never actually end this relentless drive by race/intelligence advocates. The original ArbCom case was over ten years ago, and nothing has changed. Given Ferahgo's involvement I foresee another ArbCom in the future. Guy (help! - typo?) 20:41, 3 May 2021 (UTC)