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RationalWiki:Articles for deletion/Emily Willoughby
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Emily Willoughby | Result: By a razor-thin margin of 11-10, article was deleted[edit]
Delete[edit]
- Article was very likely created as part of a "parody project" by the Human Diversity Foundation. Unlike other dubious articles they created (e.g. Eric Turkheimer) the Willoughby article is entirely about her Wikipedia edit history. The reason Willoughby was targeted is she was blocking troll accounts owned by the HDF on Wikipedia. I vote to delete. Anti-eugenicist (talk) 08:12, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- The article is around 70% sourced to her Wikipedia history and is pointless drama. I believe RW should no longer get involved in documenting Wikipedia nonsense. She hasn't written any papers on race realism unlike others like Dutton, Kirkegaard etc. A good option would be to delete and redirect to International Society for Intelligence Research Psychologist Guy (talk) 12:20, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- Not a good article. Toby (talk) 12:53, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- I seem to be missing much of the backstory but totally trust the judgment of long-standing editors like Psychologist Guy in such a sensitive matter. Kadashova (talk) 13:36, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- Kadashova, the brief backstory on this, is that Emil Kirkegaard a few years ago infiltrated RationalWiki on several sock-puppet accounts and created 4 parody articles in an attempt to discredit RationalWiki. His main account was CBH, he also used the account Jean Lusaz and Kfotfo. On the last account he made an edit outlining his 'experiment'. The plan was to create these parody articles to "counter" alleged "attack" pages that RW has debunking race pseudo-scientists. His targets were Robert Plomin, Richard Haier and Eric Turkheimer, he then contacted these people on X.com in a failed attempt to get RW in trouble. All said articles have since been re-created and re-written (Pinkerite has done good work on that) so they failed. The original creator of the Emily Willoughby article was likely to be Kirkegaard's last blocked account. Kirkegaard had a falling out with Willoughby, that is probably why he created the article. A better option would be just to redirect her article to International Society for Intelligence Research where she is already mentioned. Psychologist Guy (talk) 14:44, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- I think I now sorta get the backstory. While I dislike Jerry Coyne, he did write two apparently well-received blog posts on Willoughby.[1][2]. They have lots of comments, and back in 2022, Willoughby herself responded to accusations of the sort that the article currently alludes to: "... [Y]et another example of a stupid lie about me that has been passed around uncritically. I WAS on the board that made the decision to redact Emil’s talk from the conference." She could be lying about this, but somebody on that board would probably call her out, I don't know. Kadashova (talk) 19:44, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
- Kadashova, the brief backstory on this, is that Emil Kirkegaard a few years ago infiltrated RationalWiki on several sock-puppet accounts and created 4 parody articles in an attempt to discredit RationalWiki. His main account was CBH, he also used the account Jean Lusaz and Kfotfo. On the last account he made an edit outlining his 'experiment'. The plan was to create these parody articles to "counter" alleged "attack" pages that RW has debunking race pseudo-scientists. His targets were Robert Plomin, Richard Haier and Eric Turkheimer, he then contacted these people on X.com in a failed attempt to get RW in trouble. All said articles have since been re-created and re-written (Pinkerite has done good work on that) so they failed. The original creator of the Emily Willoughby article was likely to be Kirkegaard's last blocked account. Kirkegaard had a falling out with Willoughby, that is probably why he created the article. A better option would be just to redirect her article to International Society for Intelligence Research where she is already mentioned. Psychologist Guy (talk) 14:44, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- WOW, smh. The above reads like a thriller or something. There is clearly a lot of trolling on this Wiki, but if the suspicion is that whole articles are affected, there should be immediate damage reduction. ☣🍆☣ (talk) 16:01, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- -Flandres (talk) 15:36, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- Got reverted when I tried to remove the stupid wiki drama shit. So whatever, I won’t fight it. 🎄Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano🎄Ask about our holiday specials! 17:11, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- Delete as per Psychologist Guy and Anti-eugenicist EditorialMaster (talk) 20:40, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- As I said in the collapsed section below, I was avoiding voting because I consider myself to have a COI here. But this AFD has been deadlocked 8 to 8 for the past two days, and the tie will have to be broken by someone. This article probably was created by Oliver Smith, and if by some chance it wasn't Smith, then it was one of Kirkegaard's parody accounts. It's ban evasion either way. In borderline cases (and this clearly is a borderline case), the best course of action for articles created in violation of a ban should be to delete them. Tetrapteryx (talk) 03:36, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
- As noted here (User talk:Tetrapteryx#Breaking ties), there is no prohibition on your voting, but it is not true that "the tie will have to be broken by someone". Bongolian (talk) 22:10, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
- Agree with the IP below, once all the garbage is cut out of this article it would be a non-notable stub. Oneandtwo (talk) 20:14, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
- I don't agree this article is missional-- looking at her CV, she has published only a couple papers on "g" and more on general behavior genetics, things like big-5 personality, social attitudes, schizophrenia, beliefs on free will, etc. She appears to be a run of the mill behavioral genetics psychologist who is not notable beyond dumb Wikipedia /Twitter drama. BerlinEditor (talk) 16:03, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
Keep[edit]
- Even if too much of the page is about WP drama, I think she's still both 'missional' and 'notable'. Said article should get a thorough review [and if needs be] reduction to a semi-stub - not a wholesale nuking. KarmaPolice (talk) 08:32, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- I second KP. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 08:57, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- Thirded, she's missional and notable, also nuking gives the HDF what they want essentially. Lavalizard101 (talk) 13:06, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- GeeJayKWhere all evil dwells Where every lie is true 13:11, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- Carthage (talk) 13:11, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
I'd like to keep this one around just because of how much it pisses off the "race realists." But I went ahead and cut the dumbass wiki drama shit. 🎄Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano🎄Ask about our holiday specials! 16:19, 21 December 2024 (UTC)- Just read her article in full and ended up reverting you. I'd say, if she is a white supremacist, eugenicist and so on, the best evidence comes from her Wikipedia account. While I think deleting is wise, this content is where it gets the most missional. Since ISIR, for example, isn't fully white supremacist, we shouldn't have an article on every board member... And so on. Kadashova (talk) 16:48, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- If people insist on keeping the stupid wiki drama shit, then I’ll just give in and vote to delete. 🎄Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano🎄Ask about our holiday specials! 17:09, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- Just read her article in full and ended up reverting you. I'd say, if she is a white supremacist, eugenicist and so on, the best evidence comes from her Wikipedia account. While I think deleting is wise, this content is where it gets the most missional. Since ISIR, for example, isn't fully white supremacist, we shouldn't have an article on every board member... And so on. Kadashova (talk) 16:48, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- While it may be true that Willoughby has not explicitly written any papers on race realism (racialism). She has written three papers on "general intelligence" (g or general cognitive ability),[3] a term associated with racialism that has been called pseudoscientifc by some (g factor (psychometrics) § Connection with eugenics and racialism.
I would support deleting the wiki drama, and possibly moving to draftspace. Bongolian (talk) 18:42, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- A better alternative in my opinion is to create a small sub-section about (2 or 3 lines) about her at International Society for Intelligence Research then just redirect her name there. About the only thing she is notable for is being a board member of that organization. Psychologist Guy (talk) 19:04, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- I read the CV you linked. While "research" on "general intelligence" is very harmful to marginalized communities, she also wrote papers like "Importance of intelligence and emotional intelligence" for the Journal of the American Medical Association. EQ is not a dangerous concept as far as I know, and the AMA typically has a good stance on other issues like youth trans rights![4] Maybe you want to reconsider? — Unsigned, by: Kadashova / talk / contribs
- The only place I found genuine race science crap was her old Wikipedia, which she was also explicitly topic-banned for, I believe. Kadashova (talk) 19:24, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- Correct me if I'm wrong, but there doesn't seem to be any standard to reliably measure EQ. EQ seems to be mainly based on self-reported personality tests. We've seen that some personality tests can be very problematic (e.g., Myers-Briggs Type Indicator). I suspect that the reproducibility crisis in psychology includes some studies that have used personality-tests studies. Bongolian (talk) 00:14, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- The only place I found genuine race science crap was her old Wikipedia, which she was also explicitly topic-banned for, I believe. Kadashova (talk) 19:24, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- @Bongolian I think this line of reasoning about GCA is part of the legacy of the parody accounts, and the arguments they made here and here, among other places. As shown in those posts, one of their long-term goals has been to make both RationalWiki and Wikipedia regard research about genetics and IQ in general as racist pseudoscience, even if the research doesn't involve race. The point was to demonstrate through a "social experiment" (Kirkegaard's term) that contrary to the division Turkheimer has drawn between mainstream intelligence research and "fringe science", in papers such as this one, rejecting race science in the real world usually means rejecting a large part of behavioral genetics. This way, he could get behavioral geneticists to acknowledge that they can't oppose race science without also undermining their own field.
- The parody users themselves may be no longer be active here, but their arguments seem to have led to a lasting shift in what RationalWiki considers missional. At this stage I'm not really trying to fight the shift, but it would be best to acknowledge that it's happened, because if this article is eventually kept, it will be partly on that basis. Tetrapteryx (talk) 13:36, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
- The relationship between intelligence and genetics in general can be controversial even without taking race into consideration. To give an example from my perspective: I am on the side of the scientific community that leans toward the notion of IQ itself a bogus concept. Overall intelligence, from my perspective, cannot be reduced to a number. Yes, a typical IQ test does test certain specific capabilities of an individual, and thus one can say it is a reliable indicator of what it tests against (typically academic-oriented skills). It is a fallacy in my opinion to make any other conclusions other than that, yet people do this all the time.
- I do think there is room for "behavioral genetics", but this "g factor" number raises some red flags for me -- though I am not familiar with it, it seems like yet another attempt to reduce something as complex as intelligence into a single number. My "initial thought" is that it sounds like something that I would shove in the same bogus category as IQ numbers. Not even for "racial" reasons. BobJohnson (talk) 16:05, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
- This is an interesting discussion to have on its own right (Saloonbar anyone?), but, in my opinion, if we want to max. out the impact of our articles on racialists and their "careers", we should be skeptical of anybody (especially potential parody accounts) trying to incriminate people somewhere in their periphery. I don't think we need an article on anyone and everyone who has written about IQ or studied human genetics. I do think this stuff is very harmful and socially undesirable, but we lose credibility if we call lots of people working on it (with actual institutional affiliations no less) outright pseudoscientists or associate them with other, more obvious such figures. Not all that missional and not strategically wise if you ask me. Kadashova (talk) 19:49, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
- The OP reasoning seems suspect. My understanding is that Boar, the person who created the article, is not Kirkegaard, but Oliver Smith. Who granted is another banned user, so one must "tread carefully" here too. Maybe the article needs a rewrite to remove crappy Wikidrama. But I don't like the "whitewashing" vibes I'm getting from this AfD. BobJohnson (talk) 21:42, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- That whole collapsed conversation is a great reason why this article should get deleted. 🎄Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano🎄Ask about our holiday specials! 18:59, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- Agreed. This is getting ridiculous. Even I don't have enough free time to bother at this point. :/) Kadashova (talk) 19:10, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- That would be giving the trolls what they want. Carthage (talk) 20:26, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- I think it's better to treat trolls as if they don't matter rather than center decisions around them either way. That said, personally I'm neutral on whether keeping a cut-down version of this article or deleting it is best. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 20:36, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- That whole collapsed conversation is a great reason why this article should get deleted. 🎄Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano🎄Ask about our holiday specials! 18:59, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- Improve, don't delete. The whole debacle surrounding who created this page and what their purpose was is murky and isn't particularly relevant. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 02:58, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- Seems to be missional enough, so it could probably be improved rather than deleted. -- LunaAHHHHH 07:09, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
- Looks fine to me. It could perhaps use some improvement, but couldn't you say that about any RW article that hasn't been awarded a gold brain? And don't count Willoughby out - she's becoming an important ISIR leader as the old guard dies off. The ISIR money guys at Institute of Mental Chronometry have enough confidence in her racialist potential that they gave her and James Lee half a million dollars. If you take the article down now, you'll likely have to put it back up again one day. Pinkerite (talk) 06:02, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
- Expanding on that, the question then is to what aim is all this IQ research? While IQ has been shown to be reproducible (i.e., 'reliable'), there is quite a bit of criticism about it's validity (i.e., what exactly does it show ({{wpl|Intelligence quotient#Validity as a measure of intelligence]])? Can a person have a high IQ and be incompetent? Yes. Can a person have a low IQ and still be successful in life? Yes. Have colleges ever used IQ as part of entrance qualifications? Not as far as I'm aware). There's good evidence that test taking does not translate into real life skills (Taking the bar exam, which largely relies on rote memory, does not mean one will be a good lawyer. I knew a highly-cited biochemistry professor who told me that he was a bad student when he was in school.) The point is, if IQ is not pseudoscience, it certainly seems adjacent to it. It's been around for more than a century and hasn't shown much if any real-world usefulness.
- In reading the book IQ Snake Oil, the authors made a somewhat tangential argument that introducing semi-randomness (requiring minimum qualifications followed by a random selection) into obtaining limited resources such as grant awards or college entrance would a good idea. Why? It keeps people from wasting their time. High school students would not feel compelled to take extracurricular activities that they don't actually enjoy. Grant writers wouldn't have to spend countless hours perfecting their grant applications rather than doing research. I knew another academic biochemist who told me that he was very happy to retire (possibly in his 50s at the time) because he had been spending all his time grant writing. Many academics are happy to work past their 60s because they enjoy their work. Bongolian (talk) 18:01, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
- Expanding on that, the question then is to what aim is all this IQ research? While IQ has been shown to be reproducible (i.e., 'reliable'), there is quite a bit of criticism about it's validity (i.e., what exactly does it show ({{wpl|Intelligence quotient#Validity as a measure of intelligence]])? Can a person have a high IQ and be incompetent? Yes. Can a person have a low IQ and still be successful in life? Yes. Have colleges ever used IQ as part of entrance qualifications? Not as far as I'm aware). There's good evidence that test taking does not translate into real life skills (Taking the bar exam, which largely relies on rote memory, does not mean one will be a good lawyer. I knew a highly-cited biochemistry professor who told me that he was a bad student when he was in school.) The point is, if IQ is not pseudoscience, it certainly seems adjacent to it. It's been around for more than a century and hasn't shown much if any real-world usefulness.
[show]Psychologist Guy and Tetrapteryx on who the account "Boar" truly belongs to, and one another. |
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Merge/redirect[edit]
Goat[edit]
- I am not convinced by the "wikidrama is pointless to cover" angle. If it's missional, it's coverable. And it's not like she's some rando. Carthage (talk) 19:39, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- I am bit suspicious by the sudden influx of users who are not regularly active, or have had accounts made within the last month, suddenly flocking to this page to vote in favour of deletion. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 02:20, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- I think that the fact that this page is a troll magnet suggests that it is more important than some people seem to think. GeeJayKWhere all evil dwells Where every lie is true 03:02, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- I am literally not familiar with 75% of the users who have voted for deletion. That makes me extremely suspicious. Spud (talk) 11:44, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- I think newcomers would naturally be more open to deleting articles like this one. It's below-average quality, and some arguments that may seem compelling were made. Old-timers are more likely to feel invested in defending it given the wiki's history on related matters. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 21:01, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- I'm confused by those people voting to keep the article since with the wiki drama/trolling already removed you are left with a stub article about A Troublesome Inheritance from 2014 which relies primarily on deleted tweets by Cathryn Townsend (arguably those are not appropriate). There's simply nothing to the article. 2A00:23C6:CBA9:B501:89D2:C20B:8FE0:71DB (talk) 12:51, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
- Spud's reason is why: it smells like a whitewashing attempt based on the many low-editing accounts rushing in to post delete votes. It's not a terribly important article in the end, of course, but it smells in bad faith.
- I'd actually be really receptive to merging any viable content with the Jonathan Kane article because from my perspective, most of her racialism stuff was done in cahoots with him. BobJohnson (talk) 20:41, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
- It might work. Frankly, I find her more run-of-the-mill psychology research troubling since there's such an intense focus on IQ and g as endpoints for intelligence, both of which are problematic for historic and validity reasons. Bongolian (talk) 21:08, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
- Agree, the remaining little text can be put on Kane's article if her article is deleted. How long does this AfD stay up for? 2A00:23C6:CBA9:B501:39C6:83DC:E704:C1A0 (talk) 01:42, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
- It might work. Frankly, I find her more run-of-the-mill psychology research troubling since there's such an intense focus on IQ and g as endpoints for intelligence, both of which are problematic for historic and validity reasons. Bongolian (talk) 21:08, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
- I hope it's ok for me to ask more experienced editors here: How do I reply to the people that have been put into that box?Lucern99 (talk) 00:47, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
- 11-10 in favor of deletion means no consensus, right?
DuceMoosoliniYour friendly RW
dictatormoderator 22:55, 30 December 2024 (UTC)- It would be a narrow delete. Plutocow (talk) 22:57, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
- Done.
DuceMoosoliniYour friendly RW
dictatormoderator 23:14, 30 December 2024 (UTC)