Talk:Hereditarianism

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White supremacist POV in this article

In 2018, this page reached a clear consensus that the notion of IQ scores having a genetic basis was racist pseudoscience, in this discussion:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Talk:Hereditarianism#Well_done_for_destroying_the_article.

To quote an earlier comment [1] by Ikanreed: "as Jinx says, this is some weak-ass shit in terms of science.  Not doing anything to control for your assumptions about underlying relationships being wrong, reversed, or multifactoral, is how you end up completely full of shit all the time."

Somehow a statement endorsing this pseudoscientific idea has been added back to this article, counter to the established consensus. It's now worded in a weasely way, "some research, such as that of geneticists Robert Plomin and John DeFries, propose that the heritability of IQ in human populations is around .50." This sentence is now worse than before, because whoever wrote the sentence seemingly was aware that it is advancing a racist idea, yet somehow they thought this weasel wording makes it acceptable. People of color might be reading this article every day, and RationalWiki is showing shown a callous disregard for the effects of its uncritical presentation of the language and ideas of white supremacy.

The pseudoscientific nature of these ideas is much more firmly established now than it was in 2018. This is clear from the negative reception of Kathryn Paige Harden's book The Genetic Lottery last year, which laughably tried to dress up these obsolete white supremacist ideas in the language of social justice. Reviewers were not fooled by Harden's deception. See the review here:

• "The idea of a biological hierarchy of intelligence arose alongside the first theories of human evolution. It never goes away when discredited, just changes forms. [...] While Harden, who describes herself as a political progressive, repudiates Jensen’s overt racism, she resurrects the misconceived science underlying it."

Another quote from the same review:

• "Harden’s purpose in The Genetic Lottery is to popularize the claim that social inequalities have genetic causes, and to argue that if progressives want to address inequality, they’d better confront this fact. In presenting her case, Harden revives central features of the earlier, now-discredited biological theories of intelligence: the presentation of interpretive opinions as objective facts, as we’ve seen; spurious reduction to a biological mechanism that is not only hypothetical but unspecified; and a claim to be writing in the interest of social progress."

Also see Aaron Panofsky's review of the same book published in Science: "Behavior genetics, its forbear eugenics, and its cousins sociobiology and evolutionary psychology have always been political sciences. When not being used to bar immigration, sterilize, or exterminate, behavior genetics has been an eager partner of what Albert O. Hirschman called the 'rhetoric of reaction'."

I recently read this part of the RationalWiki article to a real-life friend, and they were disgusted that RationalWiki is continuing to peddle this racist trash. It is widely known to be racist trash, and the linked earlier discussion on this page reached a clear consensus that RationalWiki has an ethical obligation to clearly call it out as such. Consequently, I am going to restore this part of the article to the version that is supported by consensus. --CBH (talk) 23:02, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

While there are real problems with scientific theories of heritable behaviors, the claim that they are de facto white supremacist is a weak hypothesis given that Western Europeans are not the group with the highest average IQ. Cultural load is an important factor in the heritability of IQ as I understand it, so, heritability is not what many people think it is.Ariel31459 (talk) 00:18, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

That doesn't really discredit the claim, and is in fact often a rhetorical move that white supremacists themselves use; such as Richard Lynn, and Kevin B. MacDonald. Heritability doesn't imply genetic determinism or even direct genetic contribution per se. It definitely doesn't imply a genetic basis for a given trait. This is something that needs to be emphasized when talking about the heritability of IQ or you mislead the audience and indirectly reinforce white supremacist conclusions. White supremacy does not necessarily entail that white people have to have "superior IQ's" to every conceivable cultural group or relevant racial constructs. They just need to be argued to be superior culturally, intellectually, or morally to some other race or set of races. If someone claimed that white people were superior on all respects to black people that person is a white supremacist even if they claim that Jewish or Asian people have superior intellects. It often doesn't stop them from claiming antiemetic conspiracy theories or that white people still are superior in other ways. Regardless if it was white supremacist or not it would be still be deeply racist. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 01:13, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

The most obvious way to defeat white supremacist arguments is to show where they fall short. If a white Supremacist makes a dumb argument based upon a misunderstanding of research, one achieves less than nothing by attacking the research if it is supportable. Science cannot be done by taking polls. "Heritability doesn't imply genetic determinism or even direct genetic contribution per se." That is what I have been trying to get some activists to understand. I agree with you, if I understand you correctly: one cannot induce scientific facts starting from individuals and generalizing to social constructs which are not, in some sense, real objects. Ariel31459 (talk) 01:37, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Is someone going to fix this part of the article, or what? Everyone seems to understand how inappropriate it is for this article to uncritically present Robert Plomin's genetic determinist ideas, the way it currently does. --CBH (talk) 19:52, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

There seems to be a general agreement here that this article should not be uncritically presenting Plomin's pseudoscientific ideas. Unless someone presents a counter-argument, I'm going to restore my change that addressed this problem. And I'll additionally restore my original version of the section titled "The non-validity and non-heritability of IQ", which was supported by consensus and cited to many reliable sources, but which was changed counter to consensus. --CBH (talk) 00:50, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

You don't know a thing about IQ and are posting nonsense to destroy the article. Coleman 2016 -

More recently, direct methods based on genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have become feasible, and they have yielded direct estimates of heritability between .40 and .50 in one study (Davies et al., 2011) and .35 in the other (Kirkpatrick et al., 2014). Population geneticists now believe that the heritability of IQ usually lies somewhere between .35 and .70, depending on various features of the sample being investigated; for example, it tends to be larger in older populations and smaller among children, and it is close to zero at the lowest socioeconomic status levels (Mackintosh, 2011, chap. 11; Nisbett et al., 2012).

Brain Galaxy (talk) 02:16, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Note CBH created the following libellous and false article which was entirely rewritten: Eric Turkheimer (view the article history) and now they want to destroy the hereditarianism article with blatant falsehoods. Brain Galaxy (talk) 02:16, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

There is a consensus “experts believe within-group differences in IQ to be at least partially inherited” (Snyderman, M., & Rothman, S. [1987]. Survey of expert opinion on intelligence and aptitude testing. American Psychologist, 42(2), 137–144.) Read the Wikipedia article on this for many more sources. Brain Galaxy (talk) 02:29, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

To claim like CBH does "notion of IQ scores having a genetic basis is racist pseudoscience" is sheer crackpottery - we are talking about individuals and within-group heritability not between-group heritability and the IQs of groups/classes/races. It appears CBH is so dumb they confuse within-group heritability with between-group despite the article repeatedly clarifies why these are different. How can talking about individuals be "racist"? @Ariel31459 also realises CBH's mistake when they removed their edit and wrote: "You seem to be conflating a scientific hypothesis about individuals with race theories". Brain Galaxy (talk) 02:37, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Except heritability estimates don't actually indicate genetic basis nor does it apply to individuals. Heritability is a statistic applied to variability within a population, which is applied to statistical spread within the data itself. That percentage of heritability more so applies to the standard deviation or variance of a population which is assumed to be a bell curve (which itself is a type of estimation). When you say a trait is .60 heritable what you are actually saying is that the distances between scores for this particular population in this particular environment -- 60% of that distance can be attributed to non-environmental factors. Applying that estimation to individuals would be in essence making the fallacy of assuming that heritability measures genetic determination -- which it doesn't. This type of statistic is immensely useful for examining specific populations in particular niches for evolutionary analysis, but applying it to human groups in ever changing environments brings with it certain limitations and caveats. This is especially true when such estimates utilize twin studies which aren't exactly "fool-proof" in terms of scientific methodology. You can say the variability of IQ scores within certain groups seems significantly heritable (as the evidence strongly suggests), but you can not say for any given individual within said group their IQ is significantly based or determined by their genes - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 03:53, 19 April 2022 (UTC).

This is in part why "heritability" of certain traits can vary as a population ages. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 04:00, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

@OnlySortaDumb The user you are replying to apparently is Mikemikev, a well known white supremacist troll. It would be better to just remove Mikemikev's posts, as was done here, instead of engaging with him. --CBH (talk) 04:04, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

I have blocked Mikemikev many times on this Wiki. That account above is very unlikely to be him based on behavioral evidence. Mikemikev is essentially a dumbass he doesn't cite studies or quote studies like that in that form. He often just attacks other users and calls them "anti-white". Johns (talk) 09:40, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

@Johns I've now realized who "Brain Galaxy" is. This is Concerned, another user who was permanently blocked for evading a ban. The complaints he is making above are the same complaints he made in this discussion in 2018, including an identical reference to my wanting to "destroy this article", and the same link to the "heritability of IQ" article at Wikipedia. Even if this isn't Mikemikev, it's still ban evasion. --CBH (talk) 13:26, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

@OnlySortaDumb Yes, within group heritability pertains to individual differences/variation within a population for a trait & it would be misleading to say individual per se because heritability is an abstract population concept. I should have worded my reply better. Height has a within-group heritability estimate of approximately 0.8 meaning 80% of the variation in a population is due to genetic factors but this does not refer to how much of any one person's height is due to his/her genes - I get this. The individual/group distinction I was trying to emphasis was IQ-scores versus group means for populations ("races"). CBH's repeated claim is IQ and heritability is "racist pseudoscience" but this isn't the case if you are merely looking at individual differences rather than group means. This troll is arguing the concept of IQ itself is "racist" and "white supremacist" here's an example of their dumb edits. They claim "As of 2018, no one has ever identified any genetic variants associated with intelligence." -- this is contradicted by a major study the same year: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/scientists-find-over-500-genes-linked-to-intelligence/

As they explain in the Nature journal Molecular Psychiatry, they managed to find 538 genes that play a role in intellectual ability, along with 187 regions in the human genome that are linked to cognitive skills.In theory, this means that scientists could get an insight into your IQ just by analyzing your spit in a pot. As part of this new study, the researchers tested out this idea and managed to predict differences in intelligence of a group of individuals using their DNA alone.

Brain Galaxy (talk) 15:56, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Is there any active moderation on this wiki? @CBH is a blatant a troll and vandal:

• See their edit where they describe IQ as "pseudoscience" (their edit was reverted).
• CBH created a libellous article on Eric Turkheimer which was deleted and entirely rewritten. Turkheimer himself read the article and described it as harassment - why is CBH not already banned? As for sockpuppetry accusations, they are almost certianly a sock of another troll user (who had most their article creations deleted for further harassment and libel), user:Jean_Lusaz.
• Their current mission appears to vandalise and discredit the hereditarianism article by adding clearly false claims. Brain Galaxy (talk) 16:18, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Actually even your above characterization of heritability is still wrong. Consult https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcs.1400. You may need to use a university database or sci-hub to access the paper. Heritability does not address genetic causes for variation at all. It estimates the degree to which variations in phenotype can be accounted for by variations in genotype, i.e. how much differences within groups in a outward phenotypical trait can be associated with variation in DNA. The authors provide a thought experiment regarding a neighborhood that has had a series of housefires, say it has been found that the difference between the houses that a had a fire and ones that didn't was the presence of a space heater. Could it be said that the space heater was the cause of the fire? No. It would be equivalent to the cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. It could entirely be the case that the cause of the fire was the use of flammable building materials, or some other factor not considered. With heritability you are at best identifying a correlation, not a causation. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 02:10, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Ok but high heritability estimate has a high probability of genetic causation or determination of trait variation. This has been in the literature for a century (Fisher 1918) and someone more recent came up with a formulae. Tal, O. (2009). From heritability to probability. Biology & Philosophy, 24(1), 81-105. Do you agree the concept of IQ is not "racist pseudoscience"? My main criticisms of CBH's edits have not been responded to by anyone. RationalWiki's POV should be scientific consensus not an extreme fringe viewpoint. The consensus on IQ is explained in Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns' a report issued in 1995 by a task force created by the Board of Scientific Affairs of the American Psychological Association (APA or is summarised by Eric Turkheimer in this article: Turkheimer, E. (1990). 'Consensus and Controversy About IQ'. Psyc critiques, 35(5), 428-430. This psychologist is the person CBH libelled as a "white supremacist" and "racist pseudoscientist". Brain Galaxy (talk) 09:47, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

I think it depends what the the IQ tests are being used for. In my opinion a IQ score is just a multi-factored score calculated by the test performance of a subset of culturally valued cognitive abilities. It can be used for racist pseudoscience especially when claimed to a objective marker for intelligence, and used to rank the intellectual superiority/inferiority of ethnic groups. Every anthropology major I met has a opinion like CBH’s and I don’t think that’s a coincidence per se. Cultural bias and limitations have been a cited concern about the legitimacy of IQ testing, and attempts at creating “culture free” tests are not without professional skepticism. I don’t think the tests themselves or the scorings are inherently racist or pseudoscientific — but there are definitely racist and pseudoscientific applications. The history of such testing is a story about eugenics first and foremost which is near universally acknowledged as a pseudoscience by mainstream scientists. When we speak of “scientific consensus” we have to ask of which scientists? Psychology isn’t the only social science that studies human beings, their mental processes, and their behaviour. Anthropologists also study such things but unanimous acceptance of so called “intelligence testing” I don’t think is nearly as present. I think the tests have applications that meet the standards of empirical adequacy in making certain reliable predictions, and I don’t think it’s trivial when we look at the evidence to what effects lead and iodine have on such scores. I guess I would say it’s contextual. When someone is said to be a fringe position we need to ask “to whom?” and why are they the only relevant authority on the matter. What do other social scientists say on the matter? And why is “intelligence” not relevant to their authority? - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 11:27, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

The only user raising any objections to my proposed change is a sockpuppet of a banned user (Concerned), and there is no need to engage with banned sockpuppets who are promoting conspiracy theories, as Brain Galaxy has done in their post here. So I'll proceed with my changes now, but any legitimate users who disagree with these changes are welcome to comment about them. --CBH (talk) 10:59, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

I know I said that Concerned/Brain Galaxy should not be acknowledged, but I'll make this one comment: they are carefully avoiding the vast body of literature describing how concepts of genetics and IQ exist primarily to perpetuate racial inequality, even when race is not explicitly mentioned. Besides the many sources cited in this section, two others that explain it in detail are Roberts (2015) and Gillborn (2016). RationalWiki has a responsibility to clearly call out this type of racial inexplicitness, as Gillborn calls it, regardless of how many (white, male, privileged) scientists are promoting it. --CBH (talk) 11:19, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but your edits appear to be influenced more by ideology than an interest in representing scientific perspectives on the states of knowledge on this subject. It is claimed that more than 500 genes have been associated with IQ. UncleKrampus (talk) 20:36, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

It's worth noting that the article admits "When they analysed the DNA of a group of different people, the team were only able to predict 7 per cent of the intelligence differences between those people", which is hardly a smoking gun. It's a problem with science journalism in general, which tends to use clickbait headlines and exaggerate the importance of recent studies, which is why you should always read the full text of those articles before citing them. Plutocow (talk) 20:59, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

It is also worth noting that the article states, "It is thought that around 50 to 80 per cent of variation in general intelligence between people is down to genetics." Now I don't know who thinks that, but I take it that a lot of scientists in the area think that. All sorts of journalists misinterpret what such a vague general statement imports into vulgar conversations about race. In my view it supports nothing general about race. UncleKrampus (talk) 21:13, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

It could also be the case that it’s a misinterpretation of heritability. Heritability estimates for IQ scores tends to be around .40 to .80 by certain estimates, and that just means that 40 to 80% of the spread in data can be accounted for by variability in DNA. The paper I cited earlier titled “the heritability fallacy” points out it’s common for science journalism to mistake this estimate to suggest “due to inheritance” or “caused by genes” . This misinterpretation is also stated not to be uncommon among behavioural geneticists and sociobiologists. There is an application to “heritability” used in population genetics/evolutionary analysis that incorporates these caveats into the method; at least that’s what the evolutionary analysis textbook I am reading suggests. It’s sort of analogous to how some evolutionary biologists come into conflict with evolutionary psychologists on what counts as direct evidence for a trait being an “adaptation”, with the evolutionary psychologists often utilizing a less rigorous and more controversial standard. We also shouldn’t be so uncritical of IQ tests being a measure of “general intelligence” — that’s controversial even within field. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 22:00, 20 April 2022 (UTC).

Yes, it could be such a situation as is caused by reification fallacy. Certainly the term "general intelligence," is not a well defined idea, apart from the claim that it can be indexed by testing. There is a closed process in action here as the definition of IQ depends upon the results of IQ tests, which in turn, depend upon the reality of the sort of intelligence as is measured by the tests. We are just assuming that what we are calling "general intelligence" is equivalent to ability to manipulate IQ tests. IQ scores can be predictive of a variety of outcomes, such as distributions of PhD degrees or research paper publications. I do wonder if a high score on Stanford-Binet alone makes one generally intelligent. UncleKrampus (talk) 23:11, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

The article needs to make the fallacious nature of these constructs much clearer than it currently does. Ariel31459 is continuing to revert my edits without participating in the discussion on this page. It's utterly bizarre that RationalWiki has more tolerance of this ideology now than it did in 2018. Systemic racism has been declared a public health crisis in the United States, and most universities and corporations have committed themselves to fighting racial inequity. This includes recognizing and eliminating the ways white supremacy is perpetuated by acts that are superficially racially "neutral", such as the use of the SAT as a requirement in college admission. IQ tests, especially when linked to notions of biologically based intelligence, are a major example of such racially inexplicit racism. Society understands this much more clearly now than it did four years ago, and so should RationalWiki. --CBH (talk) 23:19, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

To be fair, I think you go a little overboard with tying IQ tests themselves as inherently pseuodscientific. A lot of the sources you cite are journalistic or highlight the history of such testing and the racist contexts which it has been used — which doesn’t necessarily reflect the variety of applications such tests are used for today. I.e. in the diagnosis of intellectual disabilities, highlighting weaknesses in certain educationally attained skills (mathematic ability, visuospatial reasoning) so as to identify areas to focus on for people’s IEPs, evaluating brain damage, predicting future achievement, evaluating the effects of environmental impacts on the set of cognitive abilities the tests evaluate, i.e stereotype threat, iodine, lead, etc. Initially Alfred Binet developed his version of the test simply to identify areas where schoolchildren struggle in, so that schooling can be adapted to improve such weaknesses. Eugenists appropriated the test and used it for all sorts of racist and pseudoscientific purposes but that isn’t necessarily a property of the tests themselves. It’s confusing context of origin with later justification — similar to the genetic fallacy. I agree though that the limitations and criticisms of such tests should be provided in article; but total dismissal of test scientific value isn’t exactly warranted. The value is still contested by scientists and is far from settled. Psychology views such tests as being one of the most reliable psychometrics we have. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 00:20, 21 April 2022 (UTC).

How about the sources that I originally presented here? The Southern Poverty Law Center, which RationalWiki considers a highly authoritative source, refers to the notion of a genetic basis to IQ scores as "long-discredited theories of IQ and heredity". If RationalWiki decides that the SPLC is wrong to call it that, this would be (I think) the ONLY topic where RationalWiki rejects the SPLC's judgment. --CBH (talk) 01:14, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

The SPLC is neither a scientific institution nor is it authoritative on the credibility of psychometrics. The American Psychological Association does not hold this stance of IQ tests being wholly illegitmate. SPLC is sometimes a relevant source, sometimes it isn't -- their publications are purely internally checked and presented. There don't publish scientific papers, partake and subject themselves to scientific peer review, nor are they considered a reputable scientific journal. They are in essence a sort of legal think tank that to give them credit pretty reliably finds the means to track and identify hate groups across the US. That does not mean that all the information it presents is reflective of the scientific views of experts in that field. - 02:44, 21 April 2022 (UTC).

The authors you cite in your other sources are legal scholars, English and American Studies Profs, primatologists, and an economists. Not one of them is a expert of the study of psychometrics and their validity, none of them are even cognitive scientists, not one of them is even a geneticist. Which isn't to say that nothing they say is factual or that their authority is irrelevant; but if you were to read about climate science from authors who exclusively weren't climate scientists -- to say your literature search is a bit biased would be putting it mildly. That being said, I would probably also accuse someone of bias if they exclusively only cited psychologists who entirely relied on the use of IQ tests in their methodology and ignored any of the relevant criticism from other social scientists; and especially psychologists. There would be a clear conflict of interest in that if someone's career almost entirely relied on the assumption of their validity. That's why it's important to step back and look at the "big picture". We know for sure hereditarianism is a load of bullocks though. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 02:58, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Let me quote for you what Wikipedia says about the field of psychometrics: "there remains a well-documented problem of scientific racism, which has infiltrated psychometry (see e.g. [2] and [3]). Psychometry is a field where people who advocate scientific racism can push racist ideas without being constantly contradicted by the very work they're doing. And when their data did contradict their racist views, many prominent advocates of scientific racism simply falsified their work or came up with creative ways to explain away the problems. See such figures as Cyril Burt, J. Phillipe Rushton, Richard Lynn, and Hans Eysenck, who are best known in the scientific community today for the poor methodological quality of their work, their strong advocacy for a genetic link between race and intelligence, and in some cases getting away with blatant fraud for many years."

At Wikipedia, it has been understood for the past two years that someone being an "expert of the study of psychometrics" is a reason not to trust them. The journal Intelligence, one of the top "psychometrics" journals, is classified by Wikipedia as an unreliable publication due to this field's association with scientific racism. In Wikipedia's article about the journal, the criticism is cited mostly to what you call "journalistic" sources. These sources are good enough for Wikipedia, but are you trying to argue they aren't good enough for RationalWiki? --CBH (talk) 03:48, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

You can literally say the exact same thing about the field of genetics, but it isn't grounds to reject genetics and embrace Lysenkoism now is it? The entire field of statistics was developed out of the eugenics movement, and we still use many of the statistical methods that eugenicists developed. All those figures you mentioned are widely condemned in the field, and the only reason they even get citations to begin with is because you have to cite and reference the works of those you are directly criticizing if you are publishing a critique. Otherwise you are just making a series of unsourced allegations, and on top of that plagiarism if you take a direct quote from the paper in question without citing it. You are looking at the field over the course of an entire century and judging it's contemporary scientific value based on ideas that are already widely discredited in that field. This issue is controversial because it's not easily settled. Pretending the science is more certain than it is no matter which side you are coming from does more harm then good. Psychometrics is the means to which the entire field of psychology measures psychological traits quantitatively. If you reject psychometrics as racist and unscientific, you have to by extension reject quantitative psychology. You would also have to reject genetics, evolutionary biology, and statistics as well. No life science is free of this tainted history of scientific racism and eugenics. Psychometrics is not the exception here; it's the rule. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 04:02, 21 April 2022 (UTC).

@Brain Galaxy My boyfriend's background is in biochemistry and molecular biology, and he looked over the sources you shared about increased heritability indicating increased probability of genetic inheritance. He suggested you didn't actually read the sources you provided as he told me that the sources in question state that is only true when the environmental variability is 0, and there is complete knowledge of individual phenotype. Which is almost never actually the case. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 05:19, 21 April 2022 (UTC). @CBH Judging the reputability of an entire field on the basis of the reliability of one academic journal does not strike me as a good faith approach. Also the Wikipedia citation you provided makes no reference to the credibility of psychometrics as a whole. We aren't talking about that specific academic journal, we are talking about whether or not IQ tests themselves are inherently pseudoscientific. There is no scientific consensus that they are, every reputable psychological association will reflect this. The validity and reliability of IQ tests is nuanced and complicated which is why I always emphasize that the degree to which they are pseudoscientific is entirely dependent on how they are being used and under what context. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 05:33, 21 April 2022 (UTC).

If you accept that what you call "journalistic sources" are adequate to demonstrate the pseudoscientific nature of that one journal, why aren't they adequate to also demonstrate that the notion of a biological hierarchy of intelligence is pseudoscience in general? --CBH (talk) 08:21, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Why the blatant strawman? That’s not a proposition implied by the existence of IQ tests or the possibility of such tests having valid uses. I explicitly stressed I don’t think IQ tests are objective measures of intelligence, nor did I ever imply anything about “hierarchy”. I explicitly stated on this talk page that using IQ tests to intellectually rank groups would be a pseudoscientific application. You are not helping your case of not being a troll when you openly pretend someone made an argument they explicitly criticized as flawed. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 08:47, 21 April 2022 (UTC).

cbh do you own the pinkerite website? I appreciate your work in combating racism but i think you have taken it too far calling almost anyone involved with intelligence research a Nazi, racist or white supremacist. You created an article that was deleted calling eo Wilson a racist. You have gone overboard and are discrediting yourself. Step In my chambers and we will see what we can do about that. Scotty boi (talk) 09:43, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm not going to engage in discussion with ban evading sockpuppets. --CBH (talk) 12:05, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm a little late to the party, but can I point out that CBH is entirely correct because this article is about Hereditarianism, which is a racist concept, and not 'heritability', which has a separate article? I'd also like point out that it should come as no surprise that up to 500 genes have been identified with cognition, because humans DO think. Since researchers who tried to use variance in these genes to predict IQ had a success rate of only 7%, it seems fairly obvious that these genes are simply related to humans being able to think, not any kind of heirarchy of intelligence. Anyway I'm with CBH, this page is about racism. I do not believe that there is any scientific evidence that supports hereditarianism, so it would be inappropriate for there to be anything in the article that in any way implies that hereditarianism is based on anything even approaching validity.FairDinkum (talk) 08:17, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Racist POV of article

The article creator defends genes partly explain ethnic differences in IQ scores. He favours between-group heritability is around 5%. The article was set up to only refute 50% or more genes i.e. Jensen, Rushton etc. see for example this section of article:

Therefore concerning between-group heritability: anti-hereditarians either argue for 0% genes, but accept the possibility of a very small percentage of genes (e.g. Lewontin, 1970; Gould, 1994; Nisbett, 2005) or argue for the latter (Loehlin et al. 1975; Hunt, 2010).[45] Note Jensen defined hereditarianism as the view genetics explains between 50% and 75% of the black-white IQ gap and not a figure close to zero (e.g. 3%), so it's intellectually dishonest to try to redefine hereditarianism to mean, say, 97% environment and only 3% genes.

footnote [45]:

Loehlin et al. in Race Differences in Intelligence (1975) are critical of Jensen's hereditarianism, but favour a minor role of genetics in the black-white IQ gap rather than 0%; in their appendix they estimate between-group heritability at 12.5%, although this is tentative and probably an overestimation since they note, between-group heritability is "more easily accommodated in an environmentalist framework" (p. 238) and so a negligible role for genes (1-5%) is more plausible. Earl Hunt in Human Intelligence (2010) rejects both hereditarianism (as 50-75% or 80% genes) and 0% genes; while emphasising environment, he instead favours an "intermediate" position (p. 435); he provides two examples of low percentage estimates, 3% and 5-15%, but cautions evidence to try to quantify the exact % is currently lacking (p. 436).

Tristan albatross (talk) 19:43, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

The 1-5% is literally called “negligible” in the quote-box you provide; which a heritability that small would be. It would be so small as to be irrelevant. Remember too that heritability assigns a percentage to the phenotypical variation that can be accounted for by genotypical variation in a specific population in a specific environment. It does not mean that a given trait is x% determined by one’s genes. All human variation is going to effected by genotypical variation to some degree or another. The real question is to what degree is it socially/politically relevant? And in this case a between-group heritability that small just wouldn’t be. So racist? Evidence like this wouldn’t even validate racial categories as genetically meaningful (which for the record; they are not). There is no implied inferiority or superiority here unless you read significance into a number which there isn’t any. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 22:07, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

something bizarre about the list of contemporary hereditarians

there's a startling lack of diversity in them. Except for a few japanese names, all of them are white, and there are no people of african descent. Why is that? hmmm... Don't know--2600:4040:475E:F600:B400:5ECE:4695:DA32 (talk) 03:08, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Can we get this article in line with some scientific POV?

APA definition of hereditarianism: the view that genetic inheritance is the major influence on behavior. Opposed to this view is the belief that environment and learning account for the major differences between people. The question of heredity versus environment or “nature versus nurture” continues to be controversial, especially as it applies to human intelligence. See genetic determinism; nature–nurture.

Then comes in Jensenism and "The Hereditarian Hypothesis." The toxic POV in public discourse has colored many people's view of hereditarianism. That's fine, and I suppose it has been made unredeemable as a study. But take out the race science, which is based on some specious concepts concerning race, and hereditarianism appears to be a harmless assumption from ethology. It is about behavior in general and not just intelligence. Nobody complains about behavioral biology, which is closely related to heritable behavior. Robert Sapolsky, the highly regarded neuroscientist, has said that he does not believe humans have any free will at all. This is, it would seem, deterministic. I am not prepared to call Sapolsky unpleasant names over an actual difference of scientific opinion. Ariel31459 (talk) 17:09, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Hereditarianism is used as a justification for race science. This article is primarily about how race pseudoscientists use hereditarianism to justify their racist bullshit and racist policies. Hereditarianism has also been used as a justification for everything from austerity to discrimination in employment. Hereditarianism is also questionable because it is reductionist in outlook, it completely dismisses the effect culture has on behavior. Hereditarianism, if it is "purely scientific," is pretty questionable as science. The free will argument is also pretty specious, as there is such a thing as cultural determinism. Non-human animals are also not affected by culture or possess culture in the same way that humans do, so this argument too is pretty specious. If you want to create an article about heredity, go ahead. But don't purposefully conflate hereditarianism with heredity. That's dishonest. Carthage (talk) 17:15, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

You don't follow me. Was it something I said? The justification you refer to is based on a fallacy, and it should be pointed out as such. I believe behavioral biology studies hereditary behaviors. It is a real thing. Races should, of course, be left out of any scientific discussion, primarily because they are not coherent subjects for scientific study. You know I don't think you are taking this rightly, because I did say the word hereditarianism was probably too damaged by Jensenists and I said it was probably "unredeemable as a study." Still, our description leaves something to be desired, as it is inconsistent with most references I can find. I don't know why, but facts have always seemed important to me. I don't know how you get heredity and hereditarianism conflated from what I wrote. But I won't make a big deal out of it. Ariel31459 (talk) 17:42, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia seems to emphasize the association between hereditarianism and eugenics, claiming Francis Galton as the first hereditarianist. With special mention of how heredetarianists make appeals to the heritability of intelligence in particular. It is seemingly the most socially and politically relevant when hereditarianists make appeals to group differences being the result of genetic differences, and there aren't a whole lot of socially relevant "groups" that don't reduce down to things like race and sex. Other aspects of its history are listed as the publication of the Bell Curve and other pseudoscientific-related nonsense. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot to actually go off relevant to the term that is strictly speaking scientific and unproblematic. I mean unproblematic in the epistemic/scientific sense as well. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 06:33, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

I think the APA definition sort of obscures things for the layperson as to what is actually meant. Behaviour is anything an organism does, and when you assign genetics as a dominant determinant of that you are essentially forwarding biological determinism. I think there is a reason why the proponents of this view are more often than not psychologists and not strictly speaking evolutionary biologists or strict quantitative geneticists. There is a certain degree of naivety regarding biology and evolution required to think that heritability can tell you whether or not a particular trait is genetically inherited. Also, a basic error in genetics is to confuse heritability for hereditary. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 06:40, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't quite get why this page conflates hereditarianism with Jensenism. I was trying to figure out if Jonathan Kane's description as a hereditarian is accurate. Now I'm finding it probably depends on whether you use RationalWiki's definition or else... basically any other definition I found initially. My impression is that ours describes a narrower position that would not include him. Chillpilled (talk) 05:40, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

tbf I don't think either term is commonly used. Most people make reference to "race and IQ stuff" when talking about these topics without any mention of "Jansenism" or "hereditarianism" in my experience. Academic articles will give mention to Jensen himself as an example of bad science writing on topics related to intelligence testing, or use him as example of how large number of citations != well respected work (because in Jensen's case those citations are largely from papers aiming to refute Jensen, which requires citing his paper if you pull quotes from it, or if you paraphrase him). Talking to other people I think both terms more or less come off as pretty esoteric to anyone who is not particularly well-versed in racial pseudoscience. Even then, I don't think its a term that the likes of Stephen Jay Gould used in the Mismeasure of Man, or by any other critic of said racial pseudoscience. That being said, it seems in the past I already gave mention to where this association between the term "heredetarian" and eugenics style thinking came from, and that is all kind of bundled up in this sociobiology/biological determinism/race realism subset of the ideosphere. It is all ideologically related as you can prick one proponent of one idea while simultaneously pricking someone is who a proponent of one of the other ideas. They are pretty reliable correlated imo, and why wouldn't they be? They all share a certain set of axioms and assumptions about the function of genetics and the role it plays in determining not just tissue differentiation in individuals, but society itself. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 06:01, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

So they're related beliefs. I was not really contending that, but it seems Jensenism is a subset of hereditarianism rather than a synonym. Chillpilled (talk) 06:29, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

I think if we're going to use the definition currently in the article, we should at least note somewhere that other people use a different definition. Chillpilled (talk) 06:30, 9 January 2024 (UTC)