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Talk:Richard Lynn
Pseudoscientist[edit]
lynn is an outright pseudo-scientist and crank. will add lots of stuff on his junk racialist science if i get the time.Aeschylus (talk) 22:34, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
Antisemitism[edit]
May I add that it would probably not be appropriate to classify him as a 'white supremacist' since white supremacists are usually very anti-Semitic, yet he wrote a book called "The Chosen People: A Study of Jewish Intelligence and Achievement" where he argued that Jews are genetically smarter and thus have achieved more throughout history. I think he's as much (or arguably more) a philo-Semite or a Jewish supremacist as a white supremacist. 98.7.39.95 (talk) 18:31, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
- This exact talking point is used to defend hereditarianist's with ties to white supremacists all the time, it's almost a meme. It's not actually that uncommon to be consistent with their views on IQ to suggest that Jewish people have a genetic advantage in terms of ""intelligence"". It's often used as the premise to support antisemitic conspiracy theories in regards to how the "Jews" came to control everything. This does not negate a belief in the comparative racial superiority that racists claim white people have over other races. The man published racist pseudoscience that placed white people in a hierarchy over people of color. Picking hairs between a white racist and a white supremacist to me is not a worth while discussion to have, especially when they are practically equivalent. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 01:05, 7 April 2022 (UTC)
Death[edit]
Apparently, he's died. Christopher (talk) 17:58, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
Sources[edit]
There's a source/explanation missing from the claim "His work on African IQs, which evidently use horrible samples to validate preconceived biases." I do not have a full overview of all of his work, but I do know of an example of shoddy work in his estimates of South-African IQ, which he claimed was 69, based on a citation of the work of Owen (1989), which Richard Lynn referred to as:
> “the single best study of Negroid intelligence.”
The study in question examines test and item bias in the Junior Aptitude Test (JAT), a standardized test originally designed for white pupils in South Africa. Owen’s study aimed to assess whether this test was suitable for students from different racial backgrounds—white, Indian, and black pupils.
The abstract of the study states:
> “This study was undertaken to shed light on problems concerning the construction and use of a common test battery for various South African population groups.”
Essentially, the study evaluated whether the JAT, developed for white students, was appropriate for non-white groups. It selected schools across South Africa but faced challenges, particularly with black schools. The study notes that the majority of the selected black schools could not participate “owing to the unrest situation.” As a result, the testing was limited to black schools in the KwaZulu region, one of the segregated areas designated for black residents under apartheid.
The study analyzed the performance of students on various JAT subtests. A significant issue identified was that the test was administered in English to black students in KwaZulu. Several JAT subtests heavily relied on language ability. Owen assumed that language would not significantly impact the results because the black students in KwaZulu had ostensibly been learning English in their schools. However, this assumption ignored or disregarded critical issues, such as the lack of teaching equipment, the low number of certified teachers, and pupil-teacher ratios that were more than double those of white schools. As the study itself states:
> “Language was not expected to play a significant role in test performance in this investigation.”
However, the results showed this assumption to be entirely incorrect. Language played a critical role, and the black students’ poor knowledge of English rendered certain sections of the JAT, such as the synonym test and the memory paragraph test, “virtually unusable.” Yes, that's an actual quote, the study explicitly states:
> “Certain tests proved to be virtually unusable.”
Owen further noted that language bias was not the only issue. In a section titled “Item Bias in the Tests of the JAT,” he identified other forms of cultural and economic bias. For example, several test items presupposed familiarity with objects like electrical appliances, microscopes, and Western-style ladies’ accessories. Owen writes:
> “In the case of both the Indian and black testees, it seems that the single largest cause of bias lay in the fact that the pupils were not familiar with the objects represented by the pictures. Cultural and socioeconomic status factors probably also played a role in this regard.”
Despite the study concluding that the JAT was biased and that some results were “virtually unusable,” Richard Lynn still considered this “the single best study of Negroid intelligence.” Lynn used this study, which, again, tested children in segregated schools using a non-native language, as a key foundation for his estimate of the average IQ of black Africans. In his own words:
> “The mean IQ of the sample in comparison with Caucasoid South African norms is 69. [...] It is proposed, therefore, to round this figure up to 70 and take this as the approximate mean for pure Negroids.”