Talk:Race and intelligence
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Is there really a scientific consensus that there is no evidence for a genetic link between race and intelligence? Yes, and for a number of reasons. Primarily:
Isn't it true that different races have different average IQ test scores? On average and in certain contexts, yes, though these differences have fluctuated and in many cases steadily decreased over time. Crucially, the existence of such average differences today does not mean whatracialists have asserted that it means (i.e. that races can be ranked according to their genetic predisposition for intelligence). Most IQ test data comes from North America and Europe, where non-White individuals represent ethnic minorities and often carry systemic burdens which areknown to affect test performance. Studies which purport to compare theIQ averages of various nations are considered methodologically dubious and extremely unreliable. Further, important discoveries in the past several decades, such as theFlynn effect and the steadynarrowing of the gap between low-scoring and high-scoring groups, as well as the ways in which disparities such as access to prenatal care and early childhood education affect IQ, have led to an understanding that environmental factors are sufficient to account for observed between-group differences. And isn't IQ a measure of intelligence? Not exactly. IQ tests are designed to measure intelligence, but it is widely acknowledged that they measure only a very limited range of an individual's cognitive capacity. They do not measure mental adaptability or creativity, for example. You can read more about the limitations of IQ measurementshere. These caveats need to be kept in mind when extrapolating from IQ measurements to statements about intelligence. But even if we were to take IQ to be a measure of intelligence, there would still be no good reason to assert a genetic link between race and intelligence (for all the reasons stated elsewhere in this FAQ). Isn't there research showing that there are genetic differences between races? Yes and no. A geneticist could analyze a DNA sample and then in many cases make an accurate statement about that person's race, but no single gene or group of genes has ever been found that defines a person's race. Such variations make up a minute fraction of the total genome, less even than the amount of genetic material that typically varies from one individual to the next. It's also important to keep in mind that racial classifications are socially constructed, in the sense that how a person is classified racially depends on perceptions, racial definitions, and customs in their society and can often change when they travel to a different country or when social conventions change over time (seehere for more details). So how can different races look different, without having different genes? Theydo have some different genes, but the genes that vary between any two given races will not necessarily vary between two other races. Race is definedphenotypically, notgenotypically, which means it's defined byobservable traits. When a geneticist looks at the genetic differences between two races, there are differences in the genes that regulate those traits, and that's it. So comparingAfricans toEuropeans will show differences in genes that regulate skin color, hair texture, nose and lip shape, and other observable traits. But the rest of the genetic code will be essentially the same. In fact, there is much less genetic material that regulates the traits used to define the races than there is that regulates traits that vary from person to person. In other words, if you compare the genomes of two individuals within the same race, the results will likely differ more from each other than a comparison of the average genomes of two races. If you've ever heard people saying that the races "are more alike than two random people" or words to that effect, this is what they were referring to. Why do people insist that race is "biologically meaningless"? Mostly because it is. As explained in the answer to the previous question, race isn't defined by genetics. Race is nothing but an arbitrary list of traits, because race is defined by observable features. The list isn't even consistent from one comparison to another. We distinguish between African and European people on the basis of skin color, but what about Middle Eastern, Asian, and Native American people? They all have more or less the same skin color. We distinguish African and Asian people from European people by the shape of some of their facial features, but what about Native American and Middle Eastern people? They have the same features as the European people, or close enough to engender confusion when skin color is not discernible. Australian Aborigines share numerous traits with African people and are frequently considered "Black" along with them, yet they are descended from an ancestral Asian population and have been a distinct cultural and ethnic group for fifty thousand years. These standards of division are arbitrary and capricious; theone drop rule shows that visible differences were not even respected at the time they were still in use. ButIQ is at least somewhat heritable. Doesn't that mean that observed differences in IQ test performance between ancestral population groups must have a genetic component? This is a common misconception, sometimes termed the "hereditarian fallacy".[1] In fact, the heritability of differences between individuals and familieswithin a given population group tells us nothing about the heritability of differencesbetween population groups.[2][3] As geneticist and neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell explains:
What about all thepsychometricians who claim there's a genetic link? The short answer is: they're not geneticists. The longer answer is that there remains a well-documented problem ofscientific racism, which has infiltrated psychometry (see e.g.[5] and[6]). 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 datadid 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 asCyril Burt,J. Phillipe Rushton,Richard Lynn, andHans 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. Isn't it aconspiracy theory to claim that psychometricians do this? No. It is a well-documented fact that there isan organized group of psychometricians pushing for mainstream acceptance of racist, unscientific claims, and that this group has along history of doing so. Seethis,this andthis, as well as our article onscientific racism for more information. Isn't this justpolitical correctness? No, it's science. As a group of scholars includingbiological anthropologistsAgustín Fuentes of Princeton andJonathan M. Marks of the University of North Carolina explain: "while it is true that most researchers in the area of human genetics and human biological diversity no longer allocate significant resources and time to the race/IQ discussion, and that moral concerns may play an important role in these decisions, an equally fundamental reason why researchers do not engage with the thesis is that empirical evidence shows that the whole idea itself is unintelligible and wrong-headed". These authors compare proponents of a genetic link between race and IQ tocreationists,vaccine skeptics, andclimate change deniers.[7] At the same time, researchers who choose to pursue this line of inquiry have in no way been hindered from doing so, as is made clear by this article:[8]. It's just that all the evidence they find points to environmental rather than genetic causes for observed differences in average IQ-test performance between racial groups. What about the surveys which say that most "intelligence experts" believe in some degree of genetic linkage between race and IQ?
Is there reallyno evidence at all for a genetic link between race and intelligence? No evidence for such a link has ever been presented in the scientific community. Much data has beenclaimed to be evidence by advocates of scientific racism, but each of these claims has been universally rejected by geneticists. Statistical arguments claiming to detect the signal of such a difference inpolygenic scores have been refuted as fundamentally methodologically flawed (see e.g.[9]), and neither genetics nor neuroscience are anywhere near the point where a mechanistic explanation could even be meaningfully proposed (see e.g.[10]). This is why the question of a genetic link between race and intelligence is largely considered pseudoscience; it isassumed to exist primarily by advocates of scientific racism, and in these cases the belief is based on nothing but preconceived notions about race. What is the current state of the science on a link between intelligence and race? Please seethe article itself for an outline of the scientific consensus. What is the basis for Wikipedia'sconsensus on how to treat the material? Wikipedia editors have considered this topic in detail and over an extended period. In short, mainstream science treats the claim that genetics explains the observable differences in IQ between races as a fringe theory, so we use our ownguidelines on how to treat such material when editing our articles on the subject. Please refer to the following past discussions: |
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 | Arbitration Ruling on Race and Intelligence The articleRace and intelligence, along with other articles relating to the area of conflict (namely, the intersection of race/ethnicity and human abilities and behaviour, broadly construed), is currently subject to active arbitration remedies, described in a 2010 Arbitration Committee case where the articulated principles included:
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[11] Thanks.Doug Wellertalk13:00, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Editors who follow this page will probably take an interest in recent edits over atGenome-wide association study.MrOllie (talk)21:46, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And, a bit more distantly,Talk:Gynoid fat distribution#Gynoid fat and skeletons. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk)18:12, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't going anywhere. Please read the FAQ. |
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I will gloss over the 1st paragraph for now - who in the world wrote the second paragraph? Were they trying to be as inflammatory and biased as possible? This is ridiculous and must be fixed. Opinions?Epifanove🗯️23:55, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
References
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The article still states: "The scientific consensus is that there is no evidence for a genetic component behind IQ differences between racial groups", with nine(!) sources supposedly supporting this claim. Why do we need nine distinct sources to support such a claim? Is it perhaps because the phrase "no evidence" is inherently and intentionally misleading? Because there is in fact an abundance of evidence for a genetic component, but it simply gets dismissed as fringe, aka "bad" science.
'Saying there is ‘no evidence’ of something isn’tnot lazy or bad science reporting (or other talk). It is definitely both of those, but that is not what itcentrally is. No evidence is a magic phrase used tointentionally manipulate understanding by using amotte and bailey between ‘this is false’ and statements of the form ‘this has not been proven using properly peer reviewed randomized controlled trials with p less than 0.05.’ It makes one sound Responsible and Scientific in contrast to those who update their beliefs based on the information they acquire, no matter the source.
...
This is not an ‘honest’ mistake. This is a systematic anti-epistemic superweapon engineered to control what people are allowed and not allowed to think based on social power, in direct opposition to any and all attempts to actually understand and model the world and know things based on one’s information. Anyone wielding it should be treated accordingly.[12]
Stonkaments (talk)07:27, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Recent articles claim that the folk categories of race are genetically meaningful divisions, and that evolved genetic differences among races and nations are important for explaining immutable differences in cognitive ability, educational attainment, crime, sexual behavior, and wealth; all claims that are opposed by a strong scientific consensus to the contrary".
"There is an emerging consensus about racial and gender equality in genetic determinants of intelligence, most researchers, including ourselves, agree that genes do not explain between-group differences".
"It is worth remembering that no genes related to difference in cognitive skills across the various racial and ethnic groups have ever been discovered. The argument for genetic differences has been carried forward largely by circumstantial evidence. Of course, tomorrow afternoon genetic mechanisms producing racial and ethnic differences in intelligence might be discovered, but there have been a lot of investigations, and tomorrow has not come for quite some time now."
As there remains no way to gather evidence that would permit the direct refutation of the environmental hypotheses, and no direct evidence for the hereditarian position, it remains the case, I argue, that the hereditarian position is unsupported by current evidence.
"[T]he claims that genetics defines racial groups and makes them different, that IQ and cultural differences among racial groups are caused by genes, and that racial inequalities within and between nations are the inevitable outcome of long evolutionary processes are neither new nor supported by science (either old or new)."
It is sometimes suggested that the Black/White differential in psychometric intelligence is partly due to genetic differences (Jensen, 1972). There is not much direct evidence on this point, but what little there is fails to support the genetic hypothesis.To me, these sources can be taken to support prose that says the scientific consensus is against a genetic explanation for racial IQ gaps, or that the genetic thesis is unsupported by evidence—but not one says there is "no evidence".꧁Zanahary꧂18:31, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
there is no genetic component behind IQ differences between racial groups, not merely that
IQ differences between racial groups cannot be attributed to genetic factors. That sounds weasel-y to me: attributed by who? It's not a matter of attribution, it's a matter of facts.Loki (talk)21:12, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One could reasonably defend Nisbett's[citing[16]] argument that the gap was entirely environmental in origin.[speaking to test score gap] But it would probably be even more reasonable to acknowledge that the evidence is simply not sufficient to provide a definitive answer one way or the other—and possibly never will be.fiveby(zero)20:49, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
%2c_early_1900s%2c_Central_Africa%2c_Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo%2c_Pende_people%2c_wood%2c_fiber_-_Cleveland_Museum_of_Art_-_DSC08700.JPG)
{{cite book}}:Wikipedia Library link in|chapter-url=Today, the scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain differences in IQ test performance between groups.Does that satisfy everybody's concerns? I also went and removed one extraneous citation. We can probably refine the list of citations further.Generalrelative (talk)23:25, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Pinging@Generalrelative: We just edit conflicted. I'm okay with removing that sentence about Rushton if you don't like it, even though it's in my latest edit.ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPantsTell me all about it.15:44, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]