Talk:Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence: Difference between revisions

 

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::::::I’m well aware of other criticisms of his thesis, which are largely in popular science books (e.g. Adam Rutherford, Angela Saini), the media (already cited in the article), or short one to two paragraph discusses of one particular aspect of their thesis or another. The Ferguson paper is the criticism with the most direct and expansive focus (being a 40+ page paper directly focused on dismantling the claims made by Cochran, Hardy, Harpending) on their [[WP:FRINGE]] theory. It would not be [[WP:DUE]] weight to describe the entire theory as proposed by them, but only provide academic sources that criticize specific aspects of their theory, instead of the theory in whole. [[User:Katzrockso|Katzrockso]] ([[User talk:Katzrockso|talk]]) 20:57, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

::::::I’m well aware of other criticisms of his thesis, which are largely in popular science books (e.g. Adam Rutherford, Angela Saini), the media (already cited in the article), or short one to two paragraph discusses of one particular aspect of their thesis or another. The Ferguson paper is the criticism with the most direct and expansive focus (being a 40+ page paper directly focused on dismantling the claims made by Cochran, Hardy, Harpending) on their [[WP:FRINGE]] theory. It would not be [[WP:DUE]] weight to describe the entire theory as proposed by them, but only provide academic sources that criticize specific aspects of their theory, instead of the theory in whole. [[User:Katzrockso|Katzrockso]] ([[User talk:Katzrockso|talk]]) 20:57, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

:::::::Re: Ferguson being the most substantial critique, I’ll have to take your word for it. However, you’ve used it to a support a single sentence on culture – which could easily be substituted with a published source. [[User:Zenomonoz|Zenomonoz]] ([[User talk:Zenomonoz|talk]]) 21:14, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

:::::::Re: Ferguson being the most substantial critique, I’ll have to take your word for it. However, you’ve used it to a support a single sentence on culture – which could easily be substituted with a published source. [[User:Zenomonoz|Zenomonoz]] ([[User talk:Zenomonoz|talk]]) 21:14, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

::::::::It was supported two sentences, one about population bottlenecks and drift. This is important because the core of the NHAI is that sphlingoliphoid disease are linked to IQ and underwent divergent selection in Ashkenazi populations. Cochran et al’s main justification for the theory is to explain why these diseases retain a high frequency in Ashkenazi Jewish populations despite their obviously deleterious effect, pointing to adaptation as an explanation. That population history and genetic drift provide alternative explanations defuses this motivation for the theory in the first place.

::::::::It was two sentences, one about population bottlenecks and drift. This is important because the core of the NHAI is that sphlingoliphoid disease are linked to IQ and underwent divergent selection in Ashkenazi populations. Cochran et al’s main justification for the theory is to explain why these diseases retain a high frequency in Ashkenazi Jewish populations despite their obviously deleterious effect, pointing to adaptation as an explanation. That population history and genetic drift provide alternative explanations defuses this motivation for the theory in the first place.

::::::::I only added two sentences because there were already so many citations there. I could have (and should have) added the Ferguson citation to just about every other sentence, but that was superfluous.

::::::::I only added two sentences because there were already so many citations there. I could have (and should have) added the Ferguson citation to just about every other sentence, but that was superfluous.

::::::::Cochran et al make numerous claims in their paper and almost every single one was either already known to be false by the time of their publication or has been proven wrong since then. Unfortunately, most of the findings that refute their claims have not been raised by most authors in their criticisms. For example, Ferguson is the only author I have found that points out that the sphlingoliphoid disorders Cochran et al cite don’t even have an unequivocal positive relationship with IQ, there are a number of studies that produce negative or negligible associations. If we were to try to explain how these claims are wrong, we would be forced to otherwise rely on [[WP:SYNTH]], which is even more undesirable.

::::::::Cochran et al make numerous claims in their paper and almost every single one was either already known to be false by the time of their publication or has been proven wrong since then. Unfortunately, most of the findings that refute their claims have not been raised by most authors in their criticisms. For example, Ferguson is the only author I have found that points out that the sphlingoliphoid disorders Cochran et al cite don’t even have an unequivocal positive relationship with IQ, there are a number of studies that produce negative or negligible associations. If we were to try to explain how these claims are wrong, we would be forced to otherwise rely on [[WP:SYNTH]], which is even more undesirable.

This article was nominated for deletion. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination:

The contentious topics procedure applies to this article. This article relates to the intersection of race/ethnicity and human abilities and behaviour, a contentious topic. Editors are advised to familiarise themselves with the contentious topics procedures before editing this page.

Arbitration Ruling on Race and Intelligence The article Ashkenazi Jewish 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: Pillars: Wikipedia articles must be neutral, verifiable and must not contain original research. Those founding principles (the Pillars) are not negotiable and cannot be overruled, even when apparent consensus to do so exists. Original research: Wikipedia defines “original research” as “facts, allegations, ideas, and stories not already published by reliable sources”. In particular, analyses or conclusions not already published in reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy are not appropriate for inclusion in articles. Correct use of sources: Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources. Primary sources are permitted if used carefully. All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, rather than to original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors. Advocacy: Wikipedia strives towards a neutral point of view. Accordingly, it is not the appropriate venue for advocacy or for advancing a specific point of view. While coverage of all significant points of view is a necessary part of balancing an article, striving to give exposure to minority viewpoints that are not significantly expressed in reliable secondary sources is not. Single purpose accounts: Single purpose accounts are expected to contribute neutrally instead of following their own agenda and, in particular, should take care to avoid creating the impression that their focus on one topic is non-neutral, which could strongly suggest that their editing is not compatible with the goals of this project. Decorum: Wikipedia users are expected to behave reasonably, calmly, and courteously in their interactions with other users; to approach even difficult situations in a dignified fashion and with a constructive and collaborative outlook; and to avoid acting in a manner that brings the project into disrepute. Unseemly conduct, such as personal attacks, incivility, assumptions of bad faith, harassment, or disruptive point-making, is prohibited. Tag-team editing: Tag teams work in unison to push a particular point of view. Tag-team editing – to thwart core policies (neutral point of view, verifiability, and no original research); or to evade procedural restrictions such as the three revert rule or to violate behavioural norms by edit warring; or to attempt to exert ownership over articles; or otherwise to prevent consensus prevailing – is prohibited. If you are a new editor, or an editor unfamiliar with the situation, please follow the above guidelines. You may also wish to review the full arbitration case page. If you are unsure if your edit is appropriate, discuss it here on this talk page first.

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First of all, I have to say that the editing community on Wikipedia is so biased that it’s incredibly unpleasant to put contribute on good faith. But if not me than who? We should all want to know what is true and worth knowing; therefore, we have to report the (relevant) facts honestly no matter what they are.

First line says “measures of intelligence often exhibit bias”.

The statement implies that intelligence tests are broadly invalid across cultures, which is not supported by the mainstream psychometric literature. While test designers vigilantly check for cultural loading, the most g-loaded subtests (e.g. Raven’s matrices, digit span) consistently show minimal cultural bias across ethnic groups.

Indeed, the very next sentence quotes a document that literally says the opposite. The 1995 APA task force (“Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns”) explicitly stated that standard IQ tests are valid measures of general intelligence across groups and are not significantly biased in favor of any one culture when properly administered. RationalFactor (talk) 22:10, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

RationalFactor, in general, the sentence “Measures of intelligence often exhibit cultural bias” could probably be removed because it’s sourcing is not related to Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence, it’s just WP:SYNTH of published sources. However, some people use unrelated sources as a WP:FRINGE notice, and that seems to be why Grayfell reverted you [1]. Perhaps the solution is to include the APA task force source alongside it, and clarify there is disagreement among scientists regarding alleged cultural biases in tests.

I do agree that cultural bias has been significantly reduced in modern tests. I’m not necessarily aware of the “biases” of certain editors, but getting combative tends to be unproductive. Zenomonoz (talk) 22:56, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The article doesn’t say “measures of intelligence often exhibit bias” – this is a misquote. It says “Measures of intelligence often exhibit cultural bias“. One of the issues here is that the theories of Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence that the article exists to discuss tend to presume some form of biological racialism. These studies present their theories as representing something innate and genetic. Despite the many studies of Ashkenazi genetics which exist, Jewish identity is still also fundamentally a cultural identity. Cultural bias is directly relevant. The unstated notion that a biologically distinct Ashkenazi Jewish ‘race’ exists, and can be tested for, is a relic of scientific racism, which is a subset of pseudoscience. That’s only one-half of of why this is a fringe issue. Grayfell (talk) 23:44, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I didn’t misquote it (edit: I guess you were replying to Rationalfactor). As far as I am aware, the focus should be on the synth issues and using sources directly related to Ashkenazi. Also, Ashkenazism is still an ethnicity, distinct from Sephardim and Mizrahim. Most geneticists prefer the concept of ethnicity, rather than broad racial categories. Zenomonoz (talk) 00:25, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some geneticists treat ethnicity as a discrete or falsifiable biological category, but this is not universal and there are a lot of reasons to be cautious and skeptical of this approach. Biological race and ethnicity are still used for convenience in some fields in some contexts, but to be scientific, they always need to be clearly defined or re-defined for every use. Getting sloppy with these categories is either bad statistics or pseudoscience. Grayfell (talk) 01:47, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

“ Measures of intelligence often exhibit cultural bias.”

in the next sentence, the APA’s report is quoted—-a report that directly contradicts this claim.

sorry for being combative. I appreciate the polite tone. This feels like homework to me. I am doing it in small articles where I can. Just wanna help out. One day I wanna fix the science of intelligence articles. Most predictive construct in social science man. Purged and history revised and unwoven out of society itself by decree. Should concern us. RationalFactor (talk) 00:00, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Frankly, either have the article or don’t. i dont know that it has to be an article. But it should not be falsehoods. RationalFactor (talk) 00:04, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@AndreJustAndre @Zenomonoz You have both reverted my edits adding the Brian Ferguson paper to this article. @Zenomonoz‘s reasoning invoked the fact that this material was not published, which is true and explained in the second page of the article. As a close reading will note, this was not published due to obtuse criticisms by reviewers who believed the article didn’t highlight one perspective or another, or as one reviewer stated that the theory was so “obviously false” that “it may not merit a published response”. When theories are so WP:FRINGE, “verifiable and reliable criticism of the fringe theory need not be published in a peer-reviewed journal”. The original paper was published in Journal of Biosocial Science, which was “was the continuation of The Eugenics Review” and published by The Galton Institute. This is a decidedly WP:FRINGE source, so @AndreJustAndre‘s description of the Cochran paper as “peer-reviewed biological research” is tenuous at best.

I am also going to ping recent editors of this article to further discussion @Generalrelative @MurrayScience. Katzrockso (talk) 20:28, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I support reverting the inclusion of the self published source. Note that WP:SPS states “Be careful when using such sources: if the information in question is suitable for inclusion, someone else will likely have published it in independent, reliable sources”. There are published secondary sources that argue Jewish culture might contribute to Ashkenazi Intelligence. Zenomonoz (talk) 20:32, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Then perhaps we should strike the entire section on the Gregory Cochran paper, because as already noted, they propose a completely WP:FRINGE theory.

We have good reason to believe that “someone else will likely have published it in independent, reliable sources” is not the case here, because scientists take this theory so unseriously that “it may not merit a published response”. Per WP:FRINGE, “verifiable and reliable criticism of the fringe theory need not be published in a peer-reviewed journal”. Katzrockso (talk) 20:35, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That is excessive. Wikipedia still discusses fringe theories, and covers what the secondary sources say about them. There are published responses to the Cochran paper. Zenomonoz (talk) 20:37, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Then we should be able to use the “verifiable and reliable criticism of the fringe theory” that is not published in a peer-reviewed journal. Readers should be directed to the best source that directly addresses the WP:FRINGE claims made by the authors in their article. Katzrockso (talk) 20:39, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There might be a case for inclusion, so let’s see what other editors think. My point was to follow WP:SPS instructions to use secondary sources if they make the same argument, when they are available. There has been plenty of academic critique of Cochran’s thesis. There are some mentioned under the ‘criticism’ subsection, which directly refer to Cochran, but I know there are superior ones out there. I would advise you to put more time into finding them. Using google scholar to find sources that cite Cochran’s paper, I can see there are plenty of sources critiquing it. Zenomonoz (talk) 20:49, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m well aware of other criticisms of his thesis, which are largely in popular science books (e.g. Adam Rutherford, Angela Saini), the media (already cited in the article), or short one to two paragraph discusses of one particular aspect of their thesis or another. The Ferguson paper is the criticism with the most direct and expansive focus (being a 40+ page paper directly focused on dismantling the claims made by Cochran, Hardy, Harpending) on their WP:FRINGE theory. It would not be WP:DUE weight to describe the entire theory as proposed by them, but only provide academic sources that criticize specific aspects of their theory, instead of the theory in whole. Katzrockso (talk) 20:57, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Ferguson being the most substantial critique, I’ll have to take your word for it. However, you’ve used it to a support a single sentence on culture – which could easily be substituted with a published source. Zenomonoz (talk) 21:14, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It was supporting two sentences, one about population bottlenecks and drift. This is important because the core of the NHAI is that sphlingoliphoid disease are linked to IQ and underwent divergent selection in Ashkenazi populations. Cochran et al’s main justification for the theory is to explain why these diseases retain a high frequency in Ashkenazi Jewish populations despite their obviously deleterious effect, pointing to adaptation as an explanation. That population history and genetic drift provide alternative explanations defuses this motivation for the theory in the first place.

I only added two sentences because there were already so many citations there. I could have (and should have) added the Ferguson citation to just about every other sentence, but that was superfluous.

Cochran et al make numerous claims in their paper and almost every single one was either already known to be false by the time of their publication or has been proven wrong since then. Unfortunately, most of the findings that refute their claims have not been raised by most authors in their criticisms. For example, Ferguson is the only author I have found that points out that the sphlingoliphoid disorders Cochran et al cite don’t even have an unequivocal positive relationship with IQ, there are a number of studies that produce negative or negligible associations. If we were to try to explain how these claims are wrong, we would be forced to otherwise rely on WP:SYNTH, which is even more undesirable.

Our current exposition of the theory is completely WP:UNDUE as it describes the theory on its scientific merits and then largely lists the criticisms in terms of moral evaluations (e.g. Gilman’s criticism connecting the portrayal of Jews to previous tropes, Adam Shapiro’s criticism of Stepehn’s citation of Cochran as an co-option of white supremacy) rather than any of the scientific demerits the theory possesses. Other than short mentions in some population genetic studies (e.g. Bray et al 2010 [Signatures of founder effects, admixture, andselection in the Ashkenazi Jewish population]), references to the theory in the broader sense of discussing debunked race intelligence theories (e.g. Chad & Brym 2020) or short criticisms from researchers in the press (e.g. what’s already cited in the article), there aren’t many sources that dissect the individual claims made in the article. Katzrockso (talk) 10:58, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The justification for using Ferguson to rebut Cochran (both are anthropologists as are the coauthors so apologies for being unclear on that in my edit summary) would be WP:PARITY. But it doesn’t meet the criteria outlined. That guideline suggests, if a notable fringe theory is primarily described by amateurs and self-published texts, verifiable and reliable criticism of the fringe theory need not be published in a peer-reviewed journal That isn’t the case here. Contrary to your argument, Journal of Biosocial Science is a real journal.[2] Andre🚐 21:11, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It is a “real journal”, but it is an unreliable journal of the likes described in WP:FRINGE. Katzrockso (talk) 21:14, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No evidence of that. Andre🚐 21:15, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See [3] for an explanation, but a journal that publishes WP:FRINGE science like this and Satoshi Kanazawa’s fringe ‘research’ is not reliable. Katzrockso (talk) 21:23, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure why you are citing Michael Woodley as a source (was that a mistake?). I’d say a journal publishing a single paper by Kanazawa does not make the entire journal fringe. Some journals employ broader ‘academic freedom’ principles than others (and there is going to be more ‘leeway’ in psychology, than in a field like medicine). Cambridge is still a reliable publisher, and we can evaluate individual fringe theories on Wikipedia because they are covered in other secondary sources. Zenomonoz (talk) 21:27, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

sorry it’s the wrong paper, it was supposed to be the Kevin Bird paper Woodley is replying to [4]. Katzrockso (talk) 22:05, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Either way, it hardly seems clear that it is a consensus or even a preponderance of RS stating that a) the journal as a whole is fringe, or b) that even the paper itself is widely regarded as fringe. If either a or b is the case we should be able to find RS stating that. I understand this to be a more complex issue. There is a debate in mainstream science whether intelligence is tied to heredity, or whether it is more environmental. While there may be more people nowadays that believe the latter, that doesn’t mean the former is fringe, it could be a minority view that is simply on the outs. And I don’t agree with the kneejerk response that any investigation of the heredity of intelligence is race science or scientific racism. It isn’t necessarily the consensus that it is either, though we can certainly cover those who say that it is in due weight and attribution. And there should be better sources saying that, as it pertains to whether the entirety of the journal or the Cochran papers are fringe such that they may have PARITY apply an SPS. Andre🚐 23:27, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The consensus on Wikipedia is that theories that propose race is genetically linked with intelligence are WP:FRINGE.

You are conflating the issue of the relative contribution of genes and environments to intelligence, with the issue of whether genetics contributes to alleged racial differences in intelligence. The former is well-defined and has substantial scientific debate, the latter is not and is a WP:FRINGE view. Katzrockso (talk) 10:39, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]