Talk:Flynn effect

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Training[edit]

Could it be that more and more people are getting training in doing in doing IQ tests? I read somewhere that there is a noticeable increase in the result from the 1st test you take to the 3rd one. Probably you learn to think like the test or something. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.224.96.198 (talk • contribs) 13:44, 14 May 2004

I think that is true, people are learning the way of the tests. Once I came across the following question. Which one is the odd one out: Train, Plane, Steamboat, Car, Bus. Ok, Trains can only move on tracks, Planes can move in 3 dimensions, steamboats move in water, cars are small and buses have commercials all over them. So which one is it? In the end it was the car, but with no explanation. But after a few of these you can probably figure out what the test writers were thinking. I guess people are figuring out the mindset of the people who made the tests. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.39.143.47 (talk • contribs) 08:54, 16 May 2004

Remember, this is not an effect of the same people retaking the test, but changes in the average scores in a population across generations. I.E. If the 18 year olds averaged 100 on a test in 1948, the 18 year olds now might average 128 on the same test. Now perhaps we are all exposed to more testing, but remember, this effect has occured dramatically in even the last 20 years. Has the average persons exposure to standardized IQ tests changed that much since 1985? It's a puzzle... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.34.133.19 (talk • contribs) 03:27, 27 April 2005

On the question above, I think it'd be the car, because it is the only one that you yourself are in control of. I don't know about exposure to IQ tests (I think I've taken two or so...) but standardized testing itself has exploded, with many students taking multiple AP, SAT I/II, ACT and even graduation tests in only four years. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Finnegar (talk • contribs) 23:40, 24 January 2007

This, to me, is the greatest weakness of any IQ test which includes this sort of question. As a mathematician will tell you, there are an infinite number of ways to describe any finite series. More broadly, questions along the lines of "which doesn't belong," or "which is the next in the sequence," unless they are so simple as to be nondeterminitive, don't have "right" answers. Even the "best" answer is often considerably more subjective than the author of the test may think it is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.194.183.199 (talk • contribs) 16:08, 8 July 2007

Original research ?[edit]

I don't know if it has been emphasized by some scientist(s) but IMO :

- the expense in education in many third-world countries were considerable (I have no serious datas yet),

- the progress in communications is simply incredible : It's not a secret on Wikipedia that I spent some time in Burkina Faso around 1986. In 14 month I could phone my mother once! Just click on http://www.cenatrin.bf/ to verify that the volume of information you can exchange has increased. --Ericd 20:36, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Fringe theories tag: Inclusion of references written by Richard Lynn[edit]

As per the Richard Lynn biography article, specifically content in article about reverse Flynn effect and dysgenics. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 08:20, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Earl B. Hunt noted that research on family size effects on IQ, specifically children raised in smaller families having higher IQs than children raised in larger families, had been empirically established (though not its cause). (Hunt 2011 pp. 291–295) -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 08:25, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's not clear which theories this is referring to. The references to Lynn in the article are sparse and not particularly fringe. An argument could be made for tagging the nutrition section, but not the entire article. Removed. 99.152.115.208 (talk) 23:45, 28 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It was clear if you read carefully. The article had cited Lynn's recent work credulously, including collaborations with Edward Dutton. I've removed them. Our mention of Lynn's 1982 publication in Nature, which simply states that he found gains in IQ among the population of Japan, is fine and should remain. The rest was WP:PROFRINGE. Generalrelative (talk) 04:39, 29 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Generalrelative. I’m very grateful to editors such as yourself who graciously take time out of your day to review references and content about topics like this. I’ve restored the fringe theories tag per a the subsequent talk page section. Would you mind taking a look at the J. Philippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen references that have been included in the Intelligence subsection? It is unclear to me why they are included there at all given the Wikipedia articles about both. — CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 05:44, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Fringe theories tag: Inclusion of references written by J. Philippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen[edit]

Given the Wikipedia articles about J. Philippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen. — CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 05:37, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be okay with putting this in any sections where Jensen or Rushton are cited uncritically, but it doesn't need to be in the article header. Generalrelative (talk) 06:37, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I went and added the section tag. Feel free to edit the "Intelligence" section to bring it into line with NPOV, which would of course be preferable to leaving a tag in place. Generalrelative (talk) 07:04, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but have you bothered to read Rushton's article? His conclusion is:

"Heritable g is at the core of the debate over how much the mean Black–White gap in IQ and school achievement is due to the genes rather than to the environment, and therefore, how much it can be expected to narrow. While g and genetic estimates correlate significantly positively with Black–White differences 0.61 and 0.48 (P b 0.001), they correlate significantly negatively (or not at all) with the secular gains (r = −0.33; P b 0.001) and 0.13 (ns). Similarly, g loadings and heritabilities from the items of the Raven Matrices correlate significantly positively with each other and with Black–White differences (mean r = 0.74, P b 0.01). Although the secular gains are on g-loaded tests (such as the Wechsler), they are negatively correlated with the most g-loaded components of those tests. Tests lose their g loadedness over time as the result of training, retesting, and familiarity"

I can translate it for you if you don't understand it. Rushton concluded that, whereas Blacks demonstrate much lower results than Whites, they improve much faster, which means that tests reflect not inborn general intelligence, but a degree of overall training. That is completely in agreement with the general idea of this article.

What exactly is "fringe" in this theory? Do you really find the statement that, in the past, Blacks showed a significantly lower results in IQ tests, that the White-Black gap has significantly narrowed since then, and it is quite likely that it will disappear in close future? Do you seriously disagree that the Black-White gap is most likely not due to the actual difference in inherited intelligence, but is a result of some flaw in the test procedure? Please, explain.

In addition, the Rushton's article was cited 92 times, and I checked briefly some of the works that cites it. Thus, this publication says that "public controversy has continued with debates over intelligence research by Richard Herrnstein, Charles Murray, Philippe Rushton, Helmuth Nyborg, Richard Lynn, and many others (e.g., Gould, 1981; Nyborg, 2003).", however, fringe theories are not a subject of public controversy. Flat Earth is not a subject of public controversy, it is a subject of interest of a small group of freaks.

Furthermore, Rindermann cites the Rushton's finding without any criticism. It says:

"It is worth noting that gaps on achievement and IQ tests have been narrowing over the last few decades. For example, the gap between US White and Black students in NAEP was around 16 IQ points (favoring Whites) in the early 1970s and declined to 10 IQ points in the late 1980s (Rindermann & Thompson, 2013; Rushton & Jensen, 2010, their Fig. 3)."

Another article from this list [1] also cited Rushton without any criticism. I haven't checked all of them (do it if you want), I just picked two articles randomly, but it seems clear that the work that is being cited so many times without a clear and unanimous criticism is not fringe.

I have no idea what the article about Rushton says (and I am not going to dive into that), but Wikipedia is not a RS, per our own policy.

Please, provide any reasonable arguments, in support for the template, otherwise I am going to remove it in close future. Paul Siebert (talk) 23:35, 2 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be happy to remove the template, provided that the paragraph is brought into compliance with WP:FRIND. The issue is not so much your unfamiliarity with the Wikipedia article on Rushton as with your unfamiliarity with the general state of scholarship on this topic (so please can the "I can translate it if you don't understand it" nonsense). You also happen to be wrong about what Rushton is arguing, though this is immaterial really: he's saying that tests which are more g-loaded show less improvement over time –– i.e. the more the tests are testing for "real intelligence" the more the Black-White gap is seen to be enduring and therefore likely due to genetic as opposed to environmental factors –– a finding which Flynn himself later showed to be false. If you want to know why Rushton is considered fringe when commenting on matters related to race and intelligence, and specifically with regard to the question of whether group-level differences in IQ test performance have a genetic basis, you really need to at the very least read through last year's WP:SNOW-closed RfC on the matter: Talk:Race and intelligence/Archive 103#On Consensus About Heritability of IQ. Rindermann, Murray, Lynn etc. are part of a walled garden whose work is considered fringe by essentially all mainstream geneticists, who are the relevant experts on heritability. Again, read through the RfC for sources. This is not the place for it to be relitigated. Generalrelative (talk) 00:57, 3 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

My "I can translate it if you don't understand it" was addressed not to you. I was somewhat irritated that no rational arguments were proposed in the original post except Rushton's personality.

The hereditability of intelligence is a quite separate issue. I don't see how the works by Rushton that is cited in this section supports the idea that the Black-White difference in IQ score is due to genetics. I would say it says quite the opposite. Do you mean I am wrong? Paul Siebert (talk) 01:18, 3 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the clarification. I apologize for getting miffed about it. But yes, I do think that your translation above is incorrect. Rushton is here arguing that the more a test is g-loaded (which is his way of saying "testing for real intelligence") the more the Black-White gap can be shown to be enduring and therefore likely due to genetic as opposed to environmental factors. This is referred to as Spearman's Hypothesis, and Rushton is criticizing Flynn on the basis of work which he believes verifies this hypothesis. Which is entirely consistent with his life-long goal of proving Black intellectual inferiority. That's not just my opinion; it's how reliable secondary sources universally describe his project. Sure, he had a terrible personality, but he was also a terrible scientist. Generalrelative (talk) 01:30, 3 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, yes. You are right. Paul Siebert (talk) 15:45, 3 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Based on the discussion above I've removed the citations to Rushton and Jensen. These white supremacist sources have no place on Wikipedia. Sovkhozniki (talk) 23:57, 8 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]