Talk:Flynn effect

Training

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 ?

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)

Disputed content

I invite Publius Obsequium to discuss the disputed content they would like to add here as required by WP:ONUS. First they added this content, sourced to transparently WP:PROFRINGE source Satoshi Kanazawa. I reverted the edit as PROFRINGE. Publius Obsequium then reverted my revert with the summary peer reviewed and published meta analyses are not "fringe". This fundamentally misunderstands how we evaluate sources here. 1) We most certainly do evaluate individual authors when evaluating source quality. 2) Any fool can publish a meta-analysis, and that meta-analysis can be tainted by methodological biases in the same way as any study. We do look for meta-analyses because they are WP:SECONDARY, but we do not blindly accept any and all secondary sources. 3) The journal Intelligence has a well-known history of publishing pseudoscience when it relates (as this topic does) to the race and intelligence topic area.

Publius Obsequium subsequently changed the citation to a different paper by Jan te Nijenhuis, but the other considerations remain the same. Generalrelative (talk) 15:48, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Hi Generalrelative, yes I did you Satoshi, however that was a mistake on my part, which I have now corrected. Secondly, the journal Intelligence is a reputable journal that is cited multiple times in this article. So why are those references allowed but this one is not? Please clarify. Publius Obsequium (talk) 15:53, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Simply put, we need to consider anything published in Intelligence on this topic as though it were WP:SPS. Jan te Nijenhuis appears to also be a member of the tiny fringe group of race pseudoscientists who contribute to Mankind Quarterly. We can certainly discuss the relation of the Flynn effect to g but we will need to rely on mainstream sources to do so. Generalrelative (talk) 16:00, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Can you provide a source on Jan Te Nijenhuis being associated with Mankind Quarterly? I see nothing on his wiki page about that. Publius Obsequium (talk) 17:02, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

I suggest Googling "Jan te Nijenhuis Mankind Quarterly". Generalrelative (talk) 22:17, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

3) Have any notable experts in the field of intelligence research actually characterised Intelligence as a vessel of pseudoscience in this area? I've seen the 'well-known history of publishing pseudoscience on race and intelligence' accusation made on several occasions (granted, by the same one or two editors) but from the looks of it that accusation is being supported by a journalistic piece in a progressive political magazine and another in a pop-sci magazine.

The bar for excluding a highly regarded journal as a source has to be set far higher than the assessment of two non-expert journalists. Elisha'o'Mine (talk) 21:51, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Disputed edit

I invite Biohistorian15 to discuss their disputed edit [1][2] here. My contention is that this edit contains clear WP:PROFRINGE changes, hidden amongst uncontroversial edits. These PROFRINGE edits include (but are not limited to):

1. Removal of the "Fringe section" tag pertaining to references written by J. Philippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen on the topic of Race and intelligence;
2. Adding a substantive discussion of the views of fringe scientific racist Michael A. Woodley of Menie, misleadingly characterizing this person with a degree in plant biology as a "behavioral ecologist";
3. Changing the section header "Possible end of progression" to "Observed end of progression" and adding a "Further reading" header to that section linking to the articles Fertility and intelligence and Dysgenics, using WP:SYNTH to imply a connection;
4. Using a low-quality secondary source (WP:MDPI) to attempt to legitimize the discredited ideas of Richard Lynn (in a rather unreadable and poorly formatted way):

   Common explanations, however, also go along hereditarian lines, wherein Sundet considers in careful reference to Richard Lynn's work on "so-called dysgenic trends", wherein:

   [n]on-zero heritability combined with negative correlations between sibship size and IQ may deflate IQ means in a population. This may happen because parents with low IQ’s tend to have larger families than high-IQ parents.

   ;
5. Adding Hereditarianism to the "See also" of the "IQ group differences" section, which misleadingly conflates mainstream hereditarianism (the belief that many behavioral traits are strongly heritable) with racial hereditarianism, i.e. the fringe beliefs of Lynn and his ilk that there are behavioral differences between races that are explained by differing genetic inheritances).

Other problems with this edit include a WP:SYNTH textbox on Goodhart's Law without any explicit citation linking it to the topic at hand.

This user free to add back uncontroversial edits one at a time so they can be evaluated separately. Generalrelative (talk) 04:46, 23 July 2024 (UTC) Generalrelative (talk) 04:46, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

• 1. See my edit summary...
• 2. Rm that title; although he has published in the field.
• 3. "Observed" isn't exactly conclusive either. But rm if need be + make it a "see also" template, but it is not WP:Synth if it's in the section. The connection is furthermore absolutely obvious.
• 4. I really have no idea what you're referring to (which journal?) + rewrote that sentence anyway.
• 5. Put it back in the "See also".

Biohistorian15 (talk) 04:56, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Correction: I see which journal you mean now. I'll look into it later today. Biohistorian15 (talk) 05:40, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with most of Generalrelative's concerns and have some additional ones of my own. It was trivial to find sources directly connecting air pollution to the fluctuation in the Flynn effect; and "observed" is definitely not an improvement for something that the data is inconsistent on (since it implies that a definite and decisive end has been observed, which none of the sources support.) I think you're giving Sundet too much weight. More generally, this is a highly-controversial article on an extremely controversial topic that touches on numerous WP:FRINGE figures and fringe ideas; it's probably best to move more slowly with such drastic rewrites and focus on one thing at a time rather than trying to force through so many controversial changes at once.--Aquillion (talk) 06:18, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

References