[jraph]

Why?

It's not making an argument, it's describing. And describing is not taking action.

[edit] about describing truth or evidences: we need that. Of course it all depends on how you present the truth, whether you are actually doing pseudoscience or not, whether you are manipulating concepts that are actually scientific or not, and whether you are conflating correlation with causation or not.

[david-gpu]

Are you familiar with the controversy around a book titled "The Bell Curve"?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve

[fatbird]

The Bell Curve wasn't simply descriptive. It contained "policy implications based on these purported connections [between IQ and race]." It opened by saying that if you want to hire good employees, you should hire by IQ... and then connected IQ to race, implying that racial discrimination is justified. On examination, many of the sources were directly tied to white supremacist organizations.

The Bell Curve is a singularly poor example of a scientific description of the status quo attracting unfair attacks.

[jraph]

No, but there's a title "Lack of peer review" in your link.

This doesn't look like science.

There a lot of pseudoscience around IQ too, probably starting with the very concept of IQ for measuring "intelligence" (for which we would need a strong definition anyway)

[joenot443]

There are plenty of very real issues with Murray and The Bell Curve, but to say IQ is pseudoscience is a ridiculous claim.

[jraph]

> to say IQ is pseudoscience is a ridiculous claim

Is this claim really ridiculous? A quick search yields convincing results that hints at scientists questioning the concept:

- https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121219133334.h... "Scientists debunk the IQ myth: Notion of measuring one's intelligence quotient by singular, standardized test is highly misleading"

- https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/iq-tests-are-fund... "IQ tests are 'fundamentally flawed' and using them alone to measure intelligence is a 'fallacy', study finds"

There are many things wrong with how IQ is tested, and even how the whole notion was born.

(note that between my comment and yours, I had edited that sentence a bit, it's not worded as strongly now - this is because I don't doubt much that IQ was scientifically researched, so saying IQ is pseudoscience may indeed a bit far-fetched, but I still think the whole notion is quite broken)

[busterarm]

IQ tests are not and have never been intended to measure intelligence. They're intended to be a measure of potential.

The fact that those articles got it wrong from the basic definitions should indicate there is a problem with the interpretation. If you look at the actual first study link, for example, it doesn't debunk IQ but highlights logistical problems of pen & paper testing and sample size. What they then do is present an alternative measurement based on brain scans. They also do this intentionally to avoid controversial questions of heritability, race and gender that people associate with IQ measurement, as laid out by their introduction.

[jraph]

I assume you are referring to:

> The results question the validity of controversial studies of intelligence based on IQ tests which have drawn links between intellectual ability race, gender and social class and led to highly contentious claims that some groups of people are inherently less intelligent that other groups.

I read this as "These studies measuring intelligence using IQ which have drawn links between intellectual ability, race, gender and social class are shit and we prove it".

This is at the opposite of what you are writing. It's not at all avoiding controversies. It's debunking, basically.

You are being downvoted and flagged elsewhere because you are wrong, not because one can't describe "controversial" truth.

[zahlman]

> Is this claim really ridiculous?

Yes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)

[tptacek]

Cosma Shalizi has a piece about how if you aggregate any similar set of tests, even if they're meaningless, even if you literally generate them at random, you will get a "g"; it's like pointing out that a nonsingular matrix has an inverse.

http://bactra.org/weblog/523.html

[jraph]

How should I use your link to reach this conclusion despite the tracks I gave?

(also note that "ridiculous" is quite strong and disrespectful)

[david-gpu]

> No, but there's a title "Lack of peer review" in your link.

You are moving the goalposts.

Earlier you said:

> It's not making an argument, it's describing. And describing is not taking action.

The example I provided shows how describing alone is enough to be accused of being an eugenicist. Rightly or wrongly, doesn't matter.

[jraph]

Fine, something not peer reviewed, crippled with fallacies posing as scientific material which describes falsehoods gets heavily criticized. This looks good to me. There are ways to reap storm by describing something false and by not doing one's homework, yes, I'm willing to believe this. Note that I was speaking about describing truth (implicit in the first paragraph, explicit in the second).

I'm not willing to engage further, our last argument two weeks ago [1] didn't end well and history seems to repeat itself. This won't lead to an interesting discussion.

edit: like last time, you could have stated your point instead of asking a loaded question and make me do your homework.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41338751#41356028