Talk:UK study claims men have higher average I.Q. than women

Alright, I focused on the Pinker vs. Spelke aspect because, on such matters, their debate is by far the most informative thing on the internet, and anyone who cares should read/see it. No doubt, someone else will wish to expand the first paragraph slightly before publishing. Due to lack of a preprint of the article, I was forced to present the standard objections to the study as hypotheticals. -- 134.214.102.33 16:03, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Oops, forgot to login to write it.  :) -- Nyarlathotep 16:07, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Women "unsuitable"?

It is not true that Summers "suggested that women were unsuitable as scientific researchers." He never came close to that. He didn't even "suggest" that women are less suitable. Instead he suggested the possibility that one factor causing women to be less accomplished, prominent or advanced in academic rank on average could be an inherent average inferiority in certain salient cognitive abilities and that this is worthy of scientific exploration. At the time he said this he also said he was being provocative. I think that meant that he knew this was a touchy and politically charged area and that he thought it a good idea to encourage free discussion and reduce the chilling effect of the current "liberal" tendency to deny that there may actually be meaningful differences between groups of people who currently face unfair discrimination. Summers spent more political capital than he anticipated on making his remarks and triggered severe personal attacks on his presidency of Harvard. The current wording of the Wikinews article misrepresents Summers' position and is inflammatory. Taken literally, it has him suggesting that no woman should be employed in scientific research because all women are "unsuitable" (whatever unsuitable means). In a news article, "suggested" tends to imply "posited" or "asserted", as if merely raising an idea is equivalent not only to endorsing but even to promoting it. That may, indeed be the way the politicians work, but this article is about a scientific study published in a high-quality peer-reviewed journal and Wikinews should not contribute to the angry misinterpretations and exaggerations that are likely to explode in popular news media. I'd rather not tinker with the article without first reading the source material, but I hope whoever wrote about Summers (Nyarlathotep ?) repairs the defect quickly. Mpulier 09:40, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

• fixed Nyarlathotep 10:24, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia

Ho do I make external reference links which are not sources? Nyarlathotep 10:29, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

If you would like to link to Wikipedia just use: [[w:Wikipedia Article|link text]]. If you want to add external links or references, just add a ==External references== or ==External links== section. --Dčabrilo 10:55, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Strengths

StuRat, I appreciate that you fear "male strengths" is biased, but I feel your sentence "Tests devised by females would be more likely to emphasize female strengths, such as communication skills." paints females strengths as "not intelligence". Females are also better at computation, so I'll switch it to that. Sadly, computation does not truly strike me as intelligence either. I wish some researcher would popularize a female strength which was undeniably intelligence. Linguistic thought? Algebra? Or even just ame these nebulous "female spacial skills" which they always talk about. For now, I'll be happy with the fact that "rotation and visualization" don't sound much like intelligence either. Spelke doesn't believe any of these gifts have much bearing on intelligence per se. I'm not sure Pinker feels they mater either, but he does feel they have bearing on early life choices. Maybe keeping girls in an all girl class allows them to "use and transcend" their gifts; in the same way that males are able to do in a mixed gender class. - Nyarlathotep 21:13, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

UNACCEPTABLE

This article should not exist. You are fanning the flames of sexism, and it makes me sick. If the KKK announced a new 'study' that said that white people are superior, they would be ignored. We will not tolerate this crap! We made Harvard change their sexist ways! Shame on all of you for hyping some 'scientific' study! This is not science, it's sexism!

Ah well. Have a cup of tea. Dan100 (Talk) 21:28, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

More geniuses and more idiots

From the article: As a result, Stephen Pinker suggests that one should find "more geniuses and more idiots" among human males (see Pinker slide 41). As a consequence, any omission of people at the lower end of the IQ spectrum would bias the average male IQ upward.

This statement is somewhat misleading: it's obvious that omitting samples below the (previous) average will increase the (new) average. What's significant, though, is that people with an IQ less than [???] are perhaps more likely to be excluded from a scientific study. (It's highly unlikely that severely mentally impaired persons are included, for example). This in turn, would increase the estimated male average.

It should also be mentioned that this effect has nothing to do with the study's claims regarding relative amount of people with IQ higher than [???].

-- Woseph 08:09, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

• It has a lot to do with the studies claims about high IQ people, as the study isn't as scientifically interesting if such claims just follow from the bell curve. The authors just gave the newspapers some inflamator soundbites, they didn't say if these soundbites were just the ordinary statistical conclusions you expect. It should also be mentioned that small biases in the IQ test would magnify at the higer intelligences. Nyarlathotep 17:48, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

• Do you mean that omitting people with IQ less than [something] has a lot to do with the study's claims regarding high-IQ people? I don't see why: if you want to make claims about high-IQ people (such as comparing men and women), you are free to ignore low-IQ people. It's true that, assuming a Gaussian or just an eventually decreasing distribution, a difference in average IQ itself implies a difference in relative amount of people with IQ higher than [something sufficiently large]. However the argument in the article, as I read it, tried to explain why the true average IQ for men and women might very well be the same (without making a statement about the variance). -- Woseph 19:36:21, 2005-08-28 (UTC)

• What article? The debate?

• The article this talk page is about, and with "the argument in the article" I meant the quote at the start of this section ("As a result, ..."). The argument was made better (stronger) with the addition you just recently made, but it might still not be clear to the reader why low-IQ people would be omitted in the first place. -- Woseph 16:04:24, 2005-08-29 (UTC)

New title

I agree that equating "I.Q." with "intelligence" can be considered incorrect/controversial (despite the definition of "I.Q."). However, the new title UK study claims men have higher average I.Q. than women only describes "half" of the study: it doesn't mention that there's a higher degree of men with IQ higher than 125 and 155. How about: UK study claims men have higher I.Q. than women, which at the cost of being somewhat imprecise doesn't neglect part of the study. -- Woseph 15:53:31, 2005-08-28 (UTC)