1,000
1.00I think the title of this market is a little inflammatory and based on a false premise about what the wikipedia article actually claims (as of 10 July 2023). There is no unambiguous claim in the "Race and intelligence" article that says "there is a scientific consensus for 0% genetic causation"; there are claims that could be taken to mean that. They are (perhaps deliberately) ambiguous and in general, I think it confuses rather than clarifies to assert that an ambiguous claim someone else made was intended to mean something very specific without evidence for that.
Here are the two claims in the article I found that that come the closest:
(1)
> the scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain differences in IQ test performance between groups, and that observed differences are environmental in origin
It certainly could mean "there is a scientific consensus for 0% genetic causation" but it could be interpreted in other ways, too. The ambiguity is the word "explain"--when you say genetics don't explain population variance in some phenotypical outcome, do you mean they don't explain any of the variance of that outcome, or that they aren't the most important explanation, or they don't explain all of it?
(2)
> the scientific consensus is that there is no evidence for a genetic component behind IQ differences between racial groups
As they say, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", and so a claim that there is no evidence for a genetic component is not equivalent to a claim that the genetic component does not exist. The same goes for the characterizing the "scientific consensus" as endorsing either of those claims.
I think it's worthwhile for this topic to be explored, and this comment should not be taken as an endorsement of moderator intervention. But I'd prefer a slightly different wording for the reasons given above.
If they wanted to hedge they could have added percentages or qualifiers like “mostly”. The statement #1 taken literally means 100% environment 0% genetic. I think it is intended to be interpreted that way by laypeople, while giving the source of the statement a bit of plausible deniability about lying. This is very common comms strategy in popular coverage of politically inconvenient science.
@JonathanRay yes you are right. In light of the second part of the first statement, which I should have read more carefully, I think I was both wrong and too harsh on OP. Sorry OP. I still think it would be better to keep close to the original wording.
@Milli Why. Wikipedia is very popular, has existed for many years now and has lots of money why would it go? Maybe the article goes but expect it to be still around.
@Elspeth That would not be a clarification, that would be a significant change to the current resolution criteria.
@IsaacKing The common reading would interpret "falsely" as a non-restrictive adjective, whereas the literal reading would interpret it as a restrictive adjective. Removing the word would simply bring the literal reading in line with the common reading.
Buying Yes, because it's been stable for a couple of years, ever since this dumb RFC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard/Archive_70#RfC_on_race_and_intelligence
Claim 1: There is not a scientific consensus that measured test score gaps between groups are 100% environmental in origin
Claim 2: Wikipedia currently contradicts claim 1 (is lying for political reasons)
Claim 3: The probability of claim 1 actually becoming false by 2030 is extremely small.
Therefore this question is basically on whether Wikipedia will debias itself enough to admit claim 1 by 2030.
@IsaacKing It resolves NO.
To resolve YES, wikipedia has to be falsely claiming not-Claim1 in 2030. So if Claim1 actually becomes false, then this question resolves NO.
The statement in question (I think): "Today, the scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain differences in IQ test performance between groups, and that observed differences are environmental in origin."
So yeah, if that's the statement J is referring to, this market seems to clearly be about whether or not certain "racial groups" are more intelligent on average than others due to genetics, NOT about whether or not intelligence has any genetic component at all. J asserts that the former statement is true as an assumption of the question. Make of that what you will.
@MattP So Wikipedia claims "Today, the scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain differences in IQ test performance between groups, and that observed differences are environmental in origin."
And that's just misrepresenting the field, blatantly. Though, finding a non-censored take by experts is extremely difficult, and it can only be done anonymously. But you can click here to see a survey of experts from 2016. They report:
Education was rated by N = 71 experts as the most important cause of international ability differences. Genes were rated as the second most relevant factor but also had the highest variability in ratings. Culture, health, wealth, modernization, and politics were the next most important factors, whereas other factors such as geography, climate, test bias, and sampling error were less important.
This is just incompatible with Wikipedia's wording that "observed differences are environmental in origin". This implies that genes are negligible in explaining the gap. But genes were rated the second-most relevant factor, above culture, health, wealth modernization, politics, geography, climate, test bias, or sampling error.
So it's not really about whether the OP is assuming anything -- Wikipedia is straight up misrepresenting the field itself.
@Jotto999 there's an important distinction between these two statements:
1) Genes are one of the most important determining factors of any given person's intelligence.
2) Genetic differences between ethnic groups include not only skin color and other phenotypical variation, but also significant differences in average intelligence.
The first is noncontroversial. The second is controversial.
@MattP You concede "it's controversial", yet Wikipedia claims there's a consensus. Not sure how much more directly I could highlight the discrepancy!
@Treldman worth being precise here. The statement "intelligence has a genetic component, aka really smart people are likely on average to have smarter kids and vice versa" is almost certainly true.
The statement "the genetic component of intelligence differs on average across the so-called 'racial group' categories human society has invented" is an entirely different, much more controversial (to say the least) statement, and I have no idea if it's true or not (nor do I particularly care). That's the statement I would assume J is implying is true with this question, but it's actually entirely possible they're talking about the first statement, the more general one.
@MattP yeah, the way the question is formulated is far too vague IMO, and the lack of description doesn't help at all.
A few papers have been done polling scientists in the relevant fields, and none of those can even get a majority to agree to a 0% genetic contribution to group differences in IQ. I would count this as strong evidence against the existence of a scientific consensus for any reasonable definition of consensus.