Talk:Henry Harpending

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website[edit]

http://savageminds.org/2007/03/20/harpending-on-neo-liberal-genetics-so-so-wrong/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.168.47.9 (talk) 18:05, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Intelligence citations bibliography for updating this and other articles[edit]

You may find it helpful while reading or editing articles to look at a bibliography of Intelligence Citations, posted for the use of all Wikipedians who have occasion to edit articles on human intelligence and related issues. I happen to have circulating access to a huge academic research library at a university with an active research program in these issues (and to another library that is one of the ten largest public library systems in the United States) and have been researching these issues since 1989. You are welcome to use these citations for your own research. You can help other Wikipedians by suggesting new sources through comments on that page. It will be extremely helpful for articles on human intelligence to edit them according to the Wikipedia standards for reliable sources for medicine-related articles, as it is important to get these issues as well verified as possible. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 01:54, 14 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

NPOV tag[edit]

This article glosses over the fact that Harpending was a hugely controversial scientific racist. In fact, it doesn't contain in criticism of him at all. Joe Roe (talk) 10:36, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to cite this SPLC article. It should be included--Beneficii (talk) 20:05, 17 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Harpending was a known racist in his undergraduate years at Hamilton College. His freshman desk was stacked--end to end--with books about Nazis, Hitler, Nazi Germany, etc. This is attested by his freshman year roommate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.239.111.252 (talk) 00:15, 1 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Unless published sources attest to that it's not something we can include. Joe Roe (talk) 09:56, 1 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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SPLC stuff[edit]

I have removed the paragraph "Views on race" sourced entirely to the SPLC. Firstly, these things needs secondary sources: I don't see the SPLC's analysis cited anywhere. Secondly, these are rather inflammatory claims on a BLP and should not be given this much space. Third, I don't know if the SPLC has any expertise in genetics or anthropology, so their comments about his scholarship are rather beside the point. As far as I can see, Harpending's work is somewhat controversial but well within the mainstream. His work with Cochran has been cited many hundreds of times and his work generally many thousands of times. To call him a white supremacist and scientific racist etc. requires much stronger sourcing than this, especially on a BLP. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 07:47, 18 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The SPLC is a secondary source. It compiles existing information in a journalistic fashion and is a highly reliable authority on hate groups. Though in his long career he did produce a lot of legitimate science, Harpending's views on race (and Cochran's, for that matter) weren't mainstream anthropology: they were very much on the fringe, a relic of Coonian physical anthropology that was already dead and buried in the 1960s.
More sources would of course be nice, but I think the current version is very far from WP:UNDUE. All the criticism is in a neutrally titled sub-section making up less than a third of the article body, clearly attributes the assessment to the SPLC rather than stating it in Wikipedia's voice, and makes extensive use of direct quotes from Harpending so the reader can make up their own mind. It isn't even mentioned in the lead. Removing this section and returning to an article that completely glosses over Harpending's controversial views (see #NPOV tag above) is a big step backwards.
Also note that this isn't a BLP – Harpending died last year. – Joe (talk) 11:11, 18 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for correcting me on the BLP issue, I forgot that Harpending is dead. For the rest: A statement of the SPLC, sourced to SPLC is not a secondary source. A secondary source would be an independent source citing the SPLC's analysis. Do you have any evidence to show that Cochran and Harpending's work is not within the mainstream? I see 460 citations to one of their papers, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, on Google Scholar. The SPLC, I repeat, is not an authority on genetics or anthropology. Their area of focus is hate groups in the US. If there are secondary sources which cite the SPLC's analysis of Harpending's connections, alleged or otherwise, to white supremacist groups, I'd like to see it. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 13:36, 18 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
We use the SPLC this way in many articles. I don't think they are acting as experts on genetics or anthropology when they quote him, point out his attendance at conferences, etc. I can see reasons to cut this but not to delete it entirely, especially after finding this article on the paper he wrote with Gregory Cochran. "nd the fact that it did not meet the standards of traditional scientific scholarship, Harpending and Cochran’s paper attracted a barrage of criticism from mainstream geneticists, historians, and social scientists. “It’s bad science—not because it’s provocative, but because it’s bad genetics and bad epidemiology,” says Harry Ostrer, head of NYU’s human-genetics program." “I’d actually call the study bullshit,” says Sander Gilman, a historian at Emory University, “if I didn’t feel its idea were so insulting.” Doug Weller talk 10:58, 23 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Let me first make a general point, and then go into specifics.

This is a biography page, and if some person is controversial, it's worth including the controversy. No problems so far. However, Harpending is primarily known for his professional work, as evidenced by the thousands of citations to his work. What is not proper, in my opinion, is have a "Views on race" section, a third of the whole article, entirely negative in tone, by an organization with no capability or pretentions to evaluating his work. It is, in principle, possible to write a good summary of the controversies Harpending is involved in, but this paragraph isn't it. I'll now give more specific comments.

Regarding the SPLC: as I said, the SPLC's area of focus is hate groups in the US. What is the connection between Harpending and "white supremacist" groups? Very little, from what I can see: he once gave a talk at a conference called "Preserving Western Civilization". That's basically it. The SPLC charge Harpending with being an "eugenicist" and "scientific racist", but don't quote a single academic paper of his in the section "In his own words". Instead a blog post and a speech at the H. L. Mencken club are cited. I don't blame the SPLC (much) for this: their area of focus is hate groups and they are clearly out of their depth on matters of genetics or anthropology.

Harpending and Cochran's most controversial paper is Natural history of Ashkenazi intelligence. and their book The 10,000 Year Explosion. There have been many reviews of both in the scholarly as well as the popular press. The discussion in NY Mag is one, but there are many others. As the NY Mag source itself says:

Last summer, Henry Harpending, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Utah, and Gregory Cochran, an independent scholar with a flair for controversy, skipped cheerfully into the center of this minefield. The two shopped around a paper that tried to establish a genetic argument for the fabled intelligence of Jews. It contended that the diseases most commonly found in Ashkenazim—particularly the lysosomal storage diseases, like Tay-Sachs—were likely connected to and, indeed, in some sense responsible for outsize intellectual achievement in Ashkenazi Jews. The paper contained references, but no footnotes. It was not written in the genteel, dispassionate voice common to scientific inquiries but as a polemic. Its science was mainly conjecture. Most American academics expected the thing to drop like a stone.

It didn’t. The Journal of Biosocial Science, published by Cambridge University Press, posted it online and agreed to run it in its bi-monthly periodical sometime in 2006. The New York Times, The Economist, and several Jewish publications risked their reputations to legitimize it. Today, the paper has a lively presence on the Internet—type “Ashkenazi” into Google and the first hit is the Wikipedia entry, where the article gets pride of place.

Moreover, the paper has been cited 190 times on Google Scholar. Here is a Nature review of various academic papers on the matter. See Table 1 for the citation.

If one wants to discuss the paper and the book seriously (including criticism/controversy), I am all for it. The paragraph which I removed is not the way to go about it. I will try to write a summary of the arguments in the paper and/or book, and the reception given to them soon. However, it would require a bit more work than quoting the SPLC, so it will take some time. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 11:59, 23 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It would of course be great to expand the article with more information on Harpending's work and its reception, but what we're talking about here is you removing sourced material. The SPLC is an authoritative source on racism in America and the report is on the racist views of an American professor; it's not, and is not claiming to be, a work of anthropology or genetics. So I can't see a valid reason for us to exclude it as a source here. Publishing in Nature and being cited a lot does not preclude someone being a racist. And it doesn't matter if the SPLC didn't cite his papers – if Harpending said it he said it, it doesn't matter where.
Straying off topic a bit, the latter fact does give you an insight into the kind of person we're dealing with: in his scientific work Harpending was always careful to moderate his views (or maybe his coauthors moderated them for him). I can see how going from them alone you might get the impression that his views were mainstream-ish. It's only when you look up the talks and informal writing he did (for such luminaries as American Renaissance) that you see his true colours. Anthropologists know this but historically have been quite bad at confronting this aspect of the field out in the open. The SPLC did us a great service in publishing something about it. – Joe (talk) 12:36, 23 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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SPLC source[edit]

I mentioned in my edit summary here that mainstream sources have covered Harpending's work positively, so let me elaborate. Here is coverage in The New York Times, Here is The Economist, here is The New Republic, here is Scientific American, and here is The Financial Times. In almost every mainstream source to cover Harpending's work, and there are a lot, the coverage has been neutral or mildly positive. This includes sources written by experts in the field (the New Statesman article was written by Steven Pinker).

Now, compare the perspective taken by these mainstream sources to the one taken by the SPLC. The SPLC clearly is in the minority here, and it is grossly undue weight for it to dominate the coverage of how Harpending's work has been received. Perhaps what we ought to be doing is adding some of the other sources I've linked above, to show how overwhelmingly mainstream opinion disagrees with the SPLC in this case.

@Joe Roe: Would you prefer that we add some of these other sources, instead of reducing the SPLC summary? 2600:1004:B14F:4062:3C9A:777A:2A66:C1A2 (talk) 18:58, 21 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at this discussion, it appears that user:Kingsindian made a similar proposal two years ago, but never followed through with it. I'd say it's time to go ahead with what he proposed, unless you would be okay with reducing the SPLC summary, which is an easier solution. 2600:1004:B14F:4062:3C9A:777A:2A66:C1A2 (talk) 19:05, 21 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You're comparing apples to oranges. The section isn't about the reception of Harpending's work. He was a noted scholar who wrote many well-received works of anthropology (although the pseudoscientific 10,000 Year Explosion is far from the best example).
He was also a racist. This is amply substantiated by the SPLC source. The article needs to cover both these aspects of Harpending's biography to comply with WP:NPOV. – Joe (talk) 19:08, 21 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
In its current form, the article doesn't cover the broader reception of Harpending's work at all, aside from what the SPLC thinks of it (which is part of its reception). In order to comply with NPOV, that needs to be changed. It sounds as though you agree with this, if you think the article needs to cover both aspects of his work.
In the earlier discussion, you said, "It would of course be great to expand the article with more information on Harpending's work and its reception". What I propose is to expand that section into a broader discussion about the reception of Harpending's work, including The New York Times, Steven Pinker, etc., in addition to the SPLC. Would you accept that course of action? 2600:1004:B15E:6F81:A58D:B8ED:2D16:4E2E (talk) 19:44, 21 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, more sourced material is never a bad thing.
But the SPLC source is not a review of his work. Material on the reception of his work doesn't belong in the "Views on race" section, which should be retained. Also, it's better to focus on reviews and discussions in academic literature, rather than popular media. – Joe (talk) 08:36, 22 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad we're agreed on adding more material about the reception of Harpending's work, but I think it should be in the same section as the SPLC material, not a different section. It's inconsistent with NPOV to have a section devoted entirely to the SPLC's opinion, because the SPLC's interpretation of Harpending's work is just one opinion among many, and the SPLC is a controversial organization.
There was a discussion about the SPLC at the reliable sources noticeboard a year ago. [1] That discussion did not reach a consensus about whether the SPLC is a reliable source or not, but this discussion makes it very clear how much criticism they have faced for their opinions. In that discussion Guy Macon posted a list of twenty sources arguing that the SPLC's opinions can no longer be regarded as credible. Here are a few more: The Washington Post, National Review, New York Post, New Yorker. (Note that this criticism is coming from both left-leaning and right-leaning sources.) Even if you don't agree with the arguments presented by these sources, and by the twenty others that were posted in the RSN discussion, can we at least agree that when an organization is this controversial, its views should not be presented as definitive? 2600:1004:B15B:AB39:55E1:EB6A:2E2:188F (talk) 12:30, 22 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The articles you linked are mostly about the SPLC's finances and working practices, not its status as an authority on racism in the USA (which is well-established and mentioned by many of the same sources). And as you say, the RSN discussion was inclusive. So no, I don't think it's an unreliable source here. If you look, by the way, there are other sources that say the same things about Harpending's views on race. SPLC is just the most detailed and useful.
Why don't you write what you want to add and we'll go from there? NPOV requires us to represent all significant views. The view that Harpending was a racist is a significant one. Where we present those views is a matter of editorial judgement and doesn't boil down to "all the views in all the sections". – Joe (talk) 12:44, 22 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I'll write up an expanded version of that section, including both the SPLC and other sources, and add it to the article soon. This will require some research, but I'll try to get it done this week. 2600:1004:B166:1382:F1C4:1C4C:FDE:7683 (talk) 13:02, 22 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Consensus is still that we can use the SPLC, generally making sure we attribute it. This isn't the place to renegotiate it. And please be careful about attribution. Eg the Washington Post didn't criticise the SPLC as you suggest, that's just an opinion piece by Marc Thiessen. The New York Post didn't either, the editor of the National Review Rich Lowry wrote an opinion piece for it. So no, I don't see the left-leaning sources, only newspapers which offer columnists of various political persuasions to write opinion pieces. Doug Weller talk 14:11, 22 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Joe Roe: sorry for taking so long to get this done. As per our discussion here, and your earlier discussion with Kingsindian, I've added some more detail about the broader impact and reception of Harpending's work. Something I was repeatedly struck by while researching sources for this new content is how highly-regarded Harpending's work has been among other members of the fields he worked in (anthropological genetics and evolutionary psychology). The majority of the accusations that he's a racist have come from people and organizations outside of his field, such as the SPLC.

Next I'd like to discuss what to do with the "views on race" section, because I still think this should not be its own section, and also that it gives undue weight to the SPLC. In the mean time I've modified a few parts of that section that were poorly-sourced, or that were not describing Harpending's views accurately. 2600:1004:B145:E660:2997:11CB:AECD:E003 (talk) 01:12, 10 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This is the same conversation we had above and two years ago with Kingsindian. The fact that Harpending did legitimate scientific work has absolutely no bearing on whether or not he was a racist. It doesn't matter whether the sources that describe his racism are reliable sources on anthropology, because we are using them to support a claim about racism not anthropology. Harpending was a racist and his views on race have been extensively discussed in reliable sources. That is why we have a section. Please stop trying to whitewash it; the parts you removed were perfectly adequately sourced. – Joe (talk) 07:40, 10 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, let's discuss the parts that I changed. Here is the exact quote from Harpending:
"As I recall my description above is similar to what has been reported from many regions of Africa. I am not so sure of that since it has been forty years since I read any of the anthropological literature on the matter. A colleague pointed out a few weeks ago, after hearing this story, that if it is nearly pan-African then perhaps some of it came to the New World. Prominent and not so prominent talkers from the American Black population come out with similar theories of vague and invisible forces that are oppressing people, like 'institutional racism' and 'white privilege'."
And here is what the article says:
"In a 2012 blog post, he went as far as to claim that racism does not exist, describing it as a continuation of traditional African beliefs about witchcraft – a belief in 'vague and invisible forces that are oppressing people'."
Do you not see how your wording is misrepresenting Harpending's views? Arguing that institutional racism and white privilege don't exist is not the same as denying the existence of racism in general. The existence of racism has been widely understood for hundreds of years, but institutional racism and white privilege are much newer concepts that are only a few decades old. I'm aware the SPLC described Harpending's views in this way, but as per Doug Weller's statement above (as well as the reliable sources noticeboard thread that I linked to), the SPLC's statements must be attributed to them; they can't be described in Wikipedia's voice. This is particularly important in this case, because we can see that what Harpending actually said is quite different from the view that the SPLC claims that he held.
It also is a problem to be relying on sources that don't mention Harpending. He is not mentioned in this source, this one, or this one. As I understand it, criticizing the article's subject using sources that don't mention him is generally regarded as contrary to the No original synthesis policy. Here is how Grayfell described it on the Seymour Itzkoff article: "Sources need to mention Itzkoff. Ideally, they should be about Itzkoff." 2600:1004:B140:B6DA:C040:3CE3:7E11:11DE (talk) 11:16, 10 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Joseph L. Graves calls him a modern neo-racist.[2] An article in the Modern American Extremism and Domestic Terrorism
An Encyclopedia of Extremists and Extremist Groups has a lot on him, calling him a hero of the racist right.[3] --Doug Weller talk 16:32, 10 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The first statement is sourced to the SPLC, as you seem to already know, with the citation to Harpending's blog to support the direct quotes. We can't interpret Harpending's statement on our own behalf, only follow what reliable sources (e.g. the SPLC) have said about them. I don't mind adding "According to the SPLC".
The sources that don't mention Harpending are there for background on the H. L. Mencken Club, and are supplementary to [4] and [5]. These can stand on their own to support the statement that Harpending was a regular attendee of a racist conference where he said racist things, but I thought it was useful to add a bit of context for our readers who, unlike the readers of SPLC or Generation Progress, might not be familiar with what the H. L. Mencken Club is. WP:SYNTH does not stop us combining multiple sources to make articles more informative. It stops us synthesising multiple sources to reach a conclusion that is not in any of them. I don't believe that's the case here.
Thanks for the extra sources Doug.– Joe (talk) 06:28, 11 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'll get back to you about this soon. I also have several other problems with that section as it is currently, but I need to think about the best way to address the situation. I should note, though, that the only mention of Harpending in the Joseph Graves source appears to be Harpending's inclusion on a list that includes 18 other people (including Hans Eysenck, who was one of the four or five most influential and heavily cited psychologists of the twentieth century).
I don't think we should use sources that only mention the article's subject in passing like this, unless we're going to also include all the dozens of genetics and anthropology books and papers that contain passing mentions of Harpending's scientific work. It's inconsistent to use one type of passing mention but not the other, and the article doesn't have enough space for all of them both, unless it's tripled in length. 2600:1004:B16E:81AE:10D0:230:AC43:C640 (talk) 22:49, 12 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Encyclopedia of Extremists and Extremist Groups[edit]

There is one very good reason to avoid citing “An Encyclopedia of Extremists and Extremist Groups” for this article: this book literally repeats vandalism from an IP on Wikipedia, which stayed in an article far longer than it should have. I do not think that a book repeating vandalism from Wikipedia should be considered reliable. I’ll quote my synopsis of this issue from an email I sent to user:DGG (whose input here might be valuable) on January 31st of this year:

"Three years ago, an anonymous IP added two critical quotes [6] to the Linda Gottfredson article, one cited to a Wordpress blog and the other to a 1994 paper apparently referencing Barry Mehler in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, although with no title or issue number. I looked up the citation for the latter (Mehler 1994) at Google Scholar, with no results [7] indicating he's authored anything in that journal at all. The self-published blog source was eventually removed in 2017. The Mehler quote stayed in the article for almost 2 years, before being removed as unverifiable—but not before it was literally repeated in a book [8] published in 2018. This book cites the Southern Poverty Law Center for this quote, but the referenced SPLC article does not contain the quote.

Altogether, this looks like a clear case where a book published a false claim that originated in the Wikipedia article. It remained there for so long because at the time, the only people editing the Gottfredson article were people who disliked her, so nobody noticed this problem or did anything about it until after a published book had already repeated the material. The editors involved in these articles have always been diligent about removing poorly-sourced material that's favorable to people like Gottfredson, but if Arbcom wants poorly-sourced defamatory material to also be removed in a timely manner, it's necessary for these articles to be maintained by editors who haven’t been artificially screened for their viewpoint."

-Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 21:29, 17 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's a reference work written by a professor and expert on US extremism and published by a reputable academic publisher. In other words, an ideal reliable source. One error in a completely different entry is no reason to discard it. The logical contortions being trotted out to try and whitewash this article of racist statements that Harpending verifiably, definitely said (seriously, if you don't trust the SPLC or Balleck, you can hear half of them for yourself on YouTube) is getting concerning. – Joe (talk) 07:53, 18 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I generally trust DGG's judgment about issues like these, so now that Ferhago the Assassin requested his input, I'd like to wait for him to give his opinion here before we proceed any further.
I'm certainly uncomfortable with using a source that evidently copied some of its information from Wikipedia vandalism, because it suggests the author applied a very low standard of fact-checking, and it raises the question of how much else he also got wrong. But you're also right that (as far as I know) there's no policy that says we can't cite a book like that, if it's from a publisher that is otherwise reliable. I'd also like to know DGG's opinion about some of the other issues I raised earlier in this discussion. 2600:1004:B14D:B1E3:85F5:AFB7:FA2C:B51C (talk) 11:11, 18 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The book is very new, and has not yet received any serious reviews. The publisher, ABC-CLIO is a publisher of undergraduate reference books. From the excerpts available, it would seem that the essays on the various subjects in the book are uncritical very short compilations from whatever sources are available and its main use would be its listing of sources, not its judgements. But that's only my first impression. When I can, I'll look for a copy. DGG ( talk ) 08:59, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Our article ABC-CLIO says "is a publishing company for academic reference works and periodicals primarily on topics such as history and social sciences for educational and public library settings." That's unsourced however. If we are going to decide that a book from this publisher is not a reliable source, that's a major decision as we use their books a lot, and I think that would require a discussion at RSN. A Google Books search on the author[9] certainly makes him appear to be a reliable source. Doug Weller talk 14:34, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@DGG: Thanks for your comments. Do you have an opinion about the other issues I raised in the section above this one? Aside from whether the Balleck source is reliable, I'd like to know whether you think the "views on race" section currently gives undue weight to the Southern Poverty Law Center, and also whether the article should state that Harpending denied the existence of racism (cited to the SPLC), when we can see from Harpending's original article that the SPLC is misrepresenting Harpending's opinion. 2600:1004:B169:9A78:CAD:E779:E54E:9218 (talk) 05:00, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think DGG is going to comment here again, so I'll go ahead and propose the specific changes I'd like to make.

  • I'd like to remove the sources about the H. L. Mencken Club that don't mention Harpending. As I said before, the standard usually applied on these articles is that sources have to mention the article's subject. Your argument for including those sources is that they give the reader more background about the nature of this club, but including the extra sources isn't necessary for that, because the Generation Progress article (which does mention him) says that the Anti-Defamation League considers the club a racist gathering. If I remove the sources that don't mention him, I would replace the current description of the club with a description of how the ADL classifies it.
  • I'd like to condense (but not remove) the large paragraph in the "views on race" section that is cited entirely to the SPLC's article about Harpending. (The same article is cited three separate times in that paragraph.) That paragraph is 180 words of text cited to a single source, which is nearly three times as much space as the article gives to any other individual source. I accept that the SPLC source will have to be included, but the SPLC is not a more authoritative source than the academic books and papers being cited, and giving it three times as much space as any other source is completely out of proportion to the rest of the article.
  • With respect to Harpending's views on white privilege, I'd like to quote Harpending's original words on the matter. That would avoid the problem of us interpreting his views for ourselves, while also not misleading readers by presenting only the SPLC's misrepresentation of them. (And we can quote the SPLC's description of his views in addition to Harpending's original words, if you think that is necessary.)

@Joe Roe: would those changes be acceptable to you? 2600:1004:B165:3E77:B1A9:81A7:2399:292A (talk) 12:18, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]


I do not like to work in this area, because I think that almost everyone here does in fact want to promote a cause. It is very disheartening to work in an area where those who take overall positions that I might generally agree with, try to maintain their positions by quibbling and selective quotation, though their case would be made much more effectively by a full and balanced presentation. Whenever someone seeks to exclude sources it is more likely that they are trying to exclude whatever would help their opponents; they of course think this reasonable, as they appear to believe that anything that disagrees with their own preconceptions must by biased. The wy to counter bad arguments and dubious sources is to add good ones.
It is not necessary to make judgements. Language in an article implying that someone is a bigot or a quack or a pseudoscientist is unnecessary--if they are, the evidence will show it. It is very frustrating that I cannot convince people of this, because they are harming the validity of their own arguments. Most people would assume that if an article starts out by judging the subject, it is likely to be biased. I typically simply do not read content which starts out be praising or denigrating the subject, because if someone finds it necessary to say that, they are trying to usurp judgment for the purpose of advocacy. If I call them out for this, I am in the position of assisting those who are in my opinion not just equally biased, but wrong. I cannot work in this sort of situation. .
Those who wish to propose text for a controverisal article should not include those committed to one side of the controversy. When such advocates propose text for NPOV editors to use, they inherently bias the presentation. When peopleof various posiions do it, they add confusion. People with a POV view of a subject should not be writing about it at all on WP. Their only appropriate role is to list possible references. (and, if they do it very carefully , to call attention to what they regard as possible bias--just call attention to it, not discuss it.)
But some things asked aboe I will nonetheless answer briefly:
With the except of outright neo-nazis, nowadays everyone will say they are not a racist. One can always cherry pick a quotation.
In my opinion the SPLC's discussion of his views are accurate at least for his later career.
Our articles does bias the more controversial later work, and this is not appropriate.
Our articles should not make judgments. Terms such as "pseudoscience" , "biased" "bigot" and "racist" are none of them necessary to be used in an article. All that is necessary -- all that is appropriate -- is to describe someone's work or activities. People who after reading a NPOV presentation of (for example) the modern study of the evolution of human intelligence regard the field aa racist will do so without our labelling it. Those who regard it a a valid branch of anthropology will conclude otherwise, but all will be informed about what it consists of. DGG ( talk ) 04:38, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
DGG, do you disagree with the specific changes that I'm proposing? It sounds like maybe you do, but your comment doesn't address my proposal directly. If you would like me to not make these changes, it would be helpful if you could offer some specific suggestions about that section, and I'll try to incorporate them.
BTW, in case I didn't make this clear above, the specific place that I think the SPLC is misrepresenting Harpending's view is this quote: "Showing an impressive lack of self-awareness, Harpending argues against the existence of racism by comparing it to the “witchcraft” of the Herero people of the northern Kalihari". And here is what Harpending actually said: "Prominent and not so prominent talkers from the American Black population come out with similar theories of vague and invisible forces that are oppressing people, like 'institutional racism' and 'white privilege'." The SPLC is attributing a much more extreme view to Harpending than the one that he actually held. No reasonable person denies the existence of racial prejudice against African Americans, so Harpending would be out on a limb if he had actually argued that it doesn't exist. On the other hand, arguing against the existence of white privilege is a somewhat more defensible viewpoint. (See this article, for a prominent recent example of someone else making that argument.) 2600:1004:B12F:8189:88A7:E110:ECC3:D6AC (talk) 07:53, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe, but that's your original research and we go by what the sources say. I'll also note that we frequently use words such as "pseudoscience" , "biased" "bigot" and "racist" in articles and most of the time I think they are appropriate. I'm sure there are times when they are not of course. And yes, except for neo-Nazis white supremacists today are savvy enough to use other terms. Doug Weller talk 15:04, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Could one of you please give feedback about the specific changes I'm proposing? I feel strongly that this section needs to be improved, but I'm willing to be flexible about the details. 2600:1004:B14B:6476:5DFF:2FC1:7B22:EA73 (talk) 12:18, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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