WikiBias: How Wikipedia erases “fringe theories” and enforces conformity

Wikipedia is probably the most widely used encyclopedia in the world. If you’re looking for facts, it is pretty reliable. For example, if you want to compare the number of traffic roundabouts per capita in the US and other countries, Wikipedia will provide a nice graph from the World Economic Forum showing that the UK has about thirteen times as many as the US.

On the other hand, Wikipedia is not a reliable source for some controversial topics. The very biased entry for political scientist Charles Murray is a striking example. The following history shows something of how this works.

A friend tried to make a small change to the entry for Murray. His account was then blocked. This was done by an anonymous and self-selected collection of highly motivated individuals—more about them in a moment.

After hearing of my friend’s failure, I decided to have a go myself. I tried several things, but the simplest was to change a single word. I altered a paragraph referring to Herrnstein and Murray’s widely attacked 1994 book The Bell Curve. As it stood, this section read as follows:

The book’s most controversial argument hinged on a hypothesized relationship between race and intelligence, specifically the hypothesis that differences in average IQ test performance between racial groups are at least partially genetic in origin. Subsequent developments in genetics research have led to a scholarly consensus that this hypothesis is false. The idea that there are genetically determined differences in intelligence between racial groups is now considered discredited by mainstream science [emphasis added].

This paragraph is factually incorrect. First, there is no real consensus that the difference in test performance between racially identified groups is not partly genetic. Almost any measurable characteristic, whether physical or behavioral, has some heritable component. Second, since this position has not been proved false—which would be extremely difficult to do for a human population not available for breeding experiments—it’s incorrect to say that it has been discredited. On the other hand, there’s no doubt that many reject it.

I therefore corrected the last sentence as follows:

The idea that there are genetically determined differences in intelligence between racial groups is now rejectedby mainstream science.

The change was accepted, but then reversed a few hours later. I tried again, but it was again reversed. This repeated a few times and, eventually, I got this message: “Please stop. If you continue to vandalize Wikipedia, as you did at Charles Murray (political scientist), you may be blocked from editing.” Apparently, my minor change was regarded as vandalism. (The message was pseudonymous, but it linked to a website which proclaims, “This user is of dubious and undisclosed gender, and uses they/them pronouns.”)

It turns out that the Wikipedia editorial system, organized in a complicated way that I confess I do not fully understand, classifies some positions as fringe: “the theory that a genetic link exists between race and intelligence is enough of a minority viewpoint in the scientific consensus that it falls under Wikipedia’s definition of a fringe theory.” Fringe theories are to be excluded from Wikipedia, apparently.

Of course, the idea that many behavioral characteristics, including IQ, are heritable is far from a fringe theory. Wikipedia’s fallacious summary of the issue is:

Group differences in IQ are real and are primarily or entirely caused by social and/or environmental factors. Group differences in IQ do not truly exist and are the result of inappropriate use of the tests themselves [emphasis added].

No unbiased discussion of group differences in intelligence may be found in Wikipedia’s vast corpus. So, I decided to try a different tack.

This paragraph in the Charles Murray entry cites several critiques of The Bell Curve:

After its publication, academics criticized the book over his assertions on race and IQ.^[38][39] Some said it supported long-discredited “scientific racism“^{[40][41][42][43]} and a number of books were written to rebut The Bell Curve. Those works included a 1996 edition of evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould‘s The Mismeasure of Man; a collection of essays, The Bell Curve Wars (1995), reacting to Murray and Herrnstein’s commentary; and The Bell Curve Debate (1995), whose essays similarly respond to issues raised in The Bell Curve. Arthur S. Goldberger and Charles F. Manski critiqued the empirical methods supporting the book’s hypotheses.^[44]

The Bell Curve’s most influential critic was Stephen Jay Gould in the updated version of his 1981 book The Mismeasure of Man. The most effective critique of Gould is J. Philippe Rushton’s 1997 paper “Race, intelligence, and the brain: The errors and omissions of the ‘revised’ edition of S. J. Gould’s the mismeasure of man” (Person. individ. Diff. Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 169-180, 1997). Rushton’s critique is not mentioned in the Wikipedia entry.

Rushton himself is a controversial figure. So, rather than cite his work, I decided to focus on two of the most blatant errors in Gould’s book. I therefore inserted a passage after the paragraph of critical references along the following lines:

Gould’s criticism of The Bell Curve was probably the most effective. For example, in Mismeasure he wrote “Herrnstein and Murray violate fairness by converting a complex case that can yield only agnosticism into a biased brief for permanent and heritable difference.” Herrnstein died in 1994, just as the book was published, but Gould’s accusations still dog Murray.

In fact, on p. 311, The Bell Curve says precisely what Gould accused Herrnstein and Murray of not saying:

It seems highly likely to us that both genes and environment have something to do with racial differences.  What might the mix be?  We are resolutely agnostic on that issue; as far as we can determine, the evidence does not yet justify an estimate. [emphases added]

Herrnstein and Murray also cited the work of 19^th century physician and scientist Samuel Morton, who compared the brain volumes of European, Asian and African skulls, finding that African brains were smaller than Asian and European.  Gould, in Mismeasure, disputed that also, suggesting that Morton had “subconsciously manipulated the brain volumes…to favor his bias that Europeans had larger brains and African smaller ones.” However, a 2011 study^[1] by physical anthropologists at the University of Pennsylvania confirmed a few earlier studies which found that Morton was in fact correct and Gould’s claim is wrong.

Nevertheless, these flawed, not to say mendacious, attacks by Gould and others, have effectively excluded Murray’s work from the public IQ debate.

Needless to say, this insertion was also repeatedly deleted.

This little history reveals a flaw in the way that Wikipedia treats science. Error and debate are intrinsic to science. A consensus isn’t necessarily correct. If opinion is divided, it is simply wrong to dismiss the minority view as fringe.

Wikipedia treats some other controversial issues more fairly. Its discussion of climate change, for example, acknowledges that there is debate over the amount and causes of global temperature change (although it exaggerates the size of the dominant majority).

But race and intelligence is clearly a taboo subject, as I have noticed in other interactions. Even after lengthy phone and email conversations with a reporter for Inside Higher Education, for example, he continued to charge that the factual claim that blacks have, on average, substantially lower IQs than whites is itself racist. The fact that Herrnstein and Murray make a similar claim in their book evidently places them beyond the pale.

Unfortunately, this black–white difference exists. Whether it is genetically based is almost impossible to determine and absolutely irrelevant for public policy. If there is a difference in cognitive ability, and if politicians insist on obsessing over group-average data on income, health, etc., then honest science demands that we also look at other differences, such as IQ, that may help account for these socio-economic differences.

But we mustn’t do this, according to other sources such as top science journals and the mass media. The problem, of course, is that if Wikipedia readers are forbidden to even consider the possibility of differences in interests and abilities between racial groups, all that is left to account for the economic and social disparities between blacks and whites is systemic racism, an unmeasurable, hence irrefutable, evil perpetrated by whites against black people. Which is what has happened. White people are now routinely slandered as racists because other potential causes of black–white group disparities have been suppressed—Wikipedia is one of the guilty parties.

Image: Adobe Stock