"logical fallacies and patently false claims"

I recently posted a critique of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, in which I exposed the author’s double standards, faulty logic, contradictions and bias.  It should come as no surprise, to readers of this blog, that these traits are the rule, not the exception, when it comes to racial egalitarian literature.
Human Stupidity has called my attention to a Wikipedia article on race and crime.  While the article itself is interesting, and we can take issue with some of its conclusions, the most interesting part for me was in the discussion section, where we read:

The 2nd paragraph of IQ theory subsection seems like a bit of a non-sequitar. Saying critics point out that the IQ gap has narrowed over the years due to environmental factors is irrelevant to whether IQ differences explain racial differences in crime rate. The criticism seems to be directed at the hereditarian model of racial IQ differences, but the first paragraph doesn’t have anything to do with hereditarianism at all.–XO^10 (talk) 22:31, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

As one of the people who helped write the current version of the article, I agree with you that these criticisms don’t make a lot of sense. So does Varoon Arya, who wrote more of the article than any other editor, although he’s not active here at the moment. But the fact is that these criticisms appear in the source material, so NPOV policy demands that we include them, regardless of whether they’re actually reasonable and relevant to this topic or not.

Varoon Arya and I discussed an issue similar to this a few months ago here. I’ll quote his own comment about it:

I am in full agreement here. But sadly, these (rather tired and fully insufficient) arguments are the ones left-leaning sociologists and criminologists specialized in the field of Race and Crime Studies are still (as recently as 2009) using to offer at least the show of criticism of the “hard science” claims. To get into any serious criticism of IQ Theory or r/K Theory, we’d have to leave the field of Race and Crime Studies, and I’m not sure if that’s crossing the line into WP:SYNTH. I had to work surprisingly hard to make the critique in many areas not look ridiculous, frankly. Take Mann, for example, whose work is considered by certain parties in Race and Crime Studies to be “seminal”. (And I can quote two who use that very word.) If you run through her list of arguments with even a minimum of critical evaluation, the logical fallacies and patently false claims (not to mention the clear bias) are shocking. Sadly, Gabbidon evidences many of the same weaknesses, though he puts much more effort in trying to at least appear objective, and I trust him more to give a balanced presentation. However, Gabbidon & Greene’s 2-page treatment of “Intelligence, Race, and Crime” is loaded with enough bias to make it impossible to use in the article without heavy filtering. Take the following passage, for example:

By this time [1900’s], however, the notion of intelligence and crime had become accepted. While the notion of intelligence and crime had existed prior to the aforementioned studies, the development of the IQ test gave proponents of the idea a tool to test their beliefs. Fortunately, though, the idea lost its appeal. Curran and Renzetti (2001) noted, however, that the damage had already been done.

It doesn’t get any better than that, and often gets worse. Their critique boils down to exactly what I have in the section. It’s a case of preaching to the choir, really. The leftists have long since rejected the notion of race on moral grounds, and with it their ability to counter hard science claims with anything other than shock and disbelief that anyone could be “racist” enough to investigate the issue with some objectivity. (Wright’s 2009 piece on this subject is a gem, by the way.) But what can we do? I tried to present the critique as it is presented in the current literature. Can I help it if it’s not convincing?

Also interesting is the debate on using “The Color of Crime” as a source.  In the end, the sole reason for excluding it is that it comes from a “fringe group” rather than a “mainstream” source.  Who gets to decide what is “mainstream”?  None other than those who are already considered “mainstream”.  It’s a circular argument that essentially says, “We’ve got the money and power; this makes us mainstream and it gives us the authority to label the rest of you as fringe groups”.  Nice going Wikipedia.  Money/power = Truth.