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Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/AndRueM

AndRueM

AndRueM (talk ·  · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · spi block · block log · CA · CheckUser(log· investigate · cuwiki)


24 January 2025

– This SPI case is closed and will be archived shortly by an SPI clerk or checkuser.

Suspected sockpuppets

AndRueM is an SPA whose entire editing history is pushing a male bias on Sex differences in intelligence. They stopped editing last March. BoneCrushingDog is also an SPA pushing the same POV starting January 18th until he was blocked for edit warring on the 20th. Four days after being blocked AndRueM returns from a 9 month hiatus to continue BoneCrushingDog's talkpage thread and to push his same pro male bias POV. Photos of Japan (talk) 23:35, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by other users

Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.

This is my only account, as check user will demonstrate. It's troubling to see another blatant violation of WP:AGF and WP:CIVIL with this accusation of sockpuppetry, coming right after the baseless claim that I am a 'bot' and the continued derailment of the discussion. Would any admin help address this? AndRueM (talk) 00:00, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"You can see in my above sections that I had the exact argument as you to no avail"
Returning from being inactive for 9 months to have "the exact argument" (in your own words) that BoneCrushingDog was having, days after they got banned is obvious self outing, even if you are spoofing your IP. Photos of Japan (talk) 00:11, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So your claim is that it's more likely that I:
- Left Wikipedia without being blocked
- Returned nearly a year later under a different account for no apparent reason,
- Got blocked by failing to follow a rule that I oddly followed on this account
- Then returned to this account only after getting blocked, responding to my now blocked other account for no real benefit, instead of utilizing them simultaneously to avoid the 3 strike rule?
Rather than that I:
- Left wikipedia because I felt it was unproductive to engage with the much greater number of editors who appeared to misrepresent or downplay studies to fit a narrative
- And a year later, decided to respond to the first other person I saw who actually read the studies, and could help correct the shortcomings in the article that would otherwise be impossible AndRueM (talk) 00:26, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Right, you left Wikipedia after only editing Sex differences in intelligence, and when you returned 9 months later you found, by pure coincidence, another account that only edits Sex differences in intelligence making the exact same arguments as you. And what a coincidence, you showed up right after they got blocked, ready to carry on their arguments for them. Photos of Japan (talk) 00:47, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Right, so I’m skilled enough to, allegedly, spoof IPs, and yet somehow foolish enough to get one account blocked, respond to that blocked account, as well as fail to use multiple accounts effectively, whether by pushing edits through, avoiding being blocked, or even making any meaningful progress anywhere. All frankly nonsensical.
As for the ‘coincidence’ of several individuals editing the article in question, the answer is simple: the article is just uniquely terrible. Robust, unretracted, and highly cited meta-analyses are rejected in favor of cherry-picked, less rigorous research, and unsupported conclusions are overstated; all to push a specific narrative. Beyond the overarching message, the article’s quality is incoherent and choppy, likely due to prioritizing the dismissal of “fringe theories” over accuracy and educational value. Does it really come as a surprise that such an article attracts unique editors, who otherwise wouldn't care?
Frankly, the editors who’ve significantly contributed to this page’s current state should no longer be involved. Their inability, or refusal, to uphold basic standards of accuracy and coherence should raise serious questions about their continued participation. AndRueM (talk) 03:54, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, that's exactly what I think. In BoneCrushingDog's first conversation he says "I am trying to assume good faith" and "I wrote, in good faith" despite no one else mentioning AGF. In your first post to me you went out of your way to edit it to tell me to assume good faith. No one else has mentioned AGF on that entire talk page.
Brand new users starting their first conversation on talk pages don't start bringing up AGF out of nowhere. In that entire talk page, only you and BoneCrushingDog bring up AGF, despite having zero experience with discussions elsewhere on Wikipedia and no one else mentioning it. Coming onto Wikipedia and immediately editing controversial pages while bringing up AGF is a tell of a user who is used to creating accounts, arguing with others, getting blocked, and making new accounts. Photos of Japan (talk) 05:59, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'll just chime in to add one more suspicious detail: In BoneCrushingDog's very first edit, a comment on Talk:Sex differences in intelligence,[1] they end by stating:

I do not want to start an edit war by changing the second line in this article so I would like an editor to defend the existing claim and citation or suggest one that is more accurate to the literature without resorting to completely dismissing anything relating to Richard Lynn as fringe theory.

Not only is that oddly specific for a brand-new editor's first post, it is precisely where the original dust-up with AndRueM at the Fringe Theories Noticeboard landed during their initial editing phase back in February/March of last year [2][3]:

Note that the arguments against Lynn in this case are a circular one. Lynn has been dismissed for concluding difference in intelligence exist within populations, which are sexist, and therefore cannot be used in support of the theory that intelligence differences exist, which is sexist.

Generalrelative(talk) 15:56, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we'll leave it to an admin to assess the conspiracy.
However, it's very curious to focus so much energy on accusing others of sockpuppetry, especially after contributing so little time and input to the article itself. If someone is willing to go to such lengths to pursue these types of accusations, without even engaging constructively or addressing the content issues at hand, it raises a lot of questions, such as why they entered a talk page and engaged so aggressively in the first place. I would think that someone truly interested in improving the article would focus more on the facts and less on creating unnecessary drama. Best, AndRueM (talk) 06:45, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I came from the Fringe theories noticeboard after noticing your bot reply (100% Probability AI generated per GPTZero) and other bot reply (99% Probability AI generated), and didn't want to see another editor wasting their time with you. Maybe to someone who puts no effort into their writing you see nothing suspicious with your posts, but the shift in syntax and style from your human posts is jarring to me. One obvious difference is that your human posts (2% Probability AI generated) all exclusively use "double quotes" whereas your bot posts all use 'single quotes'. Photos of Japan (talk) 07:11, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]


Regardless of whether he's a sock or meat puppet I would support taking this to ANI, or just blocking them outright.

In the first place, all of his comments are rated by ZeroGPT to be either 2-3% chance of being AI written up until this comment (3%)

Afterwards he switches to using an LLM

81%, 100%, 100%.

After I tell other users they are wasting their time arguing with a bot his next comment went back to 2% as well as his subsequent comments.

This is a user whose first reply back to this page was to mock Wikipedia editors for having “far too much time on their hands” and who switched to an LLM seemingly to bludgeon an editor trying to make a good faith compromise with time-wasting nonsense.

AndRueM took issue with the article text not specifying that a meta-analysis was looking at school-aged children. Generalrelative accepted this concern and made a compromise which specifies that the meta analysis concerns school-aged children and concluded its results confirmed previous findings of no differences in intelligence between the sexes, directly paraphrasing the source's conclusion.

AndRueM responds by arguing that Generalrelative is engaging in OR by paraphrasing the source's conclusion, arguing that since the meta-analysis primarily concerns children we shouldn't include its conclusion that its results align with broader findings of there being no sex differences, which AndRueM has argued is the source overstating its conclusions.

Generalrelative responds that "We follow what the reliable sources say" after which he AndRueM posts his confused bot post which doesn't address the point of contention (confirming broader findings) but just rambles about the point on which they already agree on while concluding "Unfortunately, there hasn’t been meaningful engagement with the substance of the issue" and providing an ultimatum to Generalrelative to "provide clearer evidence for the reversion or reconsider the change. If not, I will proceed with further action."

Had I not brought attention to this AndRueM would have continued his low effort bot replies. Since then, he has returned to challenging the conclusions of reliable sources:

AndRueM

...your claims regarding female superiority on other areas fail to recognize that the very articles oft cited argue that the dominance only exists in child population, largely either disappearing or reversing in adulthood

Snorgon111 replies with a direct quote from a source refuting this:

In general, findings for the three measures that yielded a female advantage indicated relatively stable sex/gender differences throughout life span

AndRueM challenges the sources conclusions again:

While your article notes some areas where women seem advantaged, the authors fail to definitively support the claim about verbal-episodic memory due to the significant publication bias they discovered.

While proceeding with jargon-dense OR to argue about how established advantages that women have over men on certain cognitive tasks is merely an illusion.

This user is WP:NOT here to build an encyclopedia. Photos of Japan (talk) 03:14, 26 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]


As stated earlier, this is my only account. Evidence so far has corroborated my innocence. The fact, however, remains that despite no true reason to suggest wrongdoing, various users, including an admin, have still vocalized various rationalizations for blocking me. To me, the deviation from the topic thread in this manner suggests that the sock puppetry accusation is merely a formality for blocking; some individuals want to find any reason at all to remove me, even going as far to breaking rules themselves (such as deviating from a neutral stance, acting uncivil, going off-topic, and failing to assume good faith) simply because they disagree with my attempts to include a position that is well documented and hotly debated in relevant literature. To briefly disprove the consistent baseless attempts to frame the slight mean difference in IQ as 'fringe' and 'disruptive', here are some quotations pulled from textbooks and literature, most of which are currently used in the very wikipedia article to argue the opposite and none of which dismiss the theory as fervently as the non-experts on wikipedia:

- "Even if we were to conclude that sex and gender differences in general (or specific) intelligence exist, it is important to keep in mind the overlap between distributions of scores for both sexes." 2020 cambridge handbook of the international psychology of women
- "most studies focus on a specific group (e.g. children, adolescent, or adults) and rarely include all age groups. The age of the sample may be important in this respect, as Lynn (1994) suggested in his developmental explanation of sex differences in intelligence." Iliscieu et. Al 2016
- "There is still a long way to go to attain more robust results, however consistent with many prior studies on sex differences, our results support the conclusion that modest mean differences favoring males exist when reasoning tasks are used." Flores-Mendoza et. Al 2013
- "Rather than ask whether male sand females differ in overall IQ, or even in g, therefore, it may be more useful to ask whether they differ in Gf. The question seems simple enough. Alas, the answer is rather less simple.
The earliest, and still most widely used, measure of Gf is Raven’s Matrices. Lynn and Irwing (2004) and Irwing and Lynn (2005) have reported two meta-analyses suggesting that after the age of 15 there is a male advantage amounting to some 0.30-0.35d or 4-5 1Q points. This is probably an exaggeration, since it ignores the difference between younger and older adults: Lynn and Irwing (2004) reported that the male advantage in people over the age of 40, at 0.32d, was twice as large as that seen in 18-19-year-olds (0.164)." Mackintosh, 2011

This is not to argue in favor of a sex difference here, but rather to argue that the possibility is a genuine question in the field, and bringing it up should not provoke such intense reaction. As it stands, the evidence suggests I am innocent, so I would appreciate modifying the status accordingly and maintaining justice, avoiding personal attacks and applying an equivalent standard irrespective of the individual positions. Best, AndRueM (talk) 17:06, 26 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Now he's explaining why a study's conclusions are wrong, and how the study should have performed its statistical analysis to show a male advantage in intelligence. Photos of Japan (talk) 17:35, 26 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

  • Ponyo made an "unlikely" finding at User talk:Drmies. That doesn't rule out meat puppetry, but without knowing a little more about the details of her finding, i.e., how far away are they from each other geographically, I'm reluctant to block based on meat. I'm tempted to block AndRueM for disruptive, POV editing, but, unlike BCD, they edited the article only once - the rest of the time they've spent in discussion. Even that, though, can be sufficiently disruptive to warrant a block. Perhaps this should go to WP:ANI to be reviewed.--Bbb23 (talk) 16:55, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Insufficient evidence of socking, coupled with CU finding, closing. Bbb23 (talk) 19:07, 26 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]