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| Fabricator Margaret Mead and Friends |
On the other hand, in his misleading book "The Mismeasure of Man," Stephen Jay Gould, following in the tracks of Franz Boas and Margaret Mead, set out to prove his leftist, preconceived notions by falsifying the record and lying in has conclusions. m/r
Mau Mau Redux: Charles Murray Comes in for Abuse, Again
June 9, 2017 by Jon Cassidy
In 1981, the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould came to fame with the publication of The Mismeasure of Man, a chronicle of supposed racism in science, and a critique in particular of the idea that intelligence exists in a form that could be measured by anything so vulgar as an IQ score.
Gould took the work of a 19th century physical anthropologist named Samuel George Morton and made it ridiculous. In his telling, Morton was a fool and an unconscious racist — his project of measuring skull sizes of different ethnic groups conceived in racism and executed in same. Why, Morton clearly must have thought Caucasians had bigger brains than Africans, Indians, and Asians, and then subconsciously mismeasured the skulls to prove they were smarter.
The book then casts the entire project of measuring brain function — psychometrics — in the same light of primitivism.
Gould’s antiracist book was a hit with reviewers in the popular press, and many of its ideas about the morality and validity of testing intelligence became conventional wisdom, persisting today among the educated folks. If you’ve got some notion that IQ doesn’t measure anything but the ability to take IQ tests, that intelligence can’t be defined or may not be real at all, that multiple intelligences exist rather than a general intelligence, you can thank Gould. He’s not responsible for other arguments still rattling around our brains — about testing being culturally biased, or race being a social construct — but those ideas are just as defunct.
Then, in 2011, a funny thing happened. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania went and measured old Morton’s skulls, which turned out to be just the size he had recorded. Gould, according to one of the co-authors, was nothing but a “charlatan.”
-go to links-
“The Bell Curve” never goes away.
Phrenology is a valid science.
Well, almost.In 1981, the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould came to fame with the publication of The Mismeasure of Man, a chronicle of supposed racism in science, and a critique in particular of the idea that intelligence exists in a form that could be measured by anything so vulgar as an IQ score.
Gould took the work of a 19th century physical anthropologist named Samuel George Morton and made it ridiculous. In his telling, Morton was a fool and an unconscious racist — his project of measuring skull sizes of different ethnic groups conceived in racism and executed in same. Why, Morton clearly must have thought Caucasians had bigger brains than Africans, Indians, and Asians, and then subconsciously mismeasured the skulls to prove they were smarter.
The book then casts the entire project of measuring brain function — psychometrics — in the same light of primitivism.
Gould’s antiracist book was a hit with reviewers in the popular press, and many of its ideas about the morality and validity of testing intelligence became conventional wisdom, persisting today among the educated folks. If you’ve got some notion that IQ doesn’t measure anything but the ability to take IQ tests, that intelligence can’t be defined or may not be real at all, that multiple intelligences exist rather than a general intelligence, you can thank Gould. He’s not responsible for other arguments still rattling around our brains — about testing being culturally biased, or race being a social construct — but those ideas are just as defunct.
Then, in 2011, a funny thing happened. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania went and measured old Morton’s skulls, which turned out to be just the size he had recorded. Gould, according to one of the co-authors, was nothing but a “charlatan.”
-go to links-
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