The Mismeasure of Man - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation....

, is a history

History of science

The history of science is the study of the historical development of human understandings of the natural world and the domains of the social sciences....

and critique of the statistical methods

Factor analysis

Factor analysis is a statistical method used to describe variability among observed, correlated variables in terms of a potentially lower number of unobserved, uncorrelated variables called factors. In other words, it is possible, for example, that variations in three or four observed variables...

and cultural motivations

Racialism

Racialism is an emphasis on race or racial considerations. Currently, racialism entails a belief in the existence and significance of racial categories, but not necessarily that any absolute hierarchy between the races has been demonstrated by a rigorous and comprehensive scientific process...

underlying biological determinism

Biological determinism

Biological determination is the interpretation of humans and human life from a strictly biological point of view, and it is closely related to genetic determinism...

, the belief that “the social and economic differences between human groups — primarily races, classes

Social class

Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...

, and sex

Sex

In biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into a male or female variety . Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents...

es — arise from inherited, inborn distinctions and that society

Society

A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...

, in this sense, is an accurate reflection of biology.” The principal theme of biological determinism, that “worth can be assigned to individuals and groups by measuring intelligence as a single quantity

Intelligence quotient

An intelligence quotient, or IQ, is a score derived from one of several different standardized tests designed to assess intelligence. When modern IQ tests are constructed, the mean score within an age group is set to 100 and the standard deviation to 15...

”, is analyzed in discussions of craniometry and psychological testing

Psychological testing

Psychological testing is a field characterized by the use of samples of behavior in order to assess psychological construct, such as cognitive and emotional functioning, about a given individual. The technical term for the science behind psychological testing is psychometrics...

, two methods used to measure and establish intelligence as a single quantity. That the methods have “two deep fallacies”; the first is “reification

Reification (fallacy)

Reification is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction is treated as if it were a concrete, real event, or physical entity. In other words, it is the error of treating as a "real thing" something which is not a real thing, but merely an idea...

”, which is “our tendency to convert abstract concepts into entities”, such as the intelligence quotient

Intelligence quotient

(IQ) and the general intelligence factor

General intelligence factor

The g factor, where g stands for general intelligence, is a statistic used in psychometrics to model the mental ability underlying results of various tests of cognitive ability...

(g factor), which have been the cornerstones of much research into human intelligence; the second fallacy is '“ranking”, the “propensity for ordering complex variation as a gradual ascending scale.”

The revised and expanded, second edition of the Mismeasure of Man (1996) analyzes and challenges the methodological

Methodology

Methodology is generally a guideline for solving a problem, with specificcomponents such as phases, tasks, methods, techniques and tools . It can be defined also as follows:...

accuracy of The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life
The Bell Curve
The Bell Curve is a best-selling and controversial 1994 book by the Harvard psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray...

(1994), by Richard Herrnstein

Richard Herrnstein

Richard J. Herrnstein was an American researcher in animal learning in the Skinnerian tradition. He was one of the founders of quantitative analysis of behavior....

and Charles Murray

Charles Murray (author)

Charles Alan Murray is an American libertarian political scientist, author, columnist, and pundit working as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, DC...

, which re-presented the arguments of biological determinism, “the abstraction of intelligence as a single entity, its location within the brain

Brain

The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals—only a few primitive invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, sea squirts and starfishes do not have one. It is located in the head, usually close to primary sensory apparatus such as vision, hearing,...

, its quantification as one number for each individual, and the use of these numbers to rank people in a single series of worthiness, invariably to find that oppressed and disadvantaged groups — races, classes, or sexes — are innately inferior and deserve their status.” (See: Scientific racism

Scientific racism

Scientific racism is the use of scientific techniques and hypotheses to sanction the belief in racial superiority or racism.This is not the same as using scientific findings and the scientific method to investigate differences among the humans and argue that there are races...

)

Craniometry

The Mismeasure of Man (1981) is a critical analysis of the early works of scientific racism

Scientific racism

about the supposed, biologically inherited (genetic) basis for human intelligence

Human intelligence

Human Intelligence may refer to:* Human intelligence in the species as the property of mind that encompasses many related abilities, such as the capacities to reason, plan, problem solve, think, comprehend ideas, use languages, and learn....

, such as craniometry, the measurement of skull volume and its relation to intellectual

Intellectualism

Intellectualism denotes the use and development of the intellect, the practice of being an intellectual, and of holding intellectual pursuits in great regard. Moreover, in philosophy, “intellectualism” occasionally is synonymous with “rationalism”, i.e. knowledge derived mostly from reason and...

faculties. Gould proposed that much of the research was based more upon the racial

Racialism

and social prejudices of the researchers than upon their scientific objectivity; that on occasion, researchers such as Samuel George Morton

Samuel George Morton

Samuel George Morton was an American physician and natural scientist. Morton, reared a Quaker but became Episcopalian in midlife, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1820. After earning an advanced degree from Edinburgh University in...

(1799–1851), Louis Agassiz

Louis Agassiz

Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz was a Swiss paleontologist, glaciologist, geologist and a prominent innovator in the study of the Earth's natural history. He grew up in Switzerland and became a professor of natural history at University of Neuchâtel...

(1807–1873), and Paul Broca

Paul Broca

Pierre Paul Broca was a French physician, surgeon, anatomist, and anthropologist. He was born in Sainte-Foy-la-Grande, Gironde. He is best known for his research on Broca's area, a region of the frontal lobe that has been named after him. Broca’s Area is responsible for articulated language...

(1824–1880), committed the methodological

Methodology

Methodology is generally a guideline for solving a problem, with specificcomponents such as phases, tasks, methods, techniques and tools . It can be defined also as follows:...

fallacy of including their personal (a priori) expectations to the conclusions, as part of their analytical reasoning. Gould re-worked Morton’s original endocranial-volume data, and proposed that the original results were based upon biases and data manipulation; that by selectively using the data, Morton falsified the results. That when said biases are accounted, the original hypothesis — an ordering in skull volume ranging from Blacks to Mongols to Whites — is unsupported by the data.

Bias and falsification

The Mismeasure of Man presents an historical evaluation of the concepts of the intelligence quotient (IQ) and of the general intelligence factor (g factor

General intelligence factor

The g factor, where g stands for general intelligence, is a statistic used in psychometrics to model the mental ability underlying results of various tests of cognitive ability...

), which were and are the measures for intelligence

Intelligence

Intelligence has been defined in different ways, including the abilities for abstract thought, understanding, communication, reasoning, learning, planning, emotional intelligence and problem solving....

used by psychologists. Gould proposed that most psychological studies have been heavily biased, by the belief that the human behavior of a race

Race

Race is classification of humans into large and distinct populations or groups by factors such as heritable phenotypic characteristics or geographic ancestry, but also often influenced by and correlated with traits such as appearance, culture, ethnicity, and socio-economic status...

of people is best explained by genetic

Genetics

Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....

heredity

Heredity

Heredity is the passing of traits to offspring . This is the process by which an offspring cell or organism acquires or becomes predisposed to the characteristics of its parent cell or organism. Through heredity, variations exhibited by individuals can accumulate and cause some species to evolve...

. He cites the Burt Affair, about the allegedly fraudulent, oft-cited twin studies

Twin study

Twin studies help disentangle the relative importance of environmental and genetic influences on individual traits and behaviors. Twin research is considered a key tool in behavioral genetics and related fields...

, by Cyril Burt

Cyril Burt

Sir Cyril Lodowic Burt was an English educational psychologist who made contributions to educational psychology and statistics....

(1883–1971), wherein he claimed that human intelligence is highly heritabile.

Statistical correlation and heritability

As a scientist (evolutionary biologist paleontologist

Paleontology

Paleontology "old, ancient", ὄν, ὀντ- "being, creature", and λόγος "speech, thought") is the study of prehistoric life. It includes the study of fossils to determine organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments...

) and historian of science

History of science

The history of science is the study of the historical development of human understandings of the natural world and the domains of the social sciences....

, Stephen Jay Gould accepted biological variability (the premise of the transmission of intelligence via genetic heredity), but opposed biological determinism
Biological determinism
Biological determination is the interpretation of humans and human life from a strictly biological point of view, and it is closely related to genetic determinism...

, which posits that genes determine a definitive, unalterable social destiny for each man and each woman in life and society

Society

. The Mismeasure of Man (1981) is an analysis of statistical correlation, the mathematics applied by psychologists to establish the validity of IQ

Intelligence quotient

tests, and the heritability of intelligence. For example, to establish the validity of the proposition that IQ is supported by a general intelligence factor

General intelligence factor

The g factor, where g stands for general intelligence, is a statistic used in psychometrics to model the mental ability underlying results of various tests of cognitive ability...

(g factor), the answers to several tests of cognitive ability

Cognition

In science, cognition refers to mental processes. These processes include attention, remembering, producing and understanding language, solving problems, and making decisions. Cognition is studied in various disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science...

must positively correlate

Correlation

In statistics, dependence refers to any statistical relationship between two random variables or two sets of data. Correlation refers to any of a broad class of statistical relationships involving dependence....

; thus, for the g factor to be a heritable trait, the IQ-test scores of close-relation respondents must correlate more than the IQ-test scores of distant-relation respondents. Hence, correlation does not imply causation

Correlation does not imply causation

"Correlation does not imply causation" is a phrase used in science and statistics to emphasize that correlation between two variables does not automatically imply that one causes the other "Correlation does not imply causation" (related to "ignoring a common cause" and questionable cause) is a...

; in example, Gould said that the measures of the changes, over time, in “my age, the population of México, the price of Swiss cheese, my pet turtle’s weight, and the average distance between galaxies” have a high, positive correlation — yet that correlation does not indicate that Gould’s age increased because the Mexican population increased. More specifically, a high, positive correlation between the intelligence quotients of a parent and a child can be presumed either as evidence that IQ is genetically inherited, or that IQ is inherited through social and environmental factors. Moreover, because the data from IQ tests can be applied to arguing the logical validity of either proposition — genetic inheritance and environmental inheritance — the psychometric

Psychometrics

Psychometrics is the field of study concerned with the theory and technique of psychological measurement, which includes the measurement of knowledge, abilities, attitudes, personality traits, and educational measurement...

data have no inherent value.

Gould proposed that if the genetic heritability of IQ were demonstrable within a given racial

Race

or ethnic

Ethnic group

An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy...

group, it would not explain the causes of IQ differences among the people of a group, or if said IQ differences can be attributed to the environment. For example, the height of a person is genetically determined, but there exist height differences within a given social group that can be attributed to environmental factors (e.g. the quality of nutrition) and to genetic inheritance. The evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin

Richard Lewontin

Richard Charles "Dick" Lewontin is an American evolutionary biologist, geneticist and social commentator. A leader in developing the mathematical basis of population genetics and evolutionary theory, he pioneered the notion of using techniques from molecular biology such as gel electrophoresis to...

, a colleague of Gould’s, is a proponent of said argument in relation to the cognitive ability tests that determine a person’s intelligence quotient. An example of the intellectual confusion about what heritability

Heritability

The Heritability of a population is the proportion of observable differences between individuals that is due to genetic differences. Factors including genetics, environment and random chance can all contribute to the variation between individuals in their observable characteristics...

is and is not, is the statement: “If all environments were to become equal for everyone, heritability would rise to 100 percent because all remaining differences in IQ would necessarily be genetic in origin”, which Gould said is misleading, at best, and false, at worst. First, it is very difficult to conceive of a world wherein every man, woman, and child grew up in the same environment, because their spatial and temporal dispersion upon the planet Earth makes it impossible. Second, were people to grew up in the same environment, not every difference would be genetic in origin, because of the randomness of molecular and genetic development. Therefore, heritability is not a measure of phenotypic (physiognomy and physique) differences among racial and ethnic groups, but of differences between genotype

Genotype

The genotype is the genetic makeup of a cell, an organism, or an individual usually with reference to a specific character under consideration...

and phenotype in a given population.

Furthermore, he dismissed the proposition that an IQ score measures the general intelligence (g factor) of a person, because cognitive ability tests (IQ tests) present different types of questions, and the responses tend to form clusters of intellectual acumen. That is, different questions, and the answers to them, yield different scores — which indicate that an IQ test is a combination method of different examinations of different things. As such, Gould proposed that IQ-test proponents assume the existence of “general intelligence” as a discrete quality within the human mind

Mind

The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...

, and thus they analyze the IQ-test data to produce an IQ number that establishes the definitive general intelligence

General intelligence

General intelligence may refer to:* general intelligence factor in psychology* Intelligence* strong AI, an artificial intelligence that matches or exceeds human intelligence...

of each man and of each woman. Hence, Dr. Gould dismissed the IQ number as an erroneous artifact

Artifact (error)

In natural science and signal processing, an artifact is any error in the perception or representation of any visual or aural information introduced by the involved equipment or technique....

of the statistical mathematics applied to the raw IQ-test data; especially because psychometric data can be variously analyzed to produce multiple IQ scores.

Praise

As an author, Stephen Jay Gould said that the most positive review of the first edition of The Mismeasure of Man (1981) was by the British Journal of Mathematical & Statistical Psychology, which reported that “Gould has performed a valuable service in exposing the logical basis of one of the most important debates in the social sciences, and this book should be required reading for students and practitioners alike.” In the New York Times newspaper, the journalist Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt is an American journalist, critic and novelist who has worked in the field of books all of his professional career. He began as an editor for various New York City publishing houses, among them Holt, Rinehart and Winston and The Dial Press, from where he moved in 1965 to...

said that the critique of factor analysis

Factor analysis

“demonstrates persuasively how factor analysis led to the cardinal error in reasoning, of confusing correlation with cause, or, to put it another way, of attributing false concreteness to the abstract.” The British journal Saturday Review praised the book as a “fascinating historical study of scientific racism

Scientific racism

”, and that its arguments “illustrate both the logical inconsistencies of the theories and the prejudicially motivated, albeit unintentional, misuse of data in each case.” In the American Monthly Review magazine, Richard York and the sociologist Brett Clark

Brett Clark (sociologist)

Brett Clark is an assistant professor of sociology at North Carolina State University. His areas of interest are ecology, political economy and science.-Works and awards:...

praised the book’s thematic concentration, saying that “rather than attempt a grand critique of all ‘scientific’ efforts aimed at justifying social inequalities, Gould performs a well-reasoned assessment of the errors underlying a specific set of theories and empirical claims.”

Awards

The first edition of The Mismeasure of Man (1981) won the non-fiction award from the National Book Critics Circle

National Book Critics Circle

The National Book Critics Circle is an American tax-exempt organization for active book reviewers. Its flagship is the National Book Critics Circle Award....

; the Outstanding Book Award for 1983 from the American Educational Research Association

American Educational Research Association

The American Educational Research Association, or AERA, was founded in 1916 as a professional organization representing educational researchers in the United States and around the world....

; the Italian translation was awarded the Iglesias prize in 1991; and in 1998, the Modern Library

Modern Library

The Modern Library is a publishing company. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, it was purchased in 1925 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer...

ranked it as the 24th-best non-fiction

Non-fiction

Non-fiction is the form of any narrative, account, or other communicative work whose assertions and descriptions are understood to be fact...

book of all time. In December 2006, Discover
Discover (magazine)
Discover is an American science magazine that publishes articles about science for a general audience. The monthly magazine was launched in October 1980 by Time Inc. It was sold to Family Media, the owners of Health, in 1987. Walt Disney Company bought the magazine when Family Media went out of...

magazine ranked The Mismeasure of Man as the 17th-greatest science book

Science book

A science book is a work of nonfiction, usually written by a scientist, researcher, or professor like Stephen Hawking , or sometimes by a non-scientist such as Bill Bryson...

of all time.

Miscalculation

In a study published in 1988, John S. Michael reported that Samuel G. Morton’s original 19th-century data were more accurate than Gould had described; that “contrary to Gould’s interpretation . . . Morton’s research was conducted with integrity”. Nonetheless, Michael's analysis suggested that there were discrepancies in Morton’s craniometric calculations. In another study, published in 2011, Jason E. Lewis and colleagues re-measured the cranial volumes of the skulls in Morton’s collection, and re-examined the respective statistical analyses by Morton and by Gould, concluding that, contrary to Gould’s analysis, Morton did not falsify craniometric research results to support his racial and social prejudices, and that the "Caucasians" possessed the greatest average cranial volume in the sample. To the extent that Morton’s craniometric measurements were erroneous, the error was away from his personal biases. Ultimately, Lewis and colleagues disagreed with most of Gould’s criticisms of Morton, finding that Gould’s work was “poorly supported”, and that, in their opinion, the confirmation of the results of Morton’s original work “weakens the argument of Gould, and others, that biased results are endemic in science.” Nonetheless, they concluded that, “While we differ with Gould in regards to his analysis of Morton, we find other things to admire in Gould’s body of work.”

Misrepresentation

In a review of The Mismeasure of Man, Bernard Davis

Bernard Davis

Bernard David Davis was an American biologist who made major contributions in microbial physiology and metabolism. Davis was a prominent figure at Harvard Medical School in microbiology and in national science policy. He was the 1989 recipient of the Selman A...

, professor of microbiology

Microbiology

Microbiology is the study of microorganisms, which are defined as any microscopic organism that comprises either a single cell , cell clusters or no cell at all . This includes eukaryotes, such as fungi and protists, and prokaryotes...

at Harvard Medical School, said that Gould erected a straw man

Straw man

A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position, twisting his words or by means of [false] assumptions...

argument based upon incorrectly defined key terms — specifically reification
Reification (fallacy)
Reification is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction is treated as if it were a concrete, real event, or physical entity. In other words, it is the error of treating as a "real thing" something which is not a real thing, but merely an idea...

— which Gould furthered with a “highly selective” presentation of statistical data

Factor analysis

, all motivated more by politics than by science. That Philip Morrison

Philip Morrison

Philip Morrison, was Institute Professor Emeritus and Professor of Physics Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology .-Early life and education:...

’s laudatory book review of The Mismeasure of Man in Scientific American
Scientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...

, was written and published because the editors of the journal had “long seen the study of the genetics of intelligence as a threat to social justice.” Davis also criticized the popular-press and the literary-journal book reviews of The Mismeasure of Man as generally approbatory; whereas, most scientific-journal book reviews were generally critical. Nonetheless, in 1994, Gould contradicted Davis by arguing that of twenty-four academic book reviews written by experts in psychology, fourteen approved, three were mixed opinions, and seven disapproved of the book. Furthermore, Davis accused Gould of having misrepresented a study by Henry H. Goddard

Henry H. Goddard

Henry Herbert Goddard was a prominent American psychologist and eugenicist in the early 20th century...

(1866–1957) about the intelligence of Jewish, Hungarian, Italian, and Russian immigrants to the U.S., wherein Gould reported Goddard’s qualifying those people as “feeble-minded”; whereas, in the initial sentence of the study, Goddard said the study subjects were atypical members of their ethnic group

Ethnic group

s, who had been selected because of their suspected sub-normal intelligence. Countering Gould, Davis further explained that Goddard proposed that the low IQs of the sub-normally intelligent men and women who took the cognitive-ability test likely derived from their social environments rather than from their respective genetic inheritances, and concluded that “we may be confident that their children will be of average intelligence, and, if rightly brought up, will be good citizens.”

Intellectual error

In his review, psychologist John B. Carroll said that Gould did not understand “the nature and purpose” of factor analysis

Factor analysis

. Statistician David J. Bartholomew, of the London School of Economics

London School of Economics

The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...

, said that Dr. Gould erred in his use of factor analysis

Factor analysis

, irrelevantly concentrated upon the fallacy of reification

Reification (fallacy)

(the abstract as concrete thing), and ignored the contemporary scientific consensus about the existence of the psychometric

Psychometrics

general intelligence factor

General intelligence factor

The g factor, where g stands for general intelligence, is a statistic used in psychometrics to model the mental ability underlying results of various tests of cognitive ability...

(g factor).

Propaganda

Reviewing the book, Stephen F. Blinkhorn

Steve Blinkhorn

Stephen F. Blinkhorn is a British occupational psychologist and psychometrician , who continues to contribute to psychology and psychometric testing....

, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Hertfordshire

University of Hertfordshire

The University of Hertfordshire is a new university based largely in Hatfield, in the county of Hertfordshire, England, from which the university takes its name. It has more than 27,500 students, over 2500 staff, with a turnover of over £181m...

, wrote that The Mismeasure of Man was “a masterpiece of propaganda

Propaganda

Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....

” that selectively juxtaposed data to further a political agenda. Psychologist Lloyd Humphreys

Lloyd Humphreys

Lloyd G. Humphreys was a differential psychologist and methodologist who focused on assessing individual differences in human behavior....

, then editor-in-chief of The American Journal of Psychology and Psychological Bulletin
Psychological Bulletin
Psychological Bulletin is a peer-reviewed academic journal specializing in literature reviews. It was founded by Johns Hopkins psychologist James Mark Baldwin in 1904 immediately after he had bought out James McKeen Cattell's share of Psychological Review, which the two had founded ten years...

, wrote that The Mismeasure of Man was “science fiction” and “political propaganda”, and that Gould had misrepresented the views of Alfred Binet

Alfred Binet

Alfred Binet was a French psychologist who was the inventor of the first usable intelligence test, known at that time as the Binet test and today referred to as the IQ test. His principal goal was to identify students who needed special help in coping with the school curriculum...

, Godfrey Thomson

Godfrey Thomson

Sir Godfrey Hilton Thomson was an English educational psychologist known as a critical pioneer in intelligence research.He worked at Armstrong College, Newcastle upon Tyne from 1906 to 1925, before moving to theUniversity of Edinburgh from 1925 until 1951, where he was the Bell Professor of...

, and Lewis Terman

Lewis Terman

Lewis Madison Terman was an American psychologist, noted as a pioneer in educational psychology in the early 20th century at the Stanford University School of Education. He is best known as the inventor of the Stanford-Binet IQ test...

.

In his review, psychologist Franz Samelson wrote that Gould was wrong in asserting that the psychometric

Psychometrics

results of the intelligence tests administered to soldier-recruits by the U.S. Army contributed to the legislation of the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924

Immigration Act of 1924

The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the National Origins Act, and Asian Exclusion Act , was a United States federal law that limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already...

. In their study of the Congressional Record

Congressional Record

The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published by the United States Government Printing Office, and is issued daily when the United States Congress is in session. Indexes are issued approximately every two weeks...

and committee hearings related to the Immigration Act, Mark Snyderman and Richard J. Herrnstein reported that “the [intelligence] testing community did not generally view its findings as favoring restrictive immigration policies like those in the 1924 Act, and Congress took virtually no notice of intelligence testing.”

Responses by subjects of the book

In his review of The Mismeasure of Man, Arthur Jensen

Arthur Jensen

Arthur Robert Jensen is a Professor Emeritus of educational psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Jensen is known for his work in psychometrics and differential psychology, which is concerned with how and why individuals differ behaviorally from one another.He is a major proponent...

, a University of California (Berkeley) educational psychologist whom Gould much criticized in the book, wrote that Gould used straw man

Straw man

A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position, twisting his words or by means of [false] assumptions...

arguments to advance his opinions, misrepresented other scientists, and propounded a political agenda. According to Jensen, the book was “a patent example” of the bias that political ideology

Ideology

An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...

imposes upon science — the very thing that Gould sought to portray in the book. Jensen also criticized Gould for concentrating on long-disproven arguments (noting that 71% of the book's references preceded 1950), rather than addressing “anything currently regarded as important by scientists in the relevant fields”, suggesting that drawing conclusions from early human intelligence research is like condemning the contemporary automobile industry based upon the mechanical performance of the Ford Model T

Ford Model T

The Ford Model T is an automobile that was produced by Henry Ford's Ford Motor Company from September 1908 to May 1927...

.

Charles Murray

Charles Murray (author)

, co-author of The Bell Curve
The Bell Curve
The Bell Curve is a best-selling and controversial 1994 book by the Harvard psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray...

(1994), said that his views about the distribution of human intelligence

Intelligence

, among the races

Race

and the ethnic group

Ethnic group

s who compose the U.S. population, were misrepresented in The Mismeasure of Man.

Psychologist Hans Eysenck

Hans Eysenck

Hans Jürgen Eysenck was a German-British psychologist who spent most of his career in Britain, best remembered for his work on intelligence and personality, though he worked in a wide range of areas...

wrote that The Mismeasure of Man is a book that presents a “a paleontologist

Paleontology

’s distorted view of what psychologists

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

think, untutored in even the most elementary facts of the science.”

Responses to the second edition (1996)

Arthur Jensen and Bernard Davis argued that if the g factor (general intelligence factor) were replaced with a model that tested several types of intelligence, it would change results less than one might expect. Therefore, according to Jensen and Davis, the results of standardized test

Standardized test

A standardized test is a test that is administered and scored in a consistent, or "standard", manner. Standardized tests are designed in such a way that the questions, conditions for administering, scoring procedures, and interpretations are consistent and are administered and scored in a...

s of cognitive ability would continue to correlate with the results of other such standardized tests, and that the intellectual achievement gap between black and white people would remain.

Psychologist J. Philippe Rushton

J. Philippe Rushton

Jean Philippe Rushton is a Canadian psychology professor at the University of Western Ontario who is most widely known for his work on racial group differences, such as research on race and intelligence, race and crime, and the application of r/K selection theory to humans in his book Race,...

accused Stephen J. Gould of “scholarly malfeasance” for misrepresenting and for ignoring contemporary scientific research pertinent to the subject of his book, and for attacking dead hypotheses

Hypothesis

A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. The term derives from the Greek, ὑποτιθέναι – hypotithenai meaning "to put under" or "to suppose". For a hypothesis to be put forward as a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it...

and methods of research

Methodology

Methodology is generally a guideline for solving a problem, with specificcomponents such as phases, tasks, methods, techniques and tools . It can be defined also as follows:...

. He faulted The Mismeasure of Man because it did not mention the magnetic resonance imaging

Magnetic resonance imaging

Magnetic resonance imaging , nuclear magnetic resonance imaging , or magnetic resonance tomography is a medical imaging technique used in radiology to visualize detailed internal structures...

(MRI) studies that showed the existence of statistical correlations among brain

Brain

-size, IQ

Intelligence quotient

, and the g factor

General intelligence factor

The g factor, where g stands for general intelligence, is a statistic used in psychometrics to model the mental ability underlying results of various tests of cognitive ability...

, despite Rushton having sent copies of the MRI studies to Gould. Rushton further criticized the book for the absence of the results of five studies of twins reared corroborating the findings of Cyril Burt

Cyril Burt

Sir Cyril Lodowic Burt was an English educational psychologist who made contributions to educational psychology and statistics....

— the contemporary average was 0.75 compared to the average of 0.77 reported by Burt.

James R. Flynn

James R. Flynn

James Robert Flynn PhD FRSNZ , aka Jim Flynn, Emeritus Professor of Political Studies at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, researches intelligence and has become well known for his discovery of the Flynn effect, the continued year-after-year increase of IQ scores in all parts of the...

, a researcher critical of racial theories

Racialism

of intelligence, repeated the arguments of Arthur Jensen

Arthur Jensen

about the second edition of The Mismeasure of Man. Flynn wrote that “Gould’s book evades all of Jensen’s best arguments for a genetic component in the black–white IQ gap, by positing that they are dependent on the concept of g as a general intelligence factor. Therefore, Gould believes that if he can discredit g no more need be said. This is manifestly false. Jensen’s arguments would bite no matter whether blacks suffered from a score deficit on one or ten or one hundred factors.”

According to psychologist Ian Deary

Ian Deary

Ian J. Deary is a Scottish psychologist and Professor of Differential Psychology at the University of Edinburgh. Ian Deary is currently engaged in a 10-year study into the effects of ageing on mental ability using the 1932 Scottish Mental Survey funded by , entitled...

, Gould's claim that there is no relation between brain size and IQ is outdated. Furthermore, he reported that Gould refused to correct this in new editions of the book, even though newly available data were brought to his attention by several researchers.

Craniometry

Bias and falsification

Statistical correlation and heritability

Praise

Awards

Miscalculation

Misrepresentation

Intellectual error

Propaganda

Responses by subjects of the book

Responses to the second edition (1996)

See also

Praise

Criticism

Further reading