Thursday, June 9, 2011

Stephen Jay Gould: incompetent or biased?



Razib points me to a new article which re-examines Stephen Jay Gould's perceived bias in the study of human cranial volume by the 19th century scientist Samuel George Morton. Gould asserted that Morton:

Physically mismeasured skulls so that their cranial volumes would match his expectations about racial differences in cranial volume
Statistically manipulated population means by taking averages of individual skulls rather than averages of population averages, hence biasing his "Indian" means to be lower

Lewis et al. pretty much demolish both claims. By remeasuring almost half the original skulls studied by Morton, they show that Morton did not inflate "Caucasian" cranial volumes at the expense of non-"Caucasians". Indeed, most of his measurements deviated only a little from those done today, and, in the few cases where large discrepancies were discovered, they were in the opposite direction of Morton's perceived bias.

Furthermore, they show that Morton's supposed statistical manipulation had very little effect: the difference was only 0.3 cubic inches. Not only this, but Gould fudged his own measurements which were supposed to proved that different populations did not differ in cranial capacity:
Via Matthew
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Stephen Jay Gould: The Misrepresentation of Science

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