Life in the trees, not bamboo, shaped the panda's 'thumb'Ĭitation: 'The Mismeasure of Science: Stephen Jay Gould versus Samuel George Morton on Skulls and Bias.' By Jason E.

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Image: Inuit skulls, from Morton's Crania Americana. And Gould did provide an excellent example of how science can be skewed by prejudice. One is the importance of transparency: Gould's own analysis, and the latest reanalysis, were all possible because Morton freely shared his raw data. Yet despite Gould's mistakes, and in some ways because of them, this historical and sociological saga doesn't lack for redeeming lessons.

In its place, he made up fictional stories, never directly examined the evidence himself, and misreported Morton's numbers.' When published in 1981, The Mismeasure of Man was immediately hailed as a masterwork, the ringing answer to those who would classify people, rank them according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits. 'Gould owed us a responsible reading and trustworthy reporting on that evidence. 'Gould used the well-documented work of a long-dead man to make an argument that unconscious bias is widespread in science,' wrote University of Wisconscin anthropologist John Hawks, who was not involved in the new study, on his blog. Such features are now recognized as physyiological adaptations to climate, with no cognitive implications.) But as far as the data went, Morton was honest. (That Morton believed cranial volume differences represented cognitive variation is now doubted, but many other researchers did. Those are a different matter altogether, and Morton's work was full of them: that humanity was created in one divine swoop a few thousand years ago, that 19th century racial categories were real and fixed, that between-group cranial differences were more significant than within-group. To be certain, Lewis and DeGusta don't write that the scientific method can shield interpretations and assumptions from cultural biases.

Gould the mismeasure of man