Correction: The Mismeasure of Science: Stephen Jay Gould versus Samuel George Morton on Skulls and Bias

Lewis, Jason; DeGusta, David; Meyer, Marc R.; Monge, Janet; Mann, Alan; Holloway, Ralph L.

doi:10.1371/annotation/138c7c99-249f-432c-a4f7-2993b7b87c0a

Cited by 26 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Yet, Gould himself was motivated to write The Mismeasure of Man by his strong political and social beliefs, which guided him to present his text describing the early intelligence scientists as blinded by their prejudices [4,7,12,50]. Given Gould’s pervasively incorrect statements in The Mismeasure of Man about the Army Beta, factor analysis [3], the place of intelligence testing in the immigration debates of the 1920s [5,9,10], the biological basis for intelligence [4,8,9], and the questions regarding Gould’s analysis of Morton’s work [11,12,13,14], we wonder whether there is any section of The Mismeasure of Man that is factually accurate.…”

Section: Overall Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When Gould evaluated Samuel George Morton’s work on cranium size differences among racial groups, Gould claimed Morton selectively reported, manipulated, and distorted data in order to reach a conclusion about the supposed racial superiority of Europeans (on the basis of a larger skull capacity). Yet, Lewis et al [11] argued that Gould himself selectively reported, manipulated, and distorted data in order to bolster his argument that Morton worked to support his preconceived notions. Lewis et al’s [11] claim was contested by Weisberg [12], who argued that Lewis et al’s [11] re-analysis was flawed, and that Gould’s arguments were mostly sound.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, Lewis et al [11] argued that Gould himself selectively reported, manipulated, and distorted data in order to bolster his argument that Morton worked to support his preconceived notions. Lewis et al’s [11] claim was contested by Weisberg [12], who argued that Lewis et al’s [11] re-analysis was flawed, and that Gould’s arguments were mostly sound. However, the incompleteness of Morton’s reporting and problems with his sampling led Kaplan, Pigliucci, and Banta [13] to argue that Morton’s analysis was indeed flawed, but that Gould was equally mistaken in believing that any re-analysis would be useful in understanding Morton’s motives and actions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Stephen Jay Gould’s Analysis of the Army Beta Test in The Mismeasure of Man: Distortions and Misconceptions Regarding a Pioneering Mental Test

et al. 2019

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: In The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould argued that the preconceived beliefs and biases of scientists influence their methods and conclusions. To show the potential consequences of this, Gould used examples from the early days of psychometrics and allied fields, arguing that inappropriate assumptions and an elitist desire to rank individuals and/or groups produced incorrect results. In this article, we investigate a section of The Mismeasure of Man in which Gould evaluated the Army Beta intelligence test for illiterate American draftees in World War I. We evaluated Gould’s arguments that the Army Beta (a) had inappropriate content, (b) had unsuitable administration conditions, (c) suffered from short time limits, and (d) could not have measured intelligence. By consulting the historical record and conducting a pre-registered replication of Gould’s administration of the test to a sample of college students, we show that Gould mischaracterized the Army Beta in a number of ways. Instead, the Army Beta was a well-designed test by the standards of the time, and all evidence indicates that it measured intelligence a century ago and can, to some extent, do so today.

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Section: Overall Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Stephen Jay Gould’s Analysis of the Army Beta Test in The Mismeasure of Man: Distortions and Misconceptions Regarding a Pioneering Mental Test

et al. 2019

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“…In fact, he was famously described as 'the objectivist of his age' . 120 Gould went to great lengths to refute the science behind the Bell Curve thesis, by actively recalculating and re-analysing the statistics used by craniometrist Samuel Morton to decisively demonstrate the subjective and biased nature of Morton's calculations. He thus demonstrated that Morton's data were unreliable and distorted by his preconceived views on the intelligence of the different races.…”

Section: A Normal Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Numbering normal

McGuire¹

2020

Measuring Difference, Numbering Normal

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In 1998, thousands of men and women in the United States woke up and found themselves changed. These individuals may have felt the same as they did the day before. They may have got out of bed, showered, made breakfast and driven to work as if it were any other day. Yet overnight they had become overweight. Some had become obese, others morbidly so. Still more had moved from the underweight category to become 'normal'. What kind of drastic vicissitudes had been realised to change so many bodies so rapidly? A sudden increase in nocturnal sleep-related eating disorders? Icing sugar falling like snow from the night sky? No: the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had changed the way the way that it measured Body Mass Index (BMI). Previously the United States had classified men with a BMI of 27.8 or above and women with a BMI of 27.3 or above as overweight. However, in 1998 it shifted the measurement down to 25, to fall in line with the World Health Organization's (WHO) standardised classification system and to allow for easier calculability. 1 In one fell swoop thousands more people in the US were obese. The media responded with panicked commentary about the obesity epidemic, without mentioning the artificial inflation of these new statistics. But why would they? It is perfectly natural to trust in the classification systems of scientists. Yet this example demonstrates that the thresholds of normalcy that we rely on for the classification of health are more fluid that we might imagine. In this book I argue that our bodies have been changed by measurement technology. Our capabilities and parameters have been defined so that we-youshift from states of normalcy to disability at the whim of mercurial thresholds. Disability history fascinates because it forces us to ask questions about our universal lived experience and how we ascribe meaning and significance to certain attributes and values. What should we be capable of ?

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“…Ad 9 and 10: Morton's early racial ranking of crania has a long history of recent re-examinations, including being criticized by Steven Jay Gould (1978 [36]; 1981/1996 [12,13]) and defended independently by Lewis, Degusta, Meyer, Monge, et al (2011) [17] and by Wade (2011) [37]. The latter two studies were in turn questioned in an Editorial (2011) [38], and then Weisberg (2014) [39] partially supported Gould's accusations.…”

Section: Contras To Points 7-10mentioning

confidence: 99%

Race as Social Construct

Nyborg

2019

Psych

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It is often claimed that race is a social construct and that scientists studying race differences are disruptive racists. The recent April 2018 “Race Issue” of the widely distributed National Geographic Magazine (NG) provided its millions of readers with a particularly illustrative example of this position. As discussions of race issues often recur, in both scientific and lay literature, stir considerable polemics, and have political, societal and human implications, we found it of both scientific and general interest to identify and dissect the following partly overlapping key contentions of the NG race issue magazine: (1) Samuel Morton’s studies of brain size is reprehensible racism (2) Race does not relate to geographic location, (3) Races do not exist as we are all equals and Africans, (4) Admixture and displacement erase race differences as soon as they appear, and (5) Race is only skin color deep. Also examined is the claim that Race does not matter. When analyzed within syllogistic formalism, each of the claims is found theoretically and empirically unsustainable, as Morton’s continuously evolving race position is misrepresented, race relates significantly to geography, we are far from equals, races have definitely not been erased, and race, whether self-reported or defined by ancestry, lineage, ecotype, species, or genes, is much more than skin color deep. Race matters vitally for people and societies. We conclude that important research on existing population differences is hurt when widely respected institutions such as NG mobilize their full authority in a massively circulated attempt to betray its scientific and public readership by systematically misrepresenting historical sources and scientific positions, shaming past scientists, and by selectively suppressing unwanted or unacceptable results–acts included as examples of academic fraud by the National Academy of Sciences (US, 1986). Any unqualified a priori denial of the formative evolutionary aspects of individual and population differences threatens to impede the recent promising research on effects of genome wide allelic associations, which would lames us in the vital quest to develop rational solutions to associated globally pressing societal problems.

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Correction: The Mismeasure of Science: Stephen Jay Gould versus Samuel George Morton on Skulls and Bias

Abstract: The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Cited by 26 publications

References 10 publications

Stephen Jay Gould’s Analysis of the Army Beta Test in The Mismeasure of Man: Distortions and Misconceptions Regarding a Pioneering Mental Test

Stephen Jay Gould’s Analysis of the Army Beta Test in The Mismeasure of Man: Distortions and Misconceptions Regarding a Pioneering Mental Test

Numbering normal

Race as Social Construct

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