It isn’t that these early scientists acted dishonestly while modern scientists posses greater integrity, indeed many of these early scientists practised a degree of transparency in reporting their data that sadly surpasses the present-day norm. At least not according to the late evolutionary biologist and science communicator Stephen Jay Gould, who argued in his 1982 book The Mismeasure of Man that the evidence simply had never been on the side of the skull-measurers, literal or figurative. Half that time, a mere 75 years ago, although not unchallenged this belief remained widespread within the scientific community albeit crude and ineffective psychometric testing had by that time replaced the physical measuring of skulls.īut why did scientists once believe such silly ideas? Did a fair and objective interpretation of the evidence available at the time support such conclusions, only for new evidence to come along and paint a radically different picture? Has Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man really been discredited?Ī century and a half ago the most learned and conscientious of men believed that the size of the human skull was a measure a person’s intelligence, and that the various sub-species of human being, of which there were multiple, could be objectively ranked into a hierarchy of cranial, and hence intellectual capacity.
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