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The Mismeasure of Man

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Evolution and
reproduction; General Biology

   The Mismeasure of Man is a controversial, best-selling 1981 book
   written by the Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould ( 1941- 2002).
   The book is a history and critique of the methods and motivations
   underlying biological determinism, the belief that "the social and
   economic differences between human groups—primarily races, classes, and
   sexes—arise from inherited, inborn distinctions and that society, in
   this sense, is an accurate reflection of biology."

   The book also attempts to critique the principal theme of biological
   determinism, that "worth can be assigned to individuals and groups by
   measuring intelligence as a single quantity." Gould discusses two
   prominent techniques used to measure such a quantity, craniometry and
   psychological testing. According to Gould these methods suffer from
   "two deep fallacies." The first fallacy is of reification, that is,
   "our tendency to convert abstract concepts into entities." These
   entities include IQ (the intelligence quotient) and g (the general
   intelligence factor), which have been the cornerstone of much
   intelligence research. The second fallacy is one of ranking, or our
   "propensity for ordering complex variation as a gradual ascending
   scale."

   The Mismeasure of Man skeptically investigates "the abstraction of
   intelligence as a single entity, its location within the brain, 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."

   The book's second edition ( 1996) has been revised and challenges the
   arguments of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's The Bell Curve,
   which has also generated much controversy.

Summary of contents

Historical bias in biological sociology

   The first parts of the book are devoted to a critical analysis of early
   works on a supposed biologically inherited basis for intelligence, such
   as craniometry, the measurement of skull volume and its relation to
   intellectual faculties. Gould argues that much of this research was
   based more on prejudice than scientific rigor, demonstrating how in
   several occasions researchers such as Samuel George Morton, Louis
   Agassiz, and Paul Broca committed the fallacy of using their expected
   conclusions as part of their reasoning. The book contains a complete
   re-working of original data for one of these studies, showing that the
   original results were based on biases and manipulations, mostly by
   selection of data. When these biases are accounted for, the original
   hypothesis—an ordering in skull size ranging from Blacks through
   Mongols to Whites—is not supported in any way by the data.

Claims of bias and falsification

   The following chapters present a historical evaluation of the concept
   of IQ and of the g factor, which are measures of intelligence used by
   psychologists. Gould argues that most race-related psychological
   studies have been heavily biased by the belief that human behaviour is
   best explained by heredity. Gould notes that the often cited twin
   studies by Cyril Burt on the genetic heritability of intelligence used
   falsified data. According to L. S. Hearnshaw (1979), fraud had also
   been found in Burt's studies in kinship correlations in IQ, and
   declining levels of intelligence in Britain. Burt had also attempted to
   declare himself the father of "factor analysis," rather than his
   predecessor and mentor Charles Spearman (who invented the technique in
   1904).

Statistical correlation and heritability

   Gould devotes a large part of the book to an analysis of statistical
   correlation, which is used by psychologists to assert the validity of
   IQ tests and the heritability of intelligence. For example, to claim
   that an IQ test measures General intelligence factor relies on the fact
   that the answers to various questions correlate highly, the
   heritability of g requires that the scores of respondents who are
   closely related exhibit higher correlation than those of distant
   relations. To criticise such claims Gould points out that correlation
   is not the same as cause. As he puts it, measures of the changes, over
   time, in "my age, the population of Mexico, the price of Swiss cheese,
   my pet turtle's weight, and the average distance between galaxies" have
   a high positive correlation, but that does not mean that Stephen Jay
   Gould's age goes up because the population of Mexico goes up. Second,
   and more specifically, a high positive correlation between parent and
   child IQ can be taken as either evidence that IQ is genetically
   inherited or that IQ is inherited through social and environmental
   factors. Since the same data can be used to argue either side of the
   case, the data in and of itself is not useful.

   Furthermore, Gould argues that even if it were demonstrated that IQ is
   highly genetically heritable within a group, this tells nothing about
   the causes of IQ differences between groups or whether those
   differences can be changed by environment. Gould gives the example of
   height, which is known to be determined mostly through genes within
   socioeconomic groups, but group differences in height may be due to
   nutrition as well as genes. Richard Lewontin, a colleague of Gould's,
   is well-known for emphasizing this argument as it pertains to IQ
   testing.

   According to Gould, a good example of the confusion of heritability is
   found in the statement “If all environments were to become equal for
   everyone, heritability would rise to 100% because all remaining
   differences in IQ would necessarily be genetic in origin.” He says that
   this claim is at best misleading and at worst, false. First, it is very
   hard to conceive of a world in which everyone grows up in the exact
   same environment; the very fact that people are spatially and
   temporally dispersed means that no one can be in exactly the same
   environment, for example, a husband and wife may share a house, but
   they do not live in identical environments because each is married to a
   different person. Second, even if people grew up in exactly the same
   environment, not all differences would be genetic in origin. This is
   because embryonic development involves chance molecular events and
   random cellular movements that alter the effects of genes.

   Gould argues that heritability is not a measure of phenotypic
   differences between groups, but rather differences between genotype and
   phenotype within a population. Even within a group, if all members of
   the group grow up in exactly the same environment, it does not mean
   that heritability is 100%. All Americans (or New Yorkers, or
   upper-class New Yorkers – one may define the population in question as
   narrowly as one likes) may eat exactly the same food, but their adult
   height will still be a result of both genetics and nutrition. In short,
   heritability is almost never 100%, and heritability tells us nothing
   about genetic differences between groups. This is true for height,
   which has a high degree of heritability; it is all the more true for
   intelligence. This is true for other reasons besides ones involving
   heritability, as Gould goes on to discuss.

   Gould's most profound criticism is his rejection of the very thing that
   IQ is meant to measure, "general intelligence" (or g). IQ tests, he
   points out, ask many different kinds of questions. Responses to
   different kinds of questions tend to form clusters. In other words,
   different kinds of questions can be given different scores – which
   suggests that an IQ test is really a combination of a number of
   different tests that test a number of different things. Gould claims
   that proponents of IQ tests assume that there is such a thing as
   general intelligence, and analyze the data so as to produce one number,
   which they then claim is a measure of general intelligence. Gould
   argues that this one number (and therefore, the implication that there
   is a real thing called "general intelligence" that this number
   measures) is in fact an artifact of the statistical operations
   psychologists apply to the raw data. He argues that one can analyze the
   same data more effectively and end up with a number of different scores
   (that are as or more valid, meaning they measure something) rather than
   one score.

   Finally, Gould points out that he is not opposed to the notion of
   "biological variability" which is the premise that heredity influences
   intelligence. Instead, he does criticize the notion of "biological
   determinism" which is the idea that genes determine destiny and there
   is nothing we can or should do about this.

Reception

Awards

     * 1981 – National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction
     * 1983 – Outstanding Book Award from the American Educational
       Research Association
     * 1991 – Iglesias Prize (Italian translation)

Praise

     * Leon J. Kamin, American psychologist, Princeton University.

          "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. And yet the idea of innate limits—of biology
          as destiny—dies hard, as witness the attention devoted to The
          Bell Curve, whose arguments are here so effectively anticipated
          and thoroughly undermined by Stephen Jay Gould. In this [2nd]
          edition Dr. Gould traces the subsequent history of the
          controversy on innateness right through The Bell Curve. Further,
          he has added five essays, in a separate section at the end, on
          questions of The Bell Curve in particular and on race, racism,
          and biological determinism in general. These additions
          strengthen the claim of this book to be 'a major contribution
          toward deflating pseudobiological "explanations' of our present
          social woes.'"

     * Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "Books Of The Times" The New York Times,
       Section C; Page 29.

          "He confronts a basic tool of the measurers—the statistical
          technique called factor analysis, developed by the influential
          English psychologist Charles Spearman—and 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.
          It is this sort of performance that makes the book's eventual
          refutation of Arthur Jensen seem incidental, for it is far more
          absorbing to have our powers of reason challenged than it is to
          have our social consciences shaken."

     * Saturday Review, London.

          "A rare book—at once of great importance and wonderful to read.
          . . . Gould presents a fascinating historical study of
          scientific racism, tracing it through monogeny and polygeny,
          phrenology, recapitulation, and hereditarian IQ theory. He stops
          at each point to illustrate both the logical inconsistencies of
          the theories and the prejudicially motivated, albeit
          unintentional, misuse of data in each case. . . . A major
          addition to the scientific literature."

     * Sunday Times, London.

          "The great merit of Stephen Gould's account of the disastrous
          history of phychometrics is that he shifts the argument from a
          sterile contest between environmentalists and hereditarians and
          turns it into an argument between those who are impressed with
          what our biology stops us doing and those who are impressed with
          what it allows us to do."

     * Monthly Review, Richard York and Brett Clark.

          "The power of Gould's analysis lies in his focus on particulars.
          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."

Criticisms

   The Mismeasure of Man has been highly controversial. The popular and
   literary press have mostly praised the book, while most scientific
   journals have been critical. Among psychologists, the reaction has been
   largely negative. Hans Eysenck's review called the book "a
   paleontologist's distorted view of what psychologists think, untutored
   in even the most elementary facts of the science."

   Critics have accused Gould of selective reporting, distorting the
   viewpoints of scientists, and letting his viewpoints be influenced by
   political and ethical biases, and allege that many of Gould's claims
   about the validity of intelligence measures, such as IQ, contradict
   mainstream psychology.
     * Bernard Davis ( 1916– 1994), former professor at the Harvard
       Medical School, and former head of the Centre for Human Genetics,
       indicates that "While the nonscientific reviews of The Mismeasure
       of Man were almost uniformly laudatory, the reviews in the
       scientific journals were almost all highly critical." Davis
       describes the book as "a sophisticated piece of political
       propaganda, rather than as a balanced scientific analysis." On
       Gould's use of biological determinism and his understanding of
       intelligence testing, Davis states "Gould would prefer to combat
       the straw man of naive, 'pure' determinism, he fails to note that
       the science of genetics has altogether replaced this concept with
       interactionism."

   On Gould's use of the concept of " reification" Davis adds:

          "Gould's argument on reification purports to get at the
          philosophical foundation of the field. He claims that general
          intelligence, defined as the factor common to different
          cognitive abilities, is merely a mathematical abstraction; hence
          if we consider it a measurable attribute we are reifying it,
          falsely converting an abstraction into an 'entity' or a
          'thing'—variously referred to as 'a hard, quantifiable thing,'
          'a quantifiable fundamental particle,' 'a thing in the most
          direct, material sense.' Here he has dug himself a deep hole. .
          . . Indeed, this whole argument is fantastic. The scientist does
          not measure 'material things': He measures properties (such as
          length or mass), sometimes of a single 'thing' (however
          defined), and sometimes of an organized collection of things,
          such as a machine, a biological organ, or an organism. In a
          particularly complex collection, the brain, some properties
          (i.e., specific functions) have been traced to
          narrowly-localized regions (such as the sensory or motor nuclei
          connected to particular parts of the body)"

   On Gould's "highly selective" use of data, he adds:

          "His historical account is highly selective; he asserts the
          non-objectivity of science so that he can test for scientific
          truth, flagrantly, by the standards of his own social and
          political convictions; and by linking his critique to the quest
          for fairness and justice, he exploits the generous instincts of
          his readers. . . . In effect, we see here Lysenkoism risen
          again: an effort to outlaw a field of science because it
          conflicts with a political dogma.

   Davis also points out possible political motivations behind Gould's
   attacks

          "A left-wing group called Science for the People, of which Gould
          is a member, has been particularly active in campaigning against
          such studies. Instead of focusing, in the earlier tradition of
          radical groups, on defects in our political and economic system
          that demand radical change, this group has aimed at politicizing
          science, attacking in particular any aspect of genetics that may
          have social implications. Their targets have included genetic
          engineering, research on the effects of an XYY set of
          chromosomes, sociobiology, and efforts to measure the
          heritability of intelligence. Several years ago Gould co-signed
          their intemperate attack on E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology: The New
          Synthesis. Now, in The Mismeasure of Man, he has extended the
          attack to cognitive psychology and educational testing, because
          they may reveal genetic differences."

   Davis adds

          "Gould is entitled, of course, to whatever political views he
          wishes. But the reader is also entitled to be aware of his
          agenda."

     * David J. Bartholomew, Emeritus Professor of Statistics, London
       School of Economics, and former president of the Royal Statistical
       Society, states in his book Measuring Intelligence, Facts and
       Fallacies, (University Press, Cambridge, 2004) that Gould erred in
       his use of factor analysis. Bartholomew asks

          "...[w]here did Gould go wrong? First, by failing to distinguish
          between an empirical index constructed from a set of scores,
          like a principal component, on the one hand, and an underlying
          (latent) variable which can never be observed, but which we can
          learn something about with the aid of a model, on the other. ...
          Secondly, by ignoring the fact that we are dealing with samples
          – of subjects and items – and that this has implications for the
          inferences we can make."
          "Gould’s treatment of factor analysis also devotes a great deal
          of attention to something called rotation. It is on the alleged
          fact that rotation can apparently make factors come and go that
          Gould bases his most damaging attack. Here too lies another
          flaw, this time of interpretation ..." (p. 73)

   When addressing Gould's main points Bartholomew adds that Gould's

          "...charge of reification is, therefore, irrelevant to the main
          issue. What matters is whether or not a reasonably stable value
          can be ascertained for any individual which has predictive
          value. This is the case with IQ and also for g. Within their
          limits IQ and g are real in the pragmatic sense that they have
          predictive or explanatory value." (p. 145)

   Bartholomew continues that on the issue of whether intelligence is
   innate and reflected in the general intelligence factor, or g, is

          "...well supported by the empirical evidence. If, as we have
          conjectured, this quality is also a reflection of the
          structure/functioning of the fully developed brain, g could be
          said to be innate in much the same way as eye colour or
          exceptional musical talent. A final judgement on this claim must
          await further research on the biological basis of intelligence
          but present indications do not support Gould." (p. 146)

   And Bartholomew adds that

          "it is almost certainly true that there is a heritable component
          in intelligence"... with "the figure anywhere between 40 and 80
          per cent." Bartholomew concludes on this issue that "most of the
          current empirical evidence is strongly against Gould." (p 146)

     * Charles Murray in an interview in Skeptic magazine, claimed that
       Gould misrepresented his views.

     * Arthur Jensen, a prominent educational psychologist, in a paper
       titled The Debunking of Scientific Fossils and Straw Persons. made
       the following observation:

          Stephen Jay Gould is a paleontologist at Harvard's Museum of
          Comparative Zoology and offers a course at Harvard entitled,
          "Biology as a Social Weapon." Apparently the course covers much
          the same content as does the present book. Having had some
          personal cause for interest in ideologically motivated attacks
          on biologically oriented behavioural scientists, I first took
          notice of Gould when he played a prominent role in a group
          called Science for the People and in that group's attack on the
          theories of Harvard zoologist Edward O. Wilson, a leader in the
          development of sociobiology. . .

   Jensen also makes a complaint similar to Murray's when charging Gould
   with misrepresentations.

          In his references to my own work, Gould includes at least nine
          citations that involve more than just an expression of Gould's
          opinion; in these citations Gould purportedly paraphrases my
          views. Yet in eight of the nine cases, Gould's representation of
          these views is false, misleading, or grossly caricatured.
          Nonspecialists could have no way of knowing any of this without
          reading the cited sources. While an author can occasionally make
          an inadvertent mistake in paraphrasing another, it appears
          Gould's paraphrases are consistently slanted to serve his own
          message.

   Arthur Jensen, like Davis, suggested that Gould relies on information
   that is outdated while ignoring present research and information that
   does not support his conclusions.

          Of all the book's references, a full 27 percent precede 1900.
          Another 44 percent fall between 1900 and 1950 (60 percent of
          those are before 1925); and only 29 percent are more recent than
          1950. From the total literature spanning more than a century,
          the few "bad apples" have been hand-picked most aptly to serve
          Gould's purpose.

   However this sampling may only reflect Gould's historical treatment of
   the subject, and his literary style of incorporating historical
   thinkers—such as Plato, Alexander Pope, Thomas Jefferson, and his
   profession's hero Charles Darwin—into his narrative. Percentages aside,
   Gould argued that he had "focused upon the leading and most influential
   scientists of their times and have analyzed their major works." (1981,
   p. 27)

   In an article written for the April 1982 edition of Nature, Steve
   Blinkhorn, a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Hatfield Polytechnic
   begins his criticism of Gould's work thus

          "With a glittering prose style and as honestly held a set of
          prejudices as you could hope to meet in a day's crusading, S.J.
          Gould presents his attempt at identifying the fatal flaw in the
          theory and measurement of intelligence."

   And adds the following criticism of Gould's attempt to mislead the lay
   public through the "careful selection, emphasis and juxaposition" of
   facts

          "It is a masterpiece of propaganda, researched in the service of
          a point of view rather than written from a fund of knowledge.
          For the best propaganda requires not the suppression or
          distortion of facts but their careful selection, emphasis and
          juxtaposition. So, in a work which declares its concern to be
          with the notion of intelligence as a single measurable "thing"
          in the head, we find that two-thirds of the argument is given
          over to a careful reworking of early attempts to establish
          craniometric and anthropometric criteria of intelligence, and an
          admirably disturbing account of the Gadarene rush to press IQ
          tests into the service of social engineering in the USA in the
          first half of this century. As Gould rightly emphasizes, many of
          the uses to which tests were put made mockery of their original
          purpose."

          "The final third of the book is the attempt proper to debunk the
          notion of general intelligence as arising specifically in the
          school of factor analysts starting with Spearman. But by this
          stage the reader has been presented with sufficient examples,
          sufficiently carefully examined, of racial and social prejudice
          in the work of scientists, of distorted data, fudged analysis
          and twisted interpretation as to the inexpert might establish a
          necessary connection. Add to that the soft target of Cyril Burt,
          some rather inaccurate observations on the role and effects of
          the 11+ examination system in Britain and a remarkably detailed
          account of antique methods of factor analysis, and you have all
          the makings of a lively, plausible, opinionated and zesty
          potboiler."

     * J. Philippe Rushton, head of the Pioneer Fund, which funds research
       towards "the scientific study of heredity and human differences,"
       accused Gould of "scholarly malfeasance" for misrepresenting or
       ignoring relevant scientific research, and attacking dead arguments
       and methods. Rushton also charges that Gould fails to mention
       recent discoveries made from Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) which
       show a 0.4 correlation between brain-size and IQ

     * Hans Eysenck—who at the time of his death was the most frequently
       cited living psychologist—wrote that: "Gould is one of a number of
       politically motivated scientists who have consistently misled the
       public about what psychologists are doing in the field of
       intelligence, what they have discovered and what conclusions they
       have come to. Gould simply refuses to mention unquestionable facts
       that do not fit into his politically correct version; he
       shamelessly attacks the reputations of eminent scientists of whom
       he disapproves, on completely nonfactual grounds, and he
       misrepresents the views of scientists."

   Some nonspecialists have also been critical of Gould's methods. Steve
   Sailer, in his article for the publication National Review, concludes

          "Gould's most famous and influential book was The Mismeasure of
          Man, which exemplified his trademark combination of
          antiquarianism and guilt by association in the service of
          character assassination. In it, he attempted to destroy the
          modern science of IQ by recounting the stumblings of
          19th-century researchers working before the IQ test was even
          invented. Of course, that line of attack makes as much sense as
          trying to discredit modern astronomy by writing a book revealing
          that ancient astronomers thought the sun went around the Earth."

     * Finally, many of Gould's positions conflict with conclusions
       reached by the American Psychological Association, whose Board of
       Scientific Affairs has published a report finding that IQ scores do
       in fact have high predictive validity for certain individual
       differences.

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