An awesome new biology journal paper showing how just how wrong a distinguished professor sitting at a desk at Harvard University can be. It is also a good example of the hubris of those modern scientists who believe themselves to be vastly smarter than their 19th century forebears.
3 thoughts on “Pinheads at Harvard”
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I have been a big fan of a lot of Stephen Jay Gould’s essays on biology and science in general (specifically his two books “The Panda’s Thumb” and “Bully for Brontosaurus”), but more recently I have become aware of the fact that he is a bit like the Paul Krugman of evolutionary biologists: very popular among the general public, but not taken terribly seriously by a lot of people in his own field.
Alex: I attended a public lecture by Gould back in the 1980s at Harvard. It was a casual evening thing and designed for non-specialists (i.e., virtually nobody in the room was a researcher within Gould’s area and few people even had biology or science degrees). Whenever a Harvard undergrad or community member (older, female, wearing a cotton skirt) would ask a question, Gould would excoriate them for their stupidity. It was shocking because, given the audience, it was unreasonable to expect informed questions. He was truly nasty to these hapless audience members, something that I’ve never seen before or since in an academic setting (arguments can get mean, but it is usually Ph.D.s trying to puff themselves up amidst other Ph.D.s, not trying to show how much smarter they are than someone with no training at all).
I read “the mis-measure of man” a while back and it was blindingly obvious that it was a hatchet job, Examples of illegitimate arguments used:
1. Pick selective unqualified morons who disagree with you and pretend they are representative of all those who disagree with you.
2. Carefully nit-pick any studies that disagree with you, but accept at face value anything you agree with regardless of
3. Cherry-pick evidence in favor of your position,
4. Ignore credible opposing evidence.
5, Do not present a credible overall position, just pull down the views you oppose. What was Gould’s view on IQ? Did he really think it is all due to nurture? Cannot know.
The whole thing just reeked of a propaganda piece.
Cordelia FIne’s book “Delusions of gender” is a similar piece of work with the same flaws.