The Science Book Club of United Kingdom newspaper the Guardian, is currently discussing Stephen Jay Gould’s volume, The Mismeasure of Man. Gould’s book, published in 1981 and revised in 1996 in response to Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve, looks at the history of intelligence research and race. Tim Radford, in his article for the Gaurdian, Race and Intelligence: A Sorry Tale of Shoddy Science, asserts that, “What Gould’s book reminds us over and over again is that even very clever, generous and thoughtful people who are raised with a set of ingrained assumptions are likely to find evidence to support those assumptions.” Those wishing to follow the Guardian‘s discussion on The Mismeasure of Man can do so here.
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I was looking forward to this, because the Guardian’s science section is generally so much better than any other newspaper’s. But must confess to being rather disappointed by the result. The “discussion” consists mostly of the usual back-and-forth about the heritability (or not) of intelligence and the wickedness (or not) of the people who claim it is so. There is nothing whatever about the book itself — about the quality (or not) of Gould’s scholarship, and what we might have learned (or not) about that history in the nearly 30 years since it was originally published. Alas.