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Scientific misconduct misdiagnosed because of scientific misconduct

Please remember to have no heroes or villains, but this just looks plain bad to be honest. I'm lowering my estimation of the quality of Stephen J. Gould's work in this area. USA today: > The late scientific icon, Stephen Jay Gould, botched and perhaps faked his critique of a racist 19th-Century scientist's skull collection, suggests a second look at his efforts. > > CAPTION > UPenn > In a 1978 Science paper, Gould (1941 - 2002) , reported that the Samuel George Morton (1799-1851), "a prominent Philadelphia physician," had mis-measured the cranial capacities of his 1,000-skull "American Golgotha" collection gathered from around the world, to suit his racist beliefs. The finding led to one of Gould's best-known books, The Mismeasure of Man, a critique of scientific racism. > > "Morton is now viewed as a canonical example of scientific misconduct. But did Morton really fudge his data?," asks a PLoS Biology study led by anthropologist Jason Lewis of Stanford University. "Are studies of human variation inevitably biased, as per Gould, or are objective accounts attainable, as Morton attempted?" > > So, the study team remeasured the skulls collected by Morton, now owned largely by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia. > > Overall, they find, Morton did make mistakes in measuring skull capacity (he first stuffed them with seeds, and later lead shot to measure their brain size). But the mistakes were random. The random mistakes didn't favor any racial theory of larger brain sizes for white people over others. > > "Given how long Gould's work has been criticized in this arena, I'm a little surprised that it took this long for the work to be done to write this article," says the University of Texas's David Prindle, author of Stephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution. "People who dislike Gould's work will likely go on disliking him even more after this article. People who are fans of his writing will likely go on sup

64Jun 10, 2011

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[Link] Forty Days

A post from Gregory Cochran's and Henry Harpending's excellent blog West Hunter. > One of the many interesting aspects of how the US dealt with the AIDS epidemic is what we didn’t do – in particular, quarantine. Probably you need a decent test before quarantine is practical, but we had...

Sep 29, 201417

[Link] More ominous than a [Marriage] strike

Dalrock writes an interesting article related to Dr. Helen Smith's book the Marriage Strike. I really have to bump it up on my too rapidly growing reading list. (^_^) > Dr. Helen has a thoughtful post up asking if the title of her book is an accurate description of men’s...

Jan 4, 20144

[Link] Low-Hanging Poop

Related: Son of Low Hanging Fruit Another post on finding low hanging fruit from Gregory Cochran's and Henry Harpending's blog West Hunter. > Clostridium difficile causes a potentially serious kind of diarrhea triggered by antibiotic treatments. When the normal bacterial flora of the colon are hammered by a broad-spectrum antibiotic,...

Oct 16, 201346

[Link] Distance from Harvard

Related: Loss of local knowledge affecting intellectual trends, The Hyborian Age This post is from Gregory Cochran's and Henry Harpending's excellent blog West Hunter. > Barry Marshall once said that if he had gone to Harvard, he would have known that stomach ulcers were caused by stress, and wouldn’t even...

Oct 16, 20139

[Link] Son of low-hanging fruit

Related: Thick and Thin, Loss of local knowledge affecting intellectual trends An entry I found in the archives on Gregory Cochran's and Henry Harpending's blog West Hunter. > In yet another example of long-delayed discovery, forms of high-altitude lightning were observed for at least a century before becoming officially real...

Apr 4, 201334

[Link] Diversity and Academic Open Mindedness

Related: Heuristics for Evaluating the Soundness of the Academic Mainstream, Admitting to Bias, The Ideological Turing Test David Friedman writes on his blog. > I had an interesting recent conversation with a fellow academic that I think worth a blog post. It started with my commenting that I thought support...

Apr 4, 20132

[Video] Brainwashed - A Norwegian documentary series on nature and nurture

Related: The Blank Slate, The Psychological Diversity of Mankind, Admitting to Bias "Hjernevask" a well known (in Norway at least) documentary series that I am sure will be interesting to rationalists here is now available with English subtitles online. Produced by Ole Martin Ihle and Harald Eia a Norwegian documentarian...

Mar 2, 201318

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Scientific misconduct misdiagnosed because of scientific misconduct

[Link] Low-Hanging Poop

[Link] Power of Suggestion

[Link] Son of low-hanging fruit

GLaDOS

[Link] Forty Days

[Link] More ominous than a [Marriage] strike

[Link] Low-Hanging Poop

[Link] Distance from Harvard

[Link] Son of low-hanging fruit

[Link] Diversity and Academic Open Mindedness

[Video] Brainwashed - A Norwegian documentary series on nature and nurture

Scientific misconduct misdiagnosed because of scientific misconduct

[Link] Low-Hanging Poop

[Link] Power of Suggestion

[Link] Son of low-hanging fruit

[Link] Forty Days

[Link] More ominous than a [Marriage] strike

[Link] Low-Hanging Poop

[Link] Distance from Harvard

[Link] Son of low-hanging fruit

[Link] Diversity and Academic Open Mindedness

[Video] Brainwashed - A Norwegian documentary series on nature and nurture