The Mismeasure of Man

Rating:
Summary: audiobook is fine
Review: I rated this book with the same rating in the hardback edition. You can see my comments there. This review is just to say that the audio book edition is high quality, suitable for listening during a daily commute.

Rating:
Summary: graduate student
Review: Gould's book was well written and easily comprehensible. A number of excellent points were discussed. However, I was disappointed by his total refutation of the Bell Curve. The degree that "g" measures this abstract controversial, concept of intelligence is the the degree that the conclusions in The Bell Curve are correct. If "g" does not exist or is not a valid measurement of intelligence, the foundation of the Bell Curve will be destroyed. But I have met people with 90 IQ's and other with 140+; there seems to be a difference in their ability to grasp concepts and figure out problems. If 100 people with 140+ IQ's and 100 people with < 90 IQ's were pited against one another to solve a complex problem, I believe the 140+ would win most of the time. Dr. Gould is professor at Harvard; how much exposure does he really have with low IQ individuals?

Bernstein and Murray avidly admit that IQ tests do err (testing error). And "g" may not be the best measure of intelligence, but IQ does seem to have some merit. Unfortunately, people are placing far, far too much importance on a simple number. "g" is just a rough (very blunt) estimate of intelligence. Ranking of people is impossible because the testing error as well as other factors that create too much mismeasurment AND the potential invalidity of IQ or "g." People should not pigeon-hole individuals with superior IQ's as "cognitively superior" or those with low IQ's as "cognitively inferior"--other factors besides IQ should be considered! But again, IQ does have some merit--the debate is how much.

Yes, disadvantaged classes and races is an issue with IQ (group differences). The Bell Curve is not primarily about that. Read the Bell Curve; the main theme is that people have different cognitive abilities. However, Hernstein and Murray briefly discuss potential group differences, but the author reminds the reader of the overlap between groups and more important within group variance. Hernstein and Murray warn that people should not be judged by what group they belong to. In addition, other factors may explain group differences, which Gould explicates--in my opinion, Hernstein and Murray do not discuss the group differences adequately. But I still agree with The Bell Curve that certain people are more intelligent than other individuals (I disagree with the group differences). Read both "The Mismeasurement of Man" and "The Bell Curve" Both of them have great arguments for both sides.

Rating:
Summary: Gould blows the lid off of prejudicial science!
Review: In working on my PhD dissertation on eugenics, politics, education and the deaf and Hard-of-hearing in the United States I felt compelled to pick up this book since so many of the other books I am using in my research refer back to this classic. I had read one other of Gould's books and wasn't particularly impressed. However, this book is one of the best written accounts of scientific prejudice and bias, and the social impact of the science that comes from researching with a personal agenda. Gould obviously did a humongous amount of research, and backs up his claims that certain eugenicists were determining the outcomes of their research prior to any experimentation or testing.

The part on Binet and intelligence testing was especially well written. Much of it was information I had never come across before, and it was certainly ironic that the very fears Binet expressed about scientists and educators using IQ tests that he had developed to rank and classify people according to their perceived social worth became the reality. And that reality had its discriminatory basis here in the United States, much to my dismay. I guess I should not have been surprised...as one of the first deaf children to be mainstreamed into public schools in California, I was constantly pulled out of class and given IQ tests during 4th, 5th and 6th grades. It wasn't until later my parents found out about this and we understood they were trying to test me out of the system and into a school for the mentally retarded. I now have an MS in neuroscience from medical school and I am finishing up my PhD with over a 3.75 GPA with and without the use of decent interpreters in science. Apparently, the prejudice was still alive and well in the 60's and 70's...and since I know that that area of California got sued recently for not providing accommodations for the disabled and deaf...I guess not much has changed!

Gould is hilarious in this book. He is snide, smarmy, but everything he says is true and makes sense so he he has the right to be snide and smarmy. I don't blame him for being so outraged at all of these so-called scientists like Yerkes, Goddard, Laughlin, Broca, and many others who used their science to discriminate. It is still happening today, and bioethics is enabling the discrimination against those with disabilites, the elderly, or anyone else they consider useless lives. How nice to have someone like Gould come to the rescue of those who need protection. No one should have the right to determine what another person is capable of doing...I don't care how well educated they are. Many scientists I know are only experts in one area, and they completely fail at human compassion.

This book is a classic and deserves that title. It should be required reading for educators and scientists to make sure their own prejudices and biases do not dictate their behaviors and their work. I especially think that educational psychology departments who still use so many of these archaic tests and ideas should be required to read this book since they continue to perpetuate the idea that tests can determine the intelligence of a person, both present and future intelligence with no allowance for environment, language abilities, or future education. Karen Sadler, Science Education, University of Pittsburgh

Rating:
Summary: childish, and wishywashy garbage mistook for science
Review: Though Gould comes right out and says it himself that he's not a shrink, and his book shows this, it never ceases to amaze me to see how many "great" reviews he got, from the feeble-minded, who can not see through his pro-environmentalist, pro-nuture garbage at society's expense.

Basically, you can call "Mismeasure of Man" a sort of mini-history of Darwinian science... With absurd assertions that history's most valued researchers from Galton all the way up to H & M were all wrong, and he's right, since they were a bunch of supposedly untrained, racially-biased, politically-motivated WHITE GUYS.

Of course, he completely ignores the fact that IQ/intelligence is inherited from one's parents, and are not the result of being lucky or having a great "environment." Therefore, there's only bound to be a racial gap therein IQ/intelligence ratios. He doesn't come up with any of his Bell Curves or other demonestrations to disprove any of his targets, but rather leashes his attacks out against their characters... Which is about all he can do!

Of course, it's not surprising to find more of Gould's fellow Jews of the leftist school attacking the White Man's science and academics, and defaming their characters, since after all, they're the ones who concocted the myth - not reality - of the equality of man BS.

Rating:
Summary: Masterpiece of Scientific Writing (and funny too)
Review: The incredible content of this book has already been well-defended by many reviewers here, so I only want to mention something about the style. He is dealing with topics involving tragic abuse and exploitation, yet there are many moments of humor and biting wit. I think we HAVE to laugh at racism (although that doesn't mean we shouldn't take it seriously, too). Examples of subtle humor: "The dissection of dead colleagues became something of a cottage industry among nineteenth-century craniometricians". "Agassiz did not spend all his time in Philadelphia reviling black waiters". This book is very important for the study of scientific racism and is also a joy to read!

Rating:
Summary: history, as Gould intended
Review: As a psychologist and college professor,I frequently use this book in my classes. Several reviews object to Gould not being a psycholgoist. He doesn't claim to be, nor is that necessary for this book. Critics also point out that Gould is talking about old IQ testing rather than the more modern attempts. THAT WAS HIS INTENTION WITH THIS BOOK! It is a work of history, and an excellent one at that. Gould challenges us to do better and to see farther. He is an amazing writer, and a brillant scholar.

Rating:
Summary: Sub-scholarship from a fifth-rate academic.
Review: If there's a last place in American academia reserved for pseudo-scientists, it belongs to left-wing Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. After re-reading his "The Mismeasure of Man" for the third time, I concluded that Gould's intention when writing this book was not to refute the legitimacy of hereditarianism, but to keep a firm grip on fantasy. A quarter of the work Gould cites in this book was carried out in the late 19th century (craniometry), and the the rest was carried out in the early 20th century (psychometry). Thus, Gould's cranky rebuke of "racist science" is targeted at "dotty Victorian eccentrics" like Sir Francis Galton, and the anachronistic technology they used to validate their theories. Anyone expecting critiques of the current research being conducted in the fields of behavioral genetics, differential psychology, and psychometrics is setting themselves up for a letdown of the Y2K Bug kind.

First of all, IQ may not be a perfect predictor of one's future success in life or an accurate appraisal of one's intelligence, but it does measure "something" in intelligence, or races wouldn't consistently differ with respect to it. American Indians, on average, enjoy the poorest living conditions and the lowest yearly income in the US, but they constantly outperform American blacks on IQ and SAT tests. University of Ulster psychologist Richard Lynn has found that the IQ scores of whites, blacks, and Asians is the same regardless of which country they're taken in, with whites achieving IQ scores of 100-105, blacks 70-85, and Asians 103-110. Moreover, Lynn and Glayde Whitney have found (based on Interpol data) that the crime levels of these groups are the same regardless of where they reside in the world, with Asians being the most criminally restrained, whites somewhere in the middle, and blacks coming in last (or first, depending on how one ranks it; either way they're going to come in at either ends of a scale or graph of crime data) as the most criminally unrestrained. (Egalitarians counter these plain statistical facts, explaing how the disproportionate amount of crimes that blacks commit are committed because "most people expect them to be criminals." If true, this begs an obvious question--namely, why people would expect that.) Most people accept that women are less prone to crime and violent behavior than men, which is most likely to be explained by testosterone levels. This suggests that not only are IQ tests are a reliable predictor of intelligence and criminal behavior, but that "race" is more than just "skin deep."

Before all the hullabaloo surrounding IQ tests surfaced, the US Department of Labor used them to tell how high one needed to score on one to determine if the profession they sought to enter was compatible with the score they attained. The IQ data Gould uses to support his argument that "it measures nothing," is culled from the primitive tests distributed to the US army in 1917. Gould's crude reasoning here is that "if the IQ tests given to the US army in 1917 produced wayward results, then all subsequent IQ tests must do the same." This is a non sequitur and Gould knows it.

Gould and his environmentalist lackeys at Harvard and abroad think that there's no such thing as "race." Race to them is just a fiction born of sinister racist ideology, "dotty Victorian eccentrics" and IQ tests. The response to this objection is simple: race is simply defined by place of ancestry--some people's ancestors came from Eurasia, N.E. Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. If one objects to this definition of race still, by virute of the interbreeding that has taken place between them, fine. Don't call them "races." Call them A, B, and C; call them Moe, Larry, and Curly--call them whatever you want. The question still lingers: are there hereditary differences between those whose "ancestors" came from Europe, Asia, and Africa? Gould says no, common sense says an unhesitating "Yes."

Contrary to what Gould asserts, race is not skin deep. For example, if you discovered bones from a human skeleton in your backyard and alerted the authorities, they would have a forensic anthropologist come in and determine what the race of the skeleton was, based on the structure of its bones. Recent research in the field of neurology has shown that the brains of intelligent people metabolize glucose slower. Also, recent discoveries using MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), which displays a three-dimensional image of the human brain, has shown a close correlation (.44) between brain size and IQ (J. Philippe Rushton & Ankney, 1996). All of which is "recent" data, meaning that Gould avoids it like the truth.

Gould thinks that everybody is "already" the same, except that some people were "lucky" enough to have been born "by chance" into wealthy families (in effect, claiming that wealth just "happens," totally disregarding human ingenuity). This is clearly false. If you want to read what the "other side" has to say about this mega-taboo subject, don't get "The Bell Curve." Get J. Philippe Rushton's "Race, Evolution, and Behavior."

Rating:
Summary: Right but wrong
Review: Gould's book had two main lines of attack against hereditarian IQ theory. The first is disguised as history, as Gould unearths the flaws of 19th-century cranology and early 20th intelligence testing and the biases of the scientists. While making for fascinating history, this deconstructive process could be launched against any 'science', and amounts to little more than a diversionary strawman.

The second line of attack is stronger. Dealing with the inherent difficulties in measuring intelligence (for example, what fraction of intelligence is mathematical? verbal? spacial? musical?....how you weight the test will affect the scores of different people differently), Gould destoys the idea of an linear intelligence factor.

But...in reading this book, I got the same feeling I always get when enduring a post-modern deconstructive argument - that this line of argument can be used to refute ANYTHING, and that the author fears that he might not like the truth.

Overall, it is still a worthy book containing a succinct review of the history of intelligence testing and the associated prejudices of those behind the tests, as well as powerful arguments as to the dangers of taking intelligence testing too seriously.

Rating:
Summary: Thorough, convincing account of the problems with "IQ"
Review: The history of IQ testing is littered with bad science, and, worse, with bad intentions. In "The Mismeasure of Man" Gould does a masterful job of surveying both, and of showing how much damage IQ testing and the ideas behind it can, and have, done.

The most interesting part of the book is the historical detail Gould provides about each of the scientists he discusses. Take Cesare Lombroso, the founder of criminal anthropology, which is the idea that criminals have distinctive and identifiable body and facial characteristics. This idea seems silly to most of us now, but Gould drives the point home by citing some of Lombroso's daftest ideas--for example, that prostitutes have prehensile big toes (there's even a picture to show this!) or his claim that animals have criminal types too, citing an ant "driven by rage to kill and dismember an aphid". And although Lombroso was criticized at the time, he was enormously influential.

The twentieth century figures in this story typically made more complex mistakes in science, but Gould, merely by repeating their own work, demolishes their credibility. H.H.Goddard, who tested early American immigrants, found 87% of Russian immigrants (and similar numbers from other nations) to be feeble-minded, a result so ludicrous even Goddard couldn't believe it. He fiddled with the data and got the number down below 50%, ultimately explaining this number by saying that only the poorest of each nation were emigrating to America.

Gould takes the time with each failure of science to show just where the foolishness lies. After Lombroso and Goddard he reviews the work of Terman, Yerkes, Burt, Spearman and Thurstone; the question of "g", general intelligence, is raised and dismissed, and many more ridiculous stories appear. Towards the end he goes into some detail on the question of factor analysis; the flaw here is not trivial to explain, and this is technically the hardest part of the book to follow. However, by this time the pattern of self-delusion is so clear that the reader takes little persuading.

It's been said for years that what IQ tests measure is how good you are at IQ tests. Gould makes the case for this utterly convincing. This is a profound book, written by someone who understands how science should work, and also how it really does work, all too often, in the real world.

Rating:
Summary: A truly great book.
Review: (This review is of the first edition.)

THE MISMEASURE OF MAN is a truly great book, exposing the prejudice and bigotry that has often passed under the name of "science." It is eminently readable for a book that deals with numbers and statistics, which he keeps to a bare minimum that is consistent with exposing the mistakes made by bigoted "scientists." Gould has managed to take a complicated subject and render it intelligible without 'dumbing it down.' This is one of those rare books that everyone should read, as it deals with a subject that influences all of our lives and exposes some of the foolishness that commonly passes for "accepted knowledge."

To object, as some have done, that Stephen Jay Gould is not a psychologist, is a facile objection, an argumentum ad hominem, attacking the person rather than saying anything about the reasoning that Gould presents. Undoubtedly, this is because his reasoning is quite good, and it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a serious objection to any major point in his book.

To object, as some have done, that The Mismeasure of Man is political correctness passing for science, is simply name calling (another argumentum ad hominem). If this were really true, then it would be possible to expose his supposedly faulty reasoning, but that is something they fail to do. To have a conclusion which may be consistent with "political correctness" does NOT prove that it is simply political correctness passing for science, because some ideas that are "politically correct" may very well be true. For example, it is "politically correct" to say that a woman may have the highest IQ score ever achieved, and it turns out that this is apparently true. (Marylin Vos Savant is reported to have the highest IQ; see the Guiness Book of World Records, or just look for her column in the Parade section of a typical Sunday paper in the U.S.) Indeed, this objection, without any supporting evidence, amounts to a claim that "all 'politically correct' ideas are false," which is really exposing the prejudice of those who make such an objection.

To object, as some have done, that Gould has "betrayed Darwin," shows a misunderstanding of Darwin's theory of evolution. He never intended for it to be applied in a manner that is now inappropriately called "social Darwinism." It is the application of his theory of natural selection to a different domain, not a theory that he advocated in his Origin of the Species.

To object, as some have done, that Gould focusses more on old theories rather than current ones, is also misguided, though not so grossly flawed as the argumentum ad hominems already mentioned. Gould examines the foundations of the current theories of IQ to show that they are based on prejudice and bigotry rather than true scientific principles. This is NOT the same as modern chemistry growing out of alchemy or astronomy growing out of astrology, for these modern sciences involve a rejection of the superstitious principles of alchemy and astrology. But there is no rejection of the basic ideas regarding IQs among most current psychologists.

To see that the concept of IQs are a gross misrepresentation of that nebulous concept called "intelligence," it suffices to consider the fact that using a single number to represent all of the complex processes of thought must inevitably involve bias regarding which mental processes are most important. Consider, for example, how many of the test questions will be for testing mathematical reasoning (just one part of an IQ score). The number of these relative to the number for the other aspects of intelligence involves a decision based on the preferences or bias of those who originated the system, not a scientific principle. How much of one's intelligence is mathematical reasoning? How much should it be? This last question is the decisive one for how many questions about it there will be on an IQ test, but is a normative question, not one of science at all. IQ scores are inherently biased, and as such, are not a part of science at all.