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To: spinestein
Indeed, he was absolutely guilty of the same nonsense as Lysenko! For example, because of his lefty agendas, he fought tooth and nail to decouple genetic influence on human intelligence, a preposterous position for anyone familiar with biology and anthropology to even the slightest degree. He even wrote a book called The Mismeasure of Man which used a straw man (19th Century "science") to taint the whole study of intelligence.
30 posted on 12/14/2005 12:51:19 PM PST by Pharmboy (The stone age didn't end because they ran out of stones.)
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To: Pharmboy
Of all the writings of Gould that I've read, including "The Mismeasure of Man", I've never seen anything which could be interpreted as Lysenkoism or as a decoupling of genetic influence on human intelligence.

What I have seen is his criticism of the idea of a strictly deterministic source for human intelligence and of the idea that individual people could be lumped together by race as a scientifically valid way to estimate their intelligence.

I've spent some time over the past few hours finding and reading articles critical of Gould and his writing and one thing seems most prominent: they all criticize his leftist bias and hence his motivations, saying his desire to bring about social change makes him a poor scientist and invalidates his work.

This very well credentialed critic seems to illustrate this best and even compares Gould to Lysenko (which is absurd, like comparing an unpopular president like Jimmy Carter to Hitler).

http://www.cpsimoes.net/artigos/art_davis.html

Many well known popularizers of science bring a social and political bias with them (Sagan, Attenborough, Leakey, Goodall, and especially Einstein.) and that makes them popular targets for ad hominem attacks. When a scientist steps away from his lab coat and starts making statements about social or political issues it's only fair for them to expect people to attack their opinions, but a scientific opinion and an opinion about politics should be made separately and I think Gould does a more respectable job of both than his critics do.
32 posted on 12/14/2005 3:05:37 PM PST by spinestein (All journalists today are paid advocates for someone's agenda.)
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