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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.

Perhaps I should have been more clear: Gould (and anyone else) may speak to any political beliefs they want to. My problem is when scientists misrepresent science in the service of their agendas, and with Gould it was Marxism (as it is with Lewontin).

What aggregate data shows us about abilities of groups does nothing to predict an individual's performance whatever group s/he belongs to. That is a truism. Another truism is that the totality of evidence shows that genetics plays a significant part in the determination of many behavioral traits, including what we call general intelligence (eg., monozygotic twins reared apart, intelligence tests consistent from an early age, consistency of group intelligence tests), and this is what Gould fought against. When I met him and debated him in the 1980s, he acknowledged a small genetic component to intelligence, but felt that environment was the key. This--to me--is Lysenkoism updated and a bit compromised, but Lysenkoism nonetheless. He was a "scientist" who placed ideology above science, and a self-appointed spokesman for science, to me, an unforgivable combination.

He was a polemicist who, through half-truths and misrepresentations attempted to give credence to his collectivist mentality. May he RIP.