From: revpk@cellar.org (Brian 'Rev P-K' Siano)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Consensus: Too Sluggish or Too Hasty?
Date: 8 Apr 92 04:53:10 GMT
Organization: The Cellar BBS and public access system

sichase@csa2.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:

> >In article <22483@dog.ee.lbl.gov> sichase@csa2.lbl.gov writes:
> >>Personally, I see no evidence that mainstream science has ever been "too
> >>critical" or too unaccepting of new theories, because of prejudice, lack of
> >>understanding, or anything else for that matter.  In my (admittedly optimis
> >>point of view, things are just about right, and the scientific community 
> >>has done a damn good job over the years separating the chaff from the wheat
> >>
> > 
> >Have you ever read Stephen Jay Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man"?
> > 
> 
> Finally, a good example.  Yes, I must allow that exception.  However, for
> fairness, I add the following few caveats (#3 is the most important).
> 
> (1) Nature recently reported work in which a researcher used MRI to measure
> (in vivo!) brain size, and this fellow found a correlation between brain
> volume and test performance (I think it was a standard IQ test).  So there 
> are still people interested in this question, and it still seems open, IMHO.
> Gould points out several scientific objections to accepting the validity 
> of previous data, and this MRI study addresses most of these.  
> 
> Gould also makes a strong point of the underlying nonscientific motivations
> at work here.  But there either is a correlation or there isn't, independent
> of people's motivation for finding out the facts of the case.  If it should
> turn out that there is a correlation, then we will have to deal with the fact
> as a society as best we can.
> 
        Gould also points out where the measureemnts of skull capacity were 
misrepresented in the published data. For example, Samuel George Morton's 
measurements of skull capacities were marred not only by statistical errors 
but through Morton's subjective 'grouping' of categories. For example, he 
separated Indiand into two groups, one of which he termed Toltecans, indians 
from southern and Central America. This group was in turn skewed because of 
the high number of Peruvian Incas, who had a smaller skull capacity. 
(Iroquois Indians, however, have far larger skull capacities-- yet, while 
Incas comprised 25% of M<orton's subgrouping, Iroquois made up only 2%.)

        Gould also recalculated many of the averages according to more modern 
classifications of ethnic divergences, and came up with very different 
numbers. He makes it clear that, while Morton wasn't consciously fudging his 
data, a lot of unconscious and strong prejudices encouraged him to interpret 
it in ways that supprted conventional prejudices of the time. In other words, 
sometimes even the published _data_ is suspect.

        This is entirely separate of the issue of whether the tests used to 
check the correlation are free of cultural bias as well, and whether other 
factors (i.e. diet, opportunity for education, income levels of the subjects, 
and other factors which are also correlated with performance on intelligence 
and cognitive tests) are adequately addressed as well.
        (Item two deleted because I agreed with it.)

> (3) Your example was not one of scientists being "too critical" or too 
> unaccepting, but rather the opposite.  People jumped on an attractive
> bandwagon.  So, my statement (above) stands unmodified, and your example is 

> proof that we probably should be even more critical and hypersensitive to 
new
> claims than we already are.
> 
        I wouldn't use the 'bandwagon' analogy; rather, many of the racist 
ideas that were supported by the people Gould describes were prevalent in the 
societies as a whole, and the scientists just saw little reason to question 
them. Evidence to the contrary was finagled so that the established values 
weren't questioned, and there was loads of 'evidence' to support these 
notions.

        I certainly won't doubt the need for scrutiny over new ideas; 
however, histories such as that outlined by Gould illustrate that even 
established and unquestioned ideas must be subject to proving themselves 
against new influences-- especially when the issues involved aren't just 
'emotionally charged,' but have deep and important effects on the quality of 
life for many. Please recall the eugenics movement during the Twenties and 
Thirties, and the celebrated case of Carrie Buck, who was sterilized because 
her family history was of low birth; it was expected that her children would 
be feeble-minded. When it comes to topics where science must evaluate an 
issue which affects people's lives in important ways, one must be prepared to 
scrutinize orthodoxy as well as revision.


Brian "Rev. P-K" Siano                                  revpk@cellar.org
...Saure really turns out to be an adept at the difficult art of papryomancy,
the ability to prophesy through contemplating the way people roll reefers -
the shape, the licking pattern, the wrinkles and folds or absence thereof
in the paper.  "You will soon be in love," sez Saure, "see, this line here."
"It's long, isn't it?  Does that mean --" "Length is usually intensity.
Not time."                       -- Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_