The Confession That Explains the Case Files

The orthodoxy maintains that the average genetic differences among people grouped according to today’s racial terms are so trivial when it comes to any meaningful biological traits that those differences can be ignored. The orthodoxy goes further, holding that we should be anxious about any research into genetic differences among populations. The concern is that such research, no matter how well-intentioned, is located on a slippery slope that leads to the kinds of pseudoscientific arguments about biological difference that were used in the past to try to justify the slave trade, the eugenics movement and the Nazis’ murder of six million Jews. I have deep sympathy for the concern that genetic discoveries could be misused to justify racism. But as a geneticist I also know that it is simply no longer possible to ignore average genetic differences among “races.”

Many scholars have criticized The Mismeasure of Man periodically throughout its 38-year history. For example, James T. Sanders stated that Gould’s attempt to link his argument to anti-racism was a ploy to smear intelligence scholars and Gould’s enemies as evil people. Arthur Jensen argued in 1982 that Gould misrepresented Jensen’s ideas and often demolished strawmen that no intelligence scholar believes, including the boogeyman of “biological determinism.” John Carroll showed that Gould understood neither the purpose nor interpretation of factor analysis (a statistical procedure often used to evaluate data from psychological tests) and that Gould’s attacks on factor analysis do nothing to alter the importance of intelligence tests, nor the mass of evidence—impossible to dispute—that they predict real-life outcomes. Most criticism of The Mismeasure of Man was confined to the recherché world of psychologists who study intelligence. However, a new debate opened up in 2011 when a team of anthropologists argued that Gould’s analysis of the data on cranium measurements from 19th century scientist Samuel George Morton was flawed. Gould cast Morton as a racist who fudged his data to match his beliefs about white racial superiority because of a supposed larger skull capacity. Instead, the anthropologists argued, it was Gould who manipulated the data to support his biases. This ignited a series of follow-up articles in the scholarly literature by authors taking a variety of positions regarding Morton’s data and Gould’s interpretations. Weisberg believed that the re-analysis was flawed and Gould was mostly correct. Kaplan and his colleagues claimed that Morton’s interpretations were flawed, but that Gould was incorrect in believing that he could discern Morton’s actions and motivations. Finally, Mitchell believed that Morton’s data were accurate and that the interpretations were colored by the racism of the era, but the claim that Morton subtly manipulated the data was a fiction created by Gould.

Carleton Coon was one of the greatest anthropologists of the 20th century and a champion of the study of racial differences. In 1961 he was elected president of the American Anthropological Association. It was during this year that Carleton Putnam's infamous book Race and Reason came out. Putnam's book argued that there were significant differences between the races and that this had important political implications. A few anthropologists became upset when they saw the book gain popularity and wanted the AAA to intervene. But they knew that Coon supported the book and that, as a result, having the AAA take action against it would be difficult. So they organized a secret meeting behind Coon's back in order to issue a statement denouncing Putnam's work. Coon found out about the meeting and went to stop it. Upon entering the meeting Coon asked all the association members who had actually read Putnam's book to raise their hands. Only one rose. He then asked for the hands of everyone that had even heard of the book prior to that meeting. Only a few hands rose. None the less, the statement against the book passed. Coon, disgusted by the actions of his peers, resigned from the AAA (1). This incident stands out in the history of science as a particularly clear example of scientists not living up to what people expect of them. People often take what scientists say for granted. They trust that scientists have looked at the evidence rationally and are giving the public as accurate an account of all the relevant facts as they can. When explaining science to laypeople researchers are expected to only make authoritative statements on topics they are knowledgeable of, to not lie about scientific evidence, and to not omit obviously relevant facts. People trust scientists to do these things and so feel comfortable taking what they tell them for granted. (See

My work was uplifting people, or so I told myself. Looking back, I suspect that feeling like I was on the right side of history was a kind of moral cover. Maybe I felt less wrong about the p-hacking because I was promoting social justice. The conclusions I drew were what the good guys already believed, after all.