Leery of Theories

While The Mismeasure of Man was typically a depressing book, I think the end result is actually rather positive like Gould said.  Many of us (myself included) are now more skeptical of science, and while disheartening in a way, this new insight can work to our benefit. As Gould mentioned in his conclusion, debunking science "fact" can add to the study as a whole. Disproving something or being leery of a theory forces us to think about something in a different way. It may not always be constructive or necessary, but a lot of the time we can grow and learn from it. Lost are those who continue the cycle of misinformation and bias.

Consider Lombroso and Broca for instance. Morton laid down an impressive quantity of flawed data and terrible conclusions about biological determinism that few questioned (simply because they agreed with the conclusions!). For several years afterward Lombroso and Broca among others made their name by continuing and expanding upon Morton's work and theories. Morton's foundation was crumbly, so the entire framework that it was build upon was bad too simply because no one bothered to ask "Why?". As a result, political policies were implemented and many people suffered from "scientifically proven facts". Reading this book made us see things in 20/20. We saw the entire skewed building for what it was worth. For scientists during that time, it wasn't obvious. They saw small fissures and cracks that they tried to fix as they went along, but it never occurred to them that the entire thing was garbage.

It really wasn't until Binet came along that a scientist in high esteem questioned the whole theory. By first being honest with himself (he noticed that his head size measurements were varying more trial to trial than ethnicity to ethnicity), he was later able to reject decades worth of bad data and turn the psychology world on its head. Mental testing was replacing biological sizes as a measure of intelligence. While he introduced his own bad data from a theory he himself stressed as a partial, other people AGAIN jumped on it as being absolute truth. "IQ testing" as it was called, was vogue. Yerkes, Goddard, and several more started looking at intelligence as a number and tried to push policy to account for this new Truth. Again, with a bad foundation came a worse structure.

Another breath of fresh insight was Spearman. He was not convinced that the Binet test actually measured intelligence, so he developed his own ideas. While certainly flawed in his interpretation of g (he thought it was a measure of innate intelligence), he introduced a powerful new tool to psychology: factor analysis. The problem was others YET AGAIN abused it by taking it as Truth, mostly notably Burt. Burt was a prime example of one lost by bias and misinformation. He so desperately wanted to be correct, he actually fabricated data to protect his theory.

Therefore, being skeptical of science isn't a bad thing. Without questioning, we cannot hope to grow. We will only be able to explain things we already know. A lot of the time, the best discoveries come from people who reject "our reality and substitute their own." -Mythbusters