Review: The Mismeasure of Man

The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I purchased this book at Alley Cat Books in San Francisco.

I found this book difficult to read, not because of the technical writing, but because I felt so disheartened by the arguments that Gould refutes in this book. Gould picks apart the "data" espousing the superiority of white males in such a way that makes me wonder what kind of illogic and bias are slipping through into the collective "knowledge" of today.

I enjoyed learning about the history of factor analysis and how it came to be. I never really thought about the origin of statistical tests before, and I worked a lot with principal components as a graduate student. I also liked how Gould mentions how factor analysis is most appropriately used at the frontiers of science, when there is little theoretical framework to shape the questions and analysis. It makes so much sense, but I had never really formulated it in my mind in this way.

I know that Gould has his own share of biases that led to some cherry-picking and some biased remeasurements of his own. But Gould is not stating something as universally accepted and backed by positive proof. He is shedding doubt on what has been so stated because these ideas can be and has been dangerously misapplied.

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