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Comments on: The mishmashing of Gould: scientific method and bias How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress. -- Neils Bohr Wed, 27 Jul 2011 21:15:28 +0000 hourly 1 By: ishi #comment-3005 Tue, 26 Jul 2011 13:50:38 +0000 i had seen the PLOS article. one can remember the iq controvertsy—mismeasure of man. ‘does g exist’. was sjg’s analyses of principle component analyses/factor analyses hold up when he criticzed heritability studies? (see also jay joseph on wikipedia discussion of schizophrenia inheritance/twin studies). my view is sjg made some very good points but so do his critics and the controversy remains though (as in linguistics chomsky and his critics basically just ignore each other, have their own conferences and journals). sjg never responded to his critics really. there are better approaches to iq around but the old school usde old behavior genetics ideas which may be right but may not be. there is a ton of bias in science—most obvious when its corporate funded. but i dont get the point of this article. i’d have to look again at plos to see what they did and what they say sjg did. but my view its either right or wrong. if they lumped m and f skulls togther, thats obviously bogus. but i’d have to see. thats like measuring apples and oranges together. i couldnt really tell if you read the plos article’s ‘hard’ analyses. cheers. ]]> By: ravi #comment-3002 Tue, 26 Jul 2011 02:48:24 +0000 In reply to APR. Thank you for the comment Alan. You are right of course regarding the anachronistic nature of their argument. I suspect that is because the bedrock of science studies can be ignored because science studies can be ignored, in turn because science studies has been dismissed and shamed (re: Sokal). Muscular scientism! You see a very mild version of that in the recent polite spat between V. S. Ramachandran and Colin McGinn – (or for that matter in the confident mutterings of “rogue” economist Levitt). I think I have a good idea where the insecurity comes from. Scientists and scientistic types are, I suspect, afraid of appearing soft-headed/hearted and not willing to “go where the evidence leads”. Hence Larry Summers on women, the whole EP programme, etc. Of course the strange thing is that they want to go where hard-headedness leads, not due to but despite the evidence. But wherefrom the confidence that philosophy and sociology can be utterly ignored? Perhaps the usual faith in reductionism? VSR truly thinks that mirror neurons can entirely explain civilisation! It helps that scientistic optimism of this sort is underwritten by a particular brand of philosophy epitomised in Dan Dennett, the Churchlands, et al. ]]> By: APR #comment-3001 Tue, 26 Jul 2011 02:04:56 +0000 Very nicely done, in an attempt to hoist one (Gould) by his own petard, they show they neither know which petard needs to be doing the hoisting nor are they aware how much they are dangling from their own. In any event, they are effectively making an pre-Kuhnian argument in a world where Kuhn – for all the limitations of his work – is generally treated as the bedrock, the foundation, of modern science studies (from Lakatos to Latour, Feyerabend to Haraway). Any sense of where their insecurity comes from? ]]>