Razib points me to a new article which re-examines Stephen Jay Gould's perceived bias in the study of human cranial volume by the 19th century scientist Samuel George Morton. Gould asserted that Morton:

1.Physically mismeasured skulls so that their cranial volumes would match his expectations about racial differences in cranial volume
2.Statistically manipulated population means by taking averages of individual skulls rather than averages of population averages, hence biasing his "Indian" means to be lower

Lewis et al. pretty much demolish both claims. By remeasuring almost half the original skulls studied by Morton, they show that Morton did not inflate "Caucasian" cranial volumes at the expense of non-"Caucasians". Indeed, most of his measurements deviated only a little from those done today, and, in the few cases where large discrepancies were discovered, they were in the opposite direction of Morton's perceived bias.

What is most interesting is that Gould's analysis of Morton's work shows clear evidence of bias in favor of his own hypothesis ("Morton was a racist, different races have not much different cranial capacities"), rather than the opposite. Nonetheless, Gould has been viewed by some as some sort of progressive enlightened intellectual, whereas Morton is vilified as a bad scientist who fudged his data because of his racist bias.

Morton may have been a racist, but his data were not provably the product of his racism. Gould was a non-racist, but his data was clearly the product of his biological egalitarianism and/or his quantitative incompetence.

Anyway, you can see why I find this outrageous. Gould used the well-documented work of a long-dead man to make an argument that unconscious bias is widespread in science. He posed as a concerned critic, but thereby cast doubt on the validity of the scientific enterprise. He picked volume measurement and tabulation of averages as his target, making it seem as if the simplest and most objective observations -- the Junior High-level science methods -- were themselves subject to all-encompassing cultural biases. His paper and book are very widely read and cited by people who will never examine the primary evidence. Gould owed us a responsible reading and trustworthy reporting on that evidence. In its place, he made up fictional stories, never directly examined the evidence himself, and misreported Morton's numbers.

This stuff really ticks me off. I don't think that Gould's errors can be written off as "unconscious bias". Reading back over his 1978 article, I cannot believe that Science published it.

The new paper is open access ("The Mismeasure of Science: Stephen Jay Gould versus Samuel George Morton on Skulls and Bias"), and I think that everyone should read it. The text is easy to follow, and the authors include clear answers to common questions about Morton's work and beliefs. It is a very suitable article for assignment in classes. They note that the basic issue here (endocranial volume of different groups) is largely explained by ecogeography -- the authors mention climate explicitly, but I would add body size and life history as parameters that covary with climate. Measurement of endocranial volume was cutting edge science in 1840, but I repeat, this is simple stuff.

Samuel George Morton, in the hands of Stephen Jay Gould, has served for 30 years as a textbook example of scientific misconduct [12]. The Morton case was used by Gould as the main support for his contention that “unconscious or dimly perceived finagling is probably endemic in science, since scientists are human beings rooted in cultural contexts, not automatons directed toward external truth” [1]. This view has since achieved substantial popularity in “science studies”