/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.3076299]

>they think Stephen J Gould did anything more than ramble pseudo-scientific nonsense.

[Anonymous No.3076351]

Who?

[Anonymous No.3076377]

youve read sjg's testimony in the arkansas evolution trial?

http://www.antievolution.org/projects/mclean/mva_tt_p_gould.html

/thread

[Anonymous No.3076383]

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR25.2/alcock.html

[Anonymous No.3076425]

>>3076383
"this sjg guy publishes original research in a clear enough and entertaining enough way to be read by tens of thousands!!! damn him!!!!"

[Anonymous No.3076500]

>>3076425
Except that his works are non-empirical garbage which have been debunked over and over. His unfounded "research" (making shit up is not research) is written for the layman but is politically motivated and wrong. He contributed nothing of worth to science and is better off forgotten. No one has ever been a bigger insult to evolutionary biology than this retard and his pack of neo-Lysenkoists. Thank the spaghetti monster he is dead.

[Anonymous No.3076677]

>>3076500
Let me know when you publish an idea more influential/important than the Cambrian explosion and the associated idea that diversity capitalizes on bottlenecks and is later selected.

[Anonymous No.3076731]

>>3076500
> is written for the layman
In what way does this refute my argument? SJG wrote original research (ie by its nature speculative and possibly wrong) which anyone could understand, and which many were drawn to understand simply because it was interesting.

We have different views about the goals of science, sir. Faraday, SJG, and few others are my heroes precisely BECAUSE they wrote their research for a public audience.

You prefer to be read by nobody? Go for it.

[Anonymous No.3076764]

>Gould

[Anonymous No.3076777]

Stephen Gould is and has been the most respected evolutionary biologist of all time. He is extremely prolific, both in writing popular science books (educating the masses on evolution--A GOOD THING) and in his scientific accomplishments. He was one of the most productive paleontologists of all time. A lot of what we know about dinosaurs and some ancient animals are due to the work of him and his lab. I respect him and he is one of my great heroes.

Most likely OP is a butthurt stormfag who "read" Mismeasure of Man (translation: skimmed its Wikipedia page). Mismeasure of Man was meant to debunk racist arguments, particularly those about intelligence, by showing the INNACURACY OF THEIR RESULTS and their blatantly forged data (like Morton's skulls). I'm going to go out on a limb and say that OP has NOT actually read the book at all, and is simply making judgments on it based on its thesis (which is ironic since he is the one accusing Gould of political bias).

[Anonymous No.3076803]

>>3076677
I don't have to.
http://paleobiol.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/31/2_Suppl/94
>Most of the book's conclusions were deemed controversial at publication and some of Gould's examples were soon shown to be incorrect.

[Anonymous No.3076865]

>>3076777
>Stephen Gould is and has been the most respected evolutionary biologist of all time.
By the public, which means diddly squat. He's not even on par with Richard Dawkins.
>He is extremely prolific, both in writing popular science books (educating the masses on evolution--A GOOD THING) and in his scientific accomplishments. He was one of the most productive paleontologists of all time. A lot of what we know about dinosaurs and some ancient animals are due to the work of him and his lab. I respect him and he is one of my great heroes.
A lot of his works were debunked and your bias is showing.
>Mismeasure of Man was meant to debunk racist arguments, particularly those about intelligence, by showing the INNACURACY OF THEIR RESULTS and their blatantly forged data (like Morton's skulls).
He was debunked and had to rewrite his book for the inaccuracy of his results and conclusions. His entire book was a mismeasure and blatantly forged for the purpose of attempting to refute differences in heritable intelligence across human populations.

[Anonymous No.3076889]

>>3076764
Heh, I just noticed both him and the actual guy are in similar professional positions.

[Anonymous No.3076910]

If you've read anything Stephen J. Gould has ever said about evolutionary biology, I have some bad news for you. In the field of evolutionary biology at large, Gould's reputation is mud. Not because he was wrong. Many honest scientists have made honest mistakes. What Gould did was much worse, involving deliberate misrepresentation of science.

[Anonymous No.3076926]

>>3076865
>He was debunked and had to rewrite his book for the inaccuracy of his results and conclusions. His entire book was a mismeasure and blatantly forged for the purpose of attempting to refute differences in heritable intelligence across human populations.

Hey asshole, did you read the foreward to his new book? He gave a 20 page list of reasons why he was adding a new edition. Authors do it all the time, but he had to cover his bases with a litany of reasons (because it would just be bait for dumbasses like you). None of the reasons were that there were inaccuracies. I can even look it up right now. I have both editions on my bookshelf, come at me bro.

[Anonymous No.3076963]

>>3076926
>he actually wasted his money on a book as valid as the Holy Bible.

[Anonymous No.3076979]

Reflections on Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man
http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/carroll-gould.html

THE DEBUNKING OF SCIENTIFIC FOSSILS AND STRAW PERSONS
http://www.debunker.com/texts/jensen.html

Bernard Davis, professor of microbiology at the Harvard Medical School, accused Gould of setting up straw man arguments, as well as incorrectly defining key terms (notably "reification"), choosing data in a "highly selective" manner, and in general being motivated more by political concerns than scientific ones.

Statistician David J. Bartholomew, of the London School of Economics, wrote that Gould erred in his use of factor analysis[14] and irrelevantly focused on issue of reification and ignored scientific consensus on the existence of the g factor of intelligence.[15] Psychologist John B. Carroll made similar criticisms, arguing that Gould did not understand "the nature and purpose" of factor analysis.[16]

In an article written for the April 1982 edition of Nature, Steve Blinkhorn, a senior lecturer in psychology at Hatfield Polytechnic, claimed The Mismeasure of Man was "a masterpiece of propaganda," which selectively juxtaposed data in order to further a political agenda.[17]

tltr: Gould was a retard.

[Anonymous No.3076981]

>>3076963
>calling an atheist evolutionary biologist's seminal work equivalent to the Holy Bible
>the irony

You're a guy on the internet trying to "debunk" a great academic. Please bring your logical coherence up to a sufficient level or GTFO.

[Anonymous No.3076991]

>>3076981
>Stephen Jay Gould's bullshit
>Great achievement
pick one.

[Anonymous No.3077011]

>>3076979
>Arthur Jensen trying to "debunk" Stephen Gould
>Arthur Jensen being a psychology professor
>psychology teacher
>psychology teacher
>psychology teacher
>talking about biology and evolution

laughingrealscientists.jpg

[Anonymous No.3077020]

>>3077011
>implying credential mean anything.

Oh I get it now, you measure the greatness or lack thereof of a scientist not by his or her contributions but by their credentials. Fail some more.

[Anonymous No.3077031]

>>3077011
If you don't like evolutionary psychologists:

John Maynard Smith, an eminent British evolutionary biologist, was among Gould's strongest critics. Maynard Smith thought that Gould misjudged the vital role of adaptation in biology, and was also critical of Gould's acceptance of species selection as a major component of biological evolution.[56] In a review of Daniel Dennett's book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Maynard Smith wrote that Gould "is giving non-biologists a largely false picture of the state of evolutionary theory."

[Anonymous No.3077036]

>>3076979
Oh look, kids, he's got a book actually TITLED Why Gould was wrong'.

Guess Gould set the terms for the debate, eh? Maybe you're just a little pissant shooting holes in the work of a great man?

[Anonymous No.3077044]

>>3077036
If he was so great it wouldn't be so easy to shoot holes through him.

[Anonymous No.3077069]

>>3077044
He was an early opponent/target of creationists. Conspiracy theories abound.

The legit academic argument against? He wrote his own research for the public.

Again, if YOU wish to be read by nobody I promise you will get that wish.

[Anonymous No.3077096]

>>3077069
It's a consumer/producer question.

You, as a consumer of scientific research, hate Gould because he was wrong/unfounded/wrote opinions as though they were facts.

I don't dispute that, nobody disputes that.

Producers of scientific research, however, marvel at the clarity of his arguments, and their ability to pique curiosity simultaneously for the scientist and lay reader.

[Anonymous No.3077098]

>>3077069
Anyone with half a brain will oppose creationism but that still doesn't excuse his blatant misrepresentation of evolutionary theory for his neo-Lysenkoist ideology. The fact that his deliberate forgery of the facts is so wildly held by mainstream science-fans just goes to show how pointless it is to publish anything for the public. Science is not about BBC documentaries or the discovery channel.

[Anonymous No.3077125]

>>3077098
>Lysenkoist
Did you just learn a new fucking word? Why do you think that repeating an obscure and ill-applied reference will make you look LESS like a kook?

[Anonymous No.3077148]

>>3077098
Instead of Ly-wtf, let me suggest Gould's own term: Shoe-horn.

It expresses your idea in a clear way that anyone can understand. And it is precisely what Gould's public works are about.

[Anonymous No.3077322]

>>3076910
http://lesswrong.com/lw/kv/beware_of_stephen_j_gould

gad.

>What romantics, ha ha, those silly evolutionary biologists, believing in progress! It's a good thing we had a statistically sophisticated thinker like Stephen J. Gould to keep their misconceptions from infecting the general public. Indeed, Stephen J. Gould was a hero - a martyr - because evolutionary biologists don't like it when you challenge their romantic preconceptions, and they persecuted him. Or so Gould represented himself to the public.

Evolution is not progress. A white rabbit is eaten in Africa, but thrives in Canada. There is no 'good' evolutionary trait, merely one well-suited to its environment.

>The upshot, as George Williams wrote:

A certain amount of information is added by selection every generation. At the same time, a certain amount is subtracted by randomizing processes. The more information is already stored, the more would mutation and other random forces reduce it in a given time interval. It is reasonable to suppose that there would be a maximum level of information content that could be maintained by selection in opposition to randomizing forces...

Ugh. Diversity (or genetic information) is actually DECREASED via selection. This is precisely the fucking point Gould...

Nevermind. You're not a troll, you're just among that huge group of people that uses a fantastic misunderstanding to 'disprove' a popular theory. Get in line behind people "disproving" relativity because, I dunno, Einstein used a bad analogy.

[Anonymous No.3078214]

I don't understand why you guys want to prove that blacks are naturally stupid.

u jelly or something? is that natural manliness that blacks have making you nerds mad?