@ Paula Stiles,

“Imaging studies of intelligence and brain structure. Correlations between intelligence and total brain volume or grey matter volume have been replicated in magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI) studies, to the extent that intelligence is now commonly used as a confounding variable in morphometric studies of disease. MRI-based studies estimate a moderate correlation between brain size and intelligence of 0.40 to 0.51 (REF. 28; see REF. 29 on interpreting this correlation, and REF. 30 for a meta-analysis).

NEUROBIOLOGY OF INTELLIGENCE: SCIENCE AND ETHICS, NATURE REVIEWS | NEUROSCIENCE VOLUME 5 | JUNE 2004

http://www.yale.edu/scan/GT_2004_NRN.pdf

Both men put their differences behind them a few years later.

Ehrlich, Paul R., et al., “Long-Term Biological Consequences of Nuclear War.” Science 222 (1983): 1293-1300.

Thanks for pointing out the evidentiary bias in Wikipedia’s treatment of nuclear winter. The real question is : Why other to correct it if it gives its author’s joy?

Nothing succeeds like semantic aggression and the scientific meltdown of the original apocalyptic hypothesis has no more removed the neologism from use than the remaindering of the book Sagan and Ehrlich wrote to tout it. Not much air time is wasted nowadays on warnings about The Energy Crisis and Y2K, and the only folks dedicated to keeping nuclear winter alive are those who invested their credibility in the original , apocalyptic hypothesis. One arrived at by invoking the precautionary principle to justify worst-case values for all thirty of the parameter choices that went into what was bizarrely styled ” a sophisticated one dimensional model.”

Their collective problem is that , thanks to the PR firm hired to promote it, the original hype was so over the top that sober research could only drive the topic in one direction. Down- , by two orders of magnitude from a 22,000 degree day worst case in the 1983 climate model to just a few hundred today- replacing twenty below zero with single degree cooling means no more snowball earth.

After Sagan jumped the shark on the Kuwait fires, , the literature flatlined , The spectacle of the original researchers writing ‘review articles ‘ about their own work has not done much to redeem the subject, but their perseverance in front loading the Wiki with Cold War factoids reminds us that one of science’s Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not covet thine own hypothesis is often more honored in the breech than the observance. Sagan’s insistence that “Apocalyptic predictions demand , if they are to be taken seriously, higher standards of evidence ” has come full circle — history is full of prophets of doom who fail to deliver.

Nuclear winter wasn’t shot down by the Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Beck’s of the 1980′s . It took climate scientists of impeccably liberal credentials who feared for the credibility of their profession on the eve of the global warming debate to rein in Sagan’s ill starred end run on the Nobel peace prize.

Missing from the analysis is the ratio of grey to white matter. The white cushions the grey, and increases if a skull is subjected to blows, especially in childhood. Also, its what causes boxers to be ‘punch drunk’. Nobody measured the cost of non-white moms not making sure their kids wore helmets on bikes, or tolerating the rougher play or what we think is physical abuse.

Missing from the analysis also is consideration of the cultural effect of Europeans needing to spend so much time packed in together every winter to stay warm, and the intolerance of physical violence cause the kids and women are close enuf to be “ancillary casualties”.

This has something to do with why tropical hunting tribes have 20 times the signs of parry fractures in their graveyards compared to European yeoman farmers. Note also how commonly photos of African men show the front teeth bashed out, while our Neanderthal ancestors died with fuller dental sets.

A. He did measure the skulls of women.
B. The paper does discuss the reasons why Morton measured the skulls. It was in hopes of figuring out whether humans were one species or several, one of the biggest questions of the day. Morton doesn’t really mention intelligence at all.
C. So Morton didn’t go in assuming that brain size and intelligence were correlated. In fact, he wrote the opposite: “A well-formed head is no evidence of superior intellect.”
D. Gould’s mistakes go well beyond just failing to “fact check” Morton’s measurement – read the paper or some of the more thorough coverage.
E. It was 1000 skulls, not 100. And the paper discusses the impact of stature and sex.
F. Nobody said Morton was unbiased. In fact, the point is that Morton *was* biased. But his measurements and reporting of them were not (contra Gould).

Gould fudging (well, not fact-checking Morton’s measurements would be more accurate) his attack on Morton’s findings does not change the importance of Gould’s critique. If Morton had not gone into his study with the (unproven) conviction that white men were smarter than everyone else, assuming the (equally unproven) correlation between brain size and intelligence, he wouldn’t have measured all of those skulls, and noted each one’s race, in the first place.

So, yeah, Gould’s assertion that Morton was operating based on unconscious bias should still stand. And while it’s good to know that Morton’s methods within the study were sound (especially since Morton was a major and respected founder of anthropology), it doesn’t change the many statements he made that clearly showed his racial bias. There is no evidence he would ever have concluded that any other race was more intelligent (i.e. had larger skulls) than white men, whatever his findings, and a great deal of evidence that he was absolutely set on proving the opposite, to the point where Gould found him an easy target a century and a half later.

For example, how much do we know about Morton’s selection process of these skulls as representative of their race, and his elimination of outliers in a given racial group? And what about Morton’s claim that Egyptians were white and not “African”, because the Ancient Egyptians he studied did not fit his assumptions about what Africans should look like?

Also, it’s been a while since I took statistics, but 100 skulls strikes me as a pretty small study sample to represent all of the world’s races, especially when not taking into consideration factors we would automatically include now, such as diet and environment, because they would affect things, such as the individual’s height and weight, that would certainly affect the size of any individual’s skull. It seems to me that all this study’s authors have really proven is that Gould did a bit of fudging, himself, not that Morton held no bias, or even held less bias than Gould.

In the lead-up to the first Iraq war, Carl Sagan claimed that the research of he and his colleagues demonstrated unequivocally that if a small fraction of Iraq’s oil wells were set alight, the smoke would lead to a snowball earth. He used this argument on every major news program to argue against the war. A few scientists did indeed say at the time that there was no basis for Sagan’s claims, but he was a celebrity and garnered all the media attention.

In the end Saddam lit way more wells than Sagan was worried about, and they burned longer than anyone anticipated. And the result was… nothing.

It would appear that the racial stereotyping being “fought” was not of the erroneous variety. As to whether nuclear disarmament was or is a laudable goal, I suppose that is a subject for debate. The accusation, however, was that Carl Sagan chose his “scientific truths” so as to fit his leftist agenda. Just like Gould.

I can get back to my project of World Domination. First thing, I’ve got to cycle all these babies up to “ready status” and then figure out which cities and countries deserve to be targeted.

I hope you’re right about Sagan, I’d hate to destroy half the planet for nothing.

You are right. He did absolutely no research to support his conclusions on nuclear winter. But he did publicly espouse them on national broadcasts to a lay audience of millions as if they were fact and supported by good science. And he did so to advance his political agenda for nuclear disarmament. The parallels to Gould are quite obvious to me. Both espoused laudable ends, fighting erroneous racial stereotyping and nuclear disarmament. And both used duplicitous means to advance those ends as supported by “Science”. While both undoubtedly did many other wonderful and noteworthy things, in these instances they were plainly wrong. The damage done to science’s reputation by this ends justify the means mentality should not be underestimated.

If you’ve got suggestions, consider sending them to azeeberg [at] discovermagazine [dot] com.

However, if the issue with Sagan is one over interpretation and extrapolation from theory, I think that’s a different kind of issue, and one that might be closer to debates over models in string theory, where effective experimentation on the issue at hand is difficult, if not impossible.

I can do that for you in two words – Nuclear Winter. There wasn’t a shred of evidence to support the contention that a nuclear exchange would trigger a nuclear winter as espoused by Mr. Sagan. No one ever wanted to call him on it because no one wanted to appear to be in favor of a nuclear war.