5250 words

“the study of the brains of human races would lose most of its interest and utility” if variation in size counted for nothing ([Broca] 1861 , p. 141). Quoted in Gould, 1996: 115)

The law is: small brain, little achievement; great brain, great achievement (Ridpath, 1891: 571)

I can’t hope to give as good a review as Gould’s review in Mismeasure of Man on the history of skull measuring, but I will try to show that hereditarians are mistaken in their brain size-IQ correlations and racial differences in brain size as a whole.

The claim that brain size is causal for differences in intelligence is not new. Although over the last few hundred years there has been back and forth arguments on this issue, it is generally believed that there are racial differences in brain size and that this racial difference in brain size accounted for civilizational accomplishments, among other things. Notions from Samuel Morton which seem to have been revived by Rushton in the 80s while formulating his r/K selection theory show that the racism that was incipient in the time period never left us, even after 1964. Rushton and others merely revived the racist thought of those from the 1800s.

Using MRI scans (Rushton and Ankney, 2009) and measuring the physical skull, Rushton asserted that the differences in brain size and quality between races accounted for differences in IQ. Although Rushton was not alone in this belief, this belief on the relationship between brain weight/structure and intelligence goes back centuries. In this article, I will review studies on racial differences in brain size and see if Rushton et al’s conclusions hold on not only brain size being causally efficacious for IQ but there being racial and differences in brain size and the brain size and IQ correlation.

The Morton debate

Morton’s skull collection has received much attention over the years. Gould (1978) first questioned Morton’s results on the ranking of skulls. He argued that when the data was properly reinterpreted, “all races have approximately equal capacities.” The skulls in Morton’s collection were collected from all over. Morton’s men even robbed graves to procure skulls for Morton, even going as far to take “bodies in front of grieving relatives and boiled flesh off fresh corpses” (Fabian, 2010: 178). One man even told Morton that grave robbing gave him a “rascally pleasure” (Fabian, 2010: 15). Indeed, grave robbing seems to have been a way to procure many skulls which were used in these kinds of analyses (Monarrez et al, 2022). Nevertheless, since skulls house brains, the thought is that by measuring skulls then we can ascertain the brain of the individual that the skull belonged to. A larger skull would imply a larger brain. And larger brains, it was said, belong to more “intelligent” people. This assumption was one that was held by the neurologist Broca, and this then justified using brain weight as a measure of intelligence. Though in 1836, an anti-racist Tiedemann (1836) argued that there were no differences in brain size between whites and blacks. (Also see Gould, 1999 for a reanalysis of Tiedemann where he shows C > M > N in brain size, but concludes that the “differences are tiny and probably of no significance in the judgment of intelligence” (p 10).) It is interesting to note that Tiedemann and Morton worked with pretty much the same data, but they came to different conclusions (Gould, 1999; Mitchell, 2018).

In 1981 Gould published his landmark book The Mismeasure of Man (Gould, 1981/1996). In the book, he argued that bias—sometimes unconscious—pervaded science and that Morton’s work on his skull collection was a great example of this type of bias. Gould (1996: 140) listed many reasons why group (race) differences in brain size have never been demonstrated, citing Tobias (1970):

After all, what can be simpler than weighing a brain?—take it out, and put it on the scale. One set of difficulties refers to problems of measurement itself: at what level is the brain severed from the spinal cord; are the meninges removed or not (meninges are the brain’s covering membranes, and the dura mater, or thick outer covering, weighs 50 to 60 grams); how much time elapsed after death; was the brain preserved in any fluid before weighing and, if so, for how long; at what temperature was the brain preserved after death. Most literature does not specify these factors adequately, and studies made by different scientists usually cannot be compared. Even when we can be sure that the same object has been measured in the same way under the same conditions, a second set of biases intervenes—influences upon brain size with no direct tie to the desired properties of intelligence or racial affiliation: sex, body size, age, nutrition, nonnutritional environment, occupation, and cause of death.

Nevertheless, in Mismeasure, Gould argued that Morton had unconscious bias where he packed the skulls of smaller African skulls more loosely while he would pack the skulls of a smaller Caucasian skull tighter (Gould made this inference due to the disconnect between Morton’s lead shot and seed measurements).

Plausible scenarios are easy to construct. Morton, measuring by seed, picks up a threateningly large black skull, fills it lightly and gives it a few desultory shakes. Next, he takes a distressingly small Caucasian skull, shakes hard, and pushes mightily at the foramen magnum with his thumb. It is easily done, without conscious motivation; expectation is a powerful guide to action. (1996: 97)

…

Yet through all this juggling, I detect no sign of fraud or conscious manipulation. Morton mad e no attempt to cove r his tracks and I must presume that he was unaware he had left them. He explained all his procedure s and published all his raw data. All I can discern is an a priori conviction about racial ranking so powerful that it directed his tabulations along preestablished lines. Yet Morton was widely hailed as the objectivist of his age, the man who would rescue American science from the mire of unsupported speculation. (1996: 101)

But in 2011, a team of researchers tried to argue that Morton did not manipulate data to fit his a priori biases (Lewis et al, 2011). They claimed that “most of Gould’s criticisms are poorly supported or falsified.” They argued that Morton’s measurements were reliable and that Morton really was the scientific objectivist many claimed him to be. Of course, since Gould died in 2002 shortly after publishing his magnum opus The Stuecure of Evolutionary Theory, Gould could not defend his arguments against Morton.

However, a few authors have responded to Lewis et al and have defended Gould conclusions against Morton (Weisberg, 2014; Kaplan, Pigliucci and Banta, 2015; Weisberg and Paul, 2016).

Weisberg (2014) was the first to argue against Lewis et al’s conclusions on Gould. Weisberg argued that while Gould sometimes overstated his case, most of his arguments were sound. Weisberg argued that, contra what Lewis et al claimed, they did not falsify Gould’s claim, which was that the difference between shot and seed measurements showed Morton’s unconscious racial bias. While Weisberg rightly states that Lewis et al uncovered some errors that Gould made, they did not successfully refute two of Gould’s main claims: “that there is evidence that Morton’s seed‐based measurements exhibit racial bias and that there are no significant differences in mean cranial capacities across races in Morton’s collection.”

Weisberg (2014: 177) writes:

There is prima facie evidence of racial bias in Morton’s (or his assistant’s) seed‐basedmeasurements. This argument is based on Gould’s accurate analysis of the difference between the seed‐ and shot‐based measurements of the same crania.

Gould is also correct about two other major issues. First, sexual dimorphism is a very suspicious source of bias in Morton’s reported averages. Since Morton identified most of his sample by sex, this is something that he could have investigated and corrected for. Second, when one takes appropriately weighted grand means of Morton’s data, and excludes obvious sources of bias including sexual dimorphism, then the average cranial capacity of the five racial groups in Morton’s collection is very similar. This was probably the point that Gould cared most about. It has been reinforced by my analysis.

[This is Weisberg’s reanalysis]

So Weisberg successfully defended Gould’s claim that there are no general differences in the races as ascribed by Morton and his contemporaries.

In 2015, another defense of Gould was mounted (Kaplan, Pigliucci and Banta, 2015). Like Weisberg before them, they also state that Gould got some things right and some things wrong, but his main arguments weren’t touched by Lewis et al. Kaplan et al stated that while Gould was right to reject Morton’s data, he was wrong to believe that “a more appropriate analysis was available.” They also argue due to the “poor dataset no legitimate inferences to “natural” populations can be drawn.” (See Luchetti, 2022 for a great discussion of Kaplan, Pigliucci and Banta.)

In 2016, Weisberg and Paul (2016) argued that Gould assumed that Morton’s lead shot method  was an objective way to ascertain the cranial capacities of skulls. Gould’s argument rested on the differences between lead shot and seed. Then in 2018, Mitchell (2018) published a paper where he discovered lost notes of Morton’s and he argued that Gould was wrong. He, however, admitted that Gould’s strongest argument was untouched—the “measurement issue” (Weisberg and Paul, 2016) was Gould’s strongest argument, deemed “perceptive” by Mitchell. In any case, Mitchell showed that the case of Morton isn’t one of an objective scientist looking to explain the world sans subjective bias—Morton’s a priori biases were strong and strongly influenced his thinking.

Lastly, ironically Rushton used Morton’s data from Gould’s (1978) critique, but didn’t seem to understand why Gould wrote the paper, nor why Morton’s methodology was highly suspect. Rushton basically took the unweighted average for “Ancient Caucasian” skulls, and the sex/age of the skulls weren’t known. He also—coincidentally I’m sure—increased the “Mongoloid skull” size from 85 to 85.5cc (Gould’s table had it as 85cc). Amazingly—and totally coincidentally, I’m sure—Rushton miscited Gould’s table and basically combined Morton’s and Gould’s data, increased the skull size slightly of “Mongoloids” and used the unweighted average of “Ancient Caucasian” skulls (Cain and Vanderwolf, 1990). How honest of Rushton. It’s ironic how people say that Gould lied about Morton’s data and that Gould was a fraud, when in all actuality, Rushton was the real fraud, never recanting on his r/K theory, and now we can see that Rushton actually miscited and combined Gould’s and Morton’s results and made assumptions without valid justification.

The discussion of bias in science is an interesting one. Since science is a social endeavor, there necessarily will be bias inherent in it, especially when studying humans and discussing the causes of certain peculiarities. I would say that Gould was right about Morton and while Gould did make a few mistakes, his main argument against Morton was untouched.

Skull measuring after Morton

The inferiority of blacks and other non-white races has been asserted ever since the European age of discovery. While there were of course 2 camps at the time—one which argued that blacks were not inferior in intelligence and another that argued they were—the claim that blacks are inferior in intelligence was, and still is, ubiquitous. They argued that smaller heads meant that one was less intelligent, and if groups had smaller heads then they too were less intelligent than groups that had smaller heads. This then was used to argue that blacks hadn’t achieved any kind of civilizational accomplishments since they were intellectually inferior due to their smaller brains (Davis, 1869; Campbell, 1891; Hoffman, 1896; Ridpath, 1897; Christison, 1899).

Robert Bean (1906) stated, using cadavers, that his white cadavers had larger frontal lobes than his black cadavers. He concluded that blacks were more objective than whites who were more subjective, and that white cadavers has larger frontal and anterior lobes than black cadavers. However, it seems that Bean did not state one conclusion—that the brain’s of his cadavers seemed to show no difference. Gould (1996: 112) discusses this issue (see Mall, 1909: 8-10, 13; Reuter, 1927). Mall (1909: 32) concluded, “In this study of several anatomical characters said to vary according to race and sex, the evidence advanced has been tested and found wanting.”

Franz Boas also didn’t agree with Bean’s analysis:

Furthermore, in “The Anthropological Position of the Negro,” which appeared in Van Norden)- Magazine a few months later, Boas attempted to refute Bean by arguing that “the anatomical differences” between blacks and whites “are minute,” and “no scientific proof that will stand honest proof … would prove the inferiority of the negro race.”39 (Williams, 1996: 20)

In 1912, Boas argued that the skull was plastic, so plastic that changes in skull shape between immigrants and their progeny were seen. His results were disputed (Sparks and Jantz, 2002), though Gravlee, Bernard, and Leonard (2002) argued that Boas was right—the shape of the skull indeed was influenced by environmental factors.

When it comes to sex, brain size, and intelligence, this was discredited by Alice Lee in her thesis in 1900. Lee created a way to measure the brain of living subjects and she used her method on the Anthropological Society and showed a wife variation, with of course overlapping sizes between men and women.

Lee, though, was a staunch eugenicist and did not apply the same thinking to race:

After dismantling the connection between gender and intellect, a logical route would have been to apply the same analysis to race. And race was indeed the next realm that Lee turned to—but her conclusions were not the same. Instead, she affirmed that through systematic measurement of skull size, scientists could indeed define distinct and separate racial groups, as craniometry contended. (The Statistician Who Debunked Sexist Myths About Skull Size and Intelligence)

Contemporary research on race, brain size, and intelligence

Starting from the mid-1980s when Rushton first tried to apply r/K to human races, there was a lively debate in the literature, with people responding to Rushton and Rushton responding back (Cain and Vanderwolf, 1990; Lynn, 1990; Rushton, 1990; Mouat, 1992). Why did Rushton seemingly revive this area of “research” into racial differences in brain size between human races?

Centring Rushton’s views on racial differences needs to start in his teenage years. Rushton stated that being surrounded by anti-white and anti-western views led to him seeking out right-wing ideas:

JPR recalls how the works of Hans Eysenck were significantly influential to the teenage Rushton, particularly his personality questionnaires mapping political affiliation to personality. During those turbulent years JPR describes bundled as growing his hair long  becoming outgoing but utterly selfish. Finding himself surrounded by what he described as anti-white and anti-western views, JPR became interested in right-wing groups. He went about sourcing old, forbidden copies of eugenics articles that argued that evolutionary differences existed between blacks and whites. (Forsythe, 2019) (See also Dutton, 2018.)

Knowing this, it makes sense how Rushton was so well-versed in old 18 and 1900s literature on racial differences.

For decades, J. P. Rushton argued that skulls and brains of blacks were smaller than whites. Since intelligence was related to brain size in Rushtonian r/K selection theory, this meant that what would account for some of the intelligence differences based on IQ scores between blacks and whites could be accounted for by differences in brain size between them. Since the brain size differences between races accounted for millions of brain cells, this could then explain race differences in IQ (Rushton and Rushton, 2003). Rushton (2010) went as far to argue that brain size was an explanation for national IQ differences and longevity.

Rushton’s thing in the 90s was to use MRI to measure endocranial volumes (eg Rushton and Ankney, 1996). Of course they attempt to show how smaller brain sizes are found in lower classes, women, and non-white races. Quite obviously, this is scientific racism, sexism, and classism (which Murray 2020 also wrote a book on). In any case, Rushton and Ankney (2009) tried arguing for “general mental ability” and whole brain size, trying to argue that the older studies “got it right” in regard to not only intelligence and brain size but also race and brain size. (Rushton and Ankney, just like Rushton and Jensen 2005, cited Mall, 1909 in the same sentence as Bean, 1906 trying to argue that the differences in brain size between whites and blacks were noted then, when Mall was a response specifically to Bean! See Gould 1996 for a solid review of Bean and Mall.) Kamin and Omari (1998) show that whites had greater head height than blacks while blacks had greater head length and circumference. They described many errors that Lynn, Rushton and Jensen made in their analyses of race and head size. Not only did Rushton ignore Tobias’ conclusions when it comes to measuring brains, he also ignored the fact that American Blacks, in comparison to American, French and English whites, had larger brains in Tobias’ (1970) study (Weizmann et al, 1990).

Rushton and Ankney (2009) review much of the same material they did in their 1996 review. They state:

The sex differences in brain size present a paradox. Women have proportionately smaller average brains than men but apparently have the same intelligence test scores.

This isn’t a paradox at all, it’s very simple to explain. Terman assumed that men and women should be equal in IQ and so constructed his test to fit that assumption. Since Terman’s Stanford-Binet test is still in use today, and since newer versions are “validated” on older versions that held the same assumption, then it follows that the assumption is still alive today. This isn’t some “paradox” that needs to be explained away by brain size, we just need to look back into history and see why this is a thing. The SAT has been changed many times to strengthen or weaken sex differences (Rosser, 1989). It’s funny how this completely astounds hereditarians. “There are large differences in brain size between men and women but hardly if any differences in IQ, but a 1 SD difference in IQ between whites and blacks which is accounted for in part by brain size.” I wonder why that never struck them as absurd? If Rushton accepted brain weight as an indicator that IQ test scores reflected differences in brain size between the races, then he would also need to accept that this should be true for men and women (Cernovsky, 1990), but Rushton never proposed anything like that. Indeed he couldn’t, since sex differences in IQ are small or nonexistent.

In their review papers, Rushton and Ankney, as did Rushton and Jensen (I should assume that this was Rushton’s contribution to the paper since he also has the same citations and arguments in his book and other papers) consistently return to a few references: Mall, Bean, Vint and Gordon, Ho et al and Beals et al. Cernovsky (1995) has a masterful response to Rushton where he dismantles his inferences and conclusions based on other studies. Cernovsky showed that Rushton’s claim that his claim that there are consistent differences between races in brain size is false; Rushton misrepresented other studies which showed blacks having heavier brains and larger cranial capacities than whites. He misrepresented Beals et al by claiming that the differences in the skulls they studied are due to race when race was spurious, climate explained the differences regardless of race. And Rushton even misrepresented Herskovits’ data which showed no difference in regarding statute or crania. So Rushton even misrepresented the brain-body size literature.

Now I need to discuss one citation line that Rushton went back to again and again throughout his career writing about racial differences. In articles like Rushton (2002) Rushton and Jensen (2005), Rushton and Ankney (2007, 2009) Rushton went back to a similar citation line: Citing 1900s studies which show racial differences. Knowing what we know about Rushton looking for old eugenics articles that showed that evolutionary differences existed between blacks and whites, this can now be placed into context.

Weighing brains at autopsy, Broca (1873) found that Whites averaged heavier brains than Blacks and had more complex convolutions and larger frontal lobes. Subsequent studies have found an average Black–White difference of about 100 g (Bean, 1906; Mall, 1909; Pearl, 1934; Vint, 1934). Some studies have found that the more White admixture (judged independently from skin color), the greater the average brain weight in Blacks (Bean, 1906; Pearl, 1934). In a study of 1,261 American adults, Ho et al. (1980) found that 811 White Americans averaged 1,323 g and 450 Black Americans averaged 1,223 g (Figure 1).

There are however, some problems with this citation line. For instance, Mall (1909) was actually a response to Bean (1906). Mall was race-blind to where the brains came from after reanalysis and found no differences in the brain between blacks and whites. Regarding the Ho et al citation, Rushton completely misrepresented their conclusions. Further, brains that are autopsied aren’t representative of the population at large (Cain and Vanderwolf, 1990; see also Lynn, 1989; Fairchild, 1991). Rushton also misrepresented the conclusions in Beals et al (1984) over the years (eg, Rushton and Ankney, 2009). Rushton reported that they found his same racial hierarchy in brain size. Cernovsky and Littman (2019) stated that Beals et al’s conclusion was that cranial size varied with climatic zone and not race, and that the correlation between race and brain size was spurious, with smaller heads found in warmer climates, regardless of race. This is yet more evidence that Rushton ignored data that fid not fit his a priori conclusions (see Cernovsky, 1997; Lerner, 2019: 694-700). Nevertheless, it seems that Rushton’s categorization of races by brain size cannot be valid (Peters, 1995).

It would seem to me that Rushton was well-aware of these older papers due to what he read in his teenage years. Although at the beginning of his career, Rushton was a social learning theorist (Rushton, 1980), quite obviously Rushton shifted to differential psychology and became a follower—and collaborator—of Jensenism.

But what is interesting here in the renewed ideas of race and brain size are the different conclusions that different investigators came to after they measured skulls. Lieberman (2001) produced a table which shies different rankings of different races over the past few hundred years.

As can be seen, there is a stark contrast in who was on top of the hierarchy based on the time period the measurements were taken. Why may this be? Obviously, this is due to what the investigator wanted to find—if you’re looking for something, you’re going to find it.

Rushton (2004) sought to revive the scala naturae, proposing that g—the general factor of intelligence—sits a top a matrix of correlated traits and he tried to argue that the concept of progress should return to evolutionary biology. Rushton’s r/K theory has been addressed in depth, and his claim that evolution is progressive is false. Nevertheless, even Rushton’s claim that brain size was selected for over evolutionary history also seems to be incorrect—it was body size that was, and since larger bodies have larger brains this explains the relationship. (See Deacon, 1990a, 1990b.)

Salami et al (2017) used brains from fresh cadavers, severing them from the spinal cord at the forum magnum and they completely removed the dura mater. This then allowed them to measure the whole brain without any confounds due to parts of the spinal cord which aren’t actually parts of the brain. They found that the mean brain weight for blacks was 1280g with a ranging between 1015g to 1590g while the mean weight of male brains was 1334g. Govender et al (2018) showed a 1404g mean brain weight for the brains of black males.

Rushton aggregated data from myriad different sources and time periods, claiming that by aggregating even data which may have been questionable in quality, the true differences in brain size would appear when averaged out. Rushton, Brainerd, and Pressley, 1983 defended the use of aggregation stating “By combining numerous exemplars, such errors of measurement are averaged out, leaving a clearer view of underlying relationships.” However, this method that Rushton used throughout his career has been widely criticized (eg, Cernovsky, 1993; Lieberman, 2001).

Rushton was quoted as saying “Even if you take something like athletic ability or sexuality—not to reinforce stereotypes or some such thing—but, you know, it’s a trade-off: more brain or more penis. You can’t have both.” How strange—because for 30 years Rushton pushed stereotypes as truth and built a whole (invalid) research program around them. The fact of the matter is, for Rushton’s hierarchy when it comes to Asians, they are a selected population in America. Thus, even there, Rushton’s claim rests on values taken from a selected population into the country.

While Asians had larger brains and higher IQ scores, they had lower sexual drive and smaller genitals; blacks had smaller brains and lower IQ scores with higher sexual drive and larger genitals; whites were just right, having brains slightly smaller than Asians with slightly lower IQs and lower sexual drive than blacks but higher than Asians along with smaller genitals than blacks but larger than Asians. This is Rushton’s legacy—keeping up racial stereotypes (even then, his claims on racial differences in penis size do not hold.)

The misleading arguments on brain size lend further evidence against Rushton’s overarching program. Thus, this discussion is yet more evidence that Rushton was anything but a “serious scholar” who trolled shopping malls asking people their sexual exploits. He was clearly an ideologue with a point to prove about race differences which probably manifested in his younger, teenage years. Rushton got a ton wrong, and we can now add brain size to that list, too, due to his fudging of data, misrepresenting data, and not including data that didn’t fit his a priori biases.

Quite clearly, whites and Asians have all the “good” while blacks and other non-white races have all the “bad.” And thus, what explains social positions not only in America but throughout the world (based on Lynn’s fraudulent national IQs; Sear, 2020) is IQ which is mediated by brain size. Brain size was but a part of Rushton’s racial rank ordering, known as r-K selection theory or differential K theory. However, his theory didn’t replicate and it was found that any differences noticed by Rushton could be environmentally-driven (Gorey and Cryns, 1995; Peregrine, Ember and Ember, 2003).

The fact of the matter is, Rushton has been summarily refuted on many of his incendiary claims about racial differences, so much so that a couple of years ago quite a few of his papers were retracted (three in one swipe). While a theoretical article arguing about the possibility that melanocortin and skin color may mediate aggression and sexuality in humans (Rushton and Templer, 2012). (This appears to be the last paper that Rushton published before his death in October, 2012. How poetic that it was retracted.) This was due mainly to the outstanding and in depth look into the arguments and citations made by Rushton and Templer. (See my critique here.)

Conclusion

Quite clearly, Gould got it right about Morton—Gould’s reanalysis showed the unconscious bias that was inherent in Morton’s thoughts on his skull collection. Gould’s—and Weisberg’s—reanalysis show that there are small differences in skulls of Morton’s collection. Even then, Gould’s landmark book showed that the study of racial differences—in this case, in brain and skull size—came from a place of racist thought. Writings from Rushton and others carry on this flame, although Rushton’s work was shown to have considerable flaws, along with the fact that he outright ignored data that didn’t fit his a priori convictions.

Although comparative studies of brain size have been widely criticized (Healy and Rowe, 2007), they quite obviously survive today due to the assumptions that hereditarians have between “IQ” and brain size along with the assumption that there are racial differences in brain size and that these differences are causal for socially-important things. However, as can be seen, the comparative study of racial brain sizes and the assumption that IQ is causally mediated by it are hugely mistaken. Morton’s studies were clouded by his racial bias, as Gould and Weisberg and Kaplan et al showed. When Rushton, Jensen, and Lynn arose, they they tried to carry on that flame, correlating head size and IQ while claiming that smaller head sizes and—by identity—smaller brains are related to a suite of negative traits.

The brain is of course an experience-dependent organ and people are exposed to different types of knowledge based on their race and social class. This difference in knowledge exposure based on group membership, then, explains IQ scores. Not any so-called differences in brain size, brain physiology or genes. And while Cairo (2011) concludes that “Everything indicates that experience makes the great difference, and therefore, we contend that the gene-environment interplay is what defines the IQ of an individual“, genes are merely necessary for that, not sufficient. Of course, since IQ is an outcome of experience, this is what explains IQ differences between groups.

Table 1 from Lieberman (2001) is very telling about Gould’s overarching claim about bias in science. As the table shows, the hierarchy in brain size was constantly shifting throughout the years based on a priori biases. Even different authors coming to different conclusions in the same time period on whether or not there are differences in brain size between races pop up. Quite obviously, the race scientists would show that race is the significant variable in whatever they were studying and so the average differences in brain size then reflect differences in genes and then intelligence which would then be reflected in civilizational accomplishments. That’s the line of reasoning that hereditarians like Rushton use when operating under these assumptions.

Science itself isn’t racist, but racist individuals can attempt to use science to import their biases and thoughts on certain groups to the masses and use a scientific veneer to achieve that aim. Rushton, Jensen and others have particular reasons to believe what they do about the structure of society and how and why certain racial groups are in the societal spot they are in. However, these a priori conceptions they had then guided their research programs for the rest of their lives. Thus, Gould’s main claim in Mismeasure about the bias that was inherent in science is well-represented: one only needs to look at contemporary hereditarian writings to see how their biases shape their research and interpretations of data.

In the end, we don’t need just-so stories to explain how and why races differ in IQ scores. We most definitely don’t need any kinds of false claims about how brain size is causal for intelligence. Nor do we need to revive racist thought on the causes and consequences of racial differences in brain size. Quite obviously, Rushton was a dodgy character in his attempt to prove his tri-archic racial theory using r/K selection theory. But it seems that when one surveys the history of accounts of racial differences in brain size and how these values were ascertained, upon critical examination, such differences claimed by the hereditarian all but dissappear.