This is hardly the first time an anthropologist has lied in the name of equality.
The late scientific icon, Stephen Jay Gould, botched and perhaps faked his critique of a racist 19th-Century scientist’s skull collection, suggests a second look at his efforts. In a 1978 Science paper, Gould (1941 – 2002) , reported that the Samuel George Morton (1799-1851), “a prominent Philadelphia physician,” had mis-measured the cranial capacities of his 1,000-skull “American Golgotha” collection gathered from around the world, to suit his racist beliefs. The finding led to one of Gould’s best-known books, The Mismeasure of Man, a critique of scientific racism.
“Morton is now viewed as a canonical example of scientific misconduct. But did Morton really fudge his data?,” asks a PLoS Biology study led by anthropologist Jason Lewis of Stanford University. “Are studies of human variation inevitably biased, as per Gould, or are objective accounts attainable, as Morton attempted?”