in 1981, Stephen J. Gould published ‘The Mismeasure of Man’, his magnum opus, which he revised in 1996 to respond to ‘The Bell Curve’, published by @charlesmurray in 1994.

Mismeasure inveighed against psychometric research into cognitive ability. there were a lot of arguments raised in the book, many covered elsewhere better, so for the purpose of this thread i will stick to the factor analytic arguments that people don’t really talk about

i assume everyone understands factor analysis, if you don’t i recommend reading the wikipedia page

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_an …

Gould was no fan of factor analysis. he claimed that “virtually all its procedures arose as justification for particular theories of intelligence” and “despite it’s status as pure deductive mathematics, was invented in a social context...for definitte reasons.. [and its use] -