Re: Gould, Science, Mistakes and Fraud - Mistake by Bryant

Joel and Lynn Gazis-Sax (gazissax@best.com)
Thu, 15 Aug 1996 13:58:18 -0800

Robert Snower wrote:
>
> A very informative post. Thank you.
>
> Best wishes. R. Snower rs222@worldnet.att.net
>
> mycol1@unm.edu (Bryant) wrote:
>
> >Joel's been mentioning fraud in science from time to time. The NSF
> >publishes a list of folks caught doing that, every year. Here's an
> >interesting case that will never make that list. It involves Stephen Jay
> >Gould, Ivy Tower resident at Harvard.
>
>
> >More typically (Gould is rarely caught out and out fudging), in his
> >essay, "Male Nipples and Clitoral Ripples," Gould complains about
> >adaptationists' insufficient testing of their evolutionary hypotheses
> >about the origins of the female orgasm. In the same essay, Gould himself
> >declares without evidence (and without presenting a single testable
> >prediction) that "the real answer" is that female orgasm is analogous to
> >a male nipple: functionless baggage from early, sexually undifferentiated
> >embryonic development. (Evidence published since strongly suggests that
> >Gould was wrong.)
>

Two things to note: First, Gould has enough integrity to admit when he
is wrong.

>In the same essay, Gould himself
>declares without evidence (and without presenting a single testable
>prediction) that "the real answer" is that female orgasm is analogous to
>a male nipple: functionless baggage from early, sexually undifferentiated
>embryonic development.

Second, if not fraud, then there is some sloppiness in the paragraph above.
Gould does not link the male nipple to the female orgasm. His point, in fact,
at least in the version I read is that the reason why females have a
clitoris is that males have a penis. Males have nipples, he argues, because
females do.

The main point of Gould's article is to challenge functionalist interpretations
of every feature on the body. Female orgasm may have a function (or, at least,
a pleasureable side effect -- why does it have to be described as a function? --
that's the point here).

As for evidence, while Gould does not do any scientific work himself, there is
enough of a documentary basis for embryology to make some of the conclusions
he has made above. His crimes, therefore, are no worse than that of sociobiologists
who do not conduct the fieldwork on ants or mole rats themselves, but instead
trust in the observations of others to help explain what they are looking at
in the moment. (If you think this is an evil practice, then the next time
Gerold or someone else goes on making assertions about how behavior of ants or
sticklebacks indicates thusly about human beings, please be sure to challenge it.)

Regards,

Joel

-- 

        ___ ___ 

       /\ _|_ /\      Joel and Lynn GAzis-SAx

      / /\_|_/\ \     gazissax@best.com

     / / /\|/\ \ \    http://www.best.com/~gazissax/

 ----------o----------------------------------------------------------

     \ \ \/|\/ / /    "If we try to flee from our human condition into  

      \ \/_|_\/ /     the computer, we only meet ourselves there."

       \/__|__\/                        William Barrett