Selection bias in skull measurements
From The Embassy of Good Science
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Selection bias in skull measurements
What is this about?
This blog post reports on the findings of a group of anthropologists who discovered that S. J. Gould had been fudging numbers and selecting his samples in a biased manner.
Why is this important?
It nicely shows the self-correcting feature of science. In his 1978 paper, Gould accused Morton (a 19th-century intellectual) of racial bias and misconduct. However, Gould himself is later found to have selected his data in a biased manner.
