![]() ![]() To measure cranial capacity (a proxy for brain size), Morton filled the cranial cavities with spherical materials: “white pepper seed” for his 1839 measurements and BB shot for his 1844 measurements. Between 1830, when he began his collection, and his death in 1849, Morton had amassed over a thousand specimens, making his the largest collection of human skulls in the world. Morton was a Philadelphia physician and highly respected scientist who avidly collected and measured human skulls. Instead, they claim that their “results falsify Gould’s hypothesis that Morton manipulated his data to conform with his a priori views.” We believe this is mistaken, and our comment will explain why. ![]() published a critique of this analysis, denying that Morton’s measurements were biased by his racism. ![]() During the course of this reanalysis, Gould discovered prima facie evidence of unconscious racial bias in Morton’s measurements. Morton had published measurements of the average cranial capacities of different races, measurements that Gould reanalyzed in an article in Science and then later in his widely read book The Mismeasure of Man. Stephen Jay Gould famously used the work of Samuel George Morton (1799–1851) to illustrate how unconscious racial bias could affect scientific measurement. ![]()
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