Review_Author: Lisa Floreck
Book_Author: Stephen Jay Gould
Book_Title: Mismeasure of Man
Reference: xx
Date: 5/7/00
Time: 3:21:02 PM
Remote Name: 207.239.0.112
Stephen Jay Gould's Mismeasure of Man provides an enlightening examination into the history of intelligence testing. The book chronicals important contributors whose work served to support the commonly held notion that human intelligence is a unitary, measurable, genetically predetermined trait. Scientists motives for measuring intelligence and consequences their work had on different groups of people, e.g. determining who should not bear children or the type of job which may be suitable for an individual are discussed in great depth. Gould's intention is to provide the reader with an understanding of how intelligence testing has grown into what it is today and this theory of a unitary measurable trait is based on many years of false premises and fallicies in research.
Each chapter in Mismeasure of Man offers evidence to refute the 800+ pages of The Bell curve which stipulate that intelligence can be measured as a single trait. The first half of the book examines work in the 18th and 19th centuries which sought to prove that intelligence is biologically determined. Through measuring the outside of skulls, the volume of the cranium and the weight of the brain, scientists collected data to support their belief that races are not equal in intelligence and are thus biologically determined. The second half of the book introduces the original purpose of the Binet test in France and it's subsequent misuse in the United States.
Gould conveys that intelligence testing is where it is today as a result of inconclusive evidence produced from flawed research taken as truth. The early chapters exhibit study after study whereby a priori convictions of the research influence the results. A reader with the slightest familiarity of research designs and statistics will clearly see how flaws in instrumentation, sampling and statistical analysis clearly invalidate the results of the work done by many in the 18th and 19th century. The first introduction of mass intelligence testing with U.S Army in the 20th century exhibited test speededness, variation in standards and lack of uniform instruction process all of which would be of the utmost concern any psychometrician or test developer today. At the time they were not only overlooked but the mass intelligence testing as used in the U.S. army to assign positions spurred many institutions institute intelligence testing as a means to rank order individuals.
Gould dedicates a large portion of the second half of the book to the emergence of the IQ test and how it became what it is today. Throughout chapter 5, readers will gain a sense of the original use of the test, i.e. to develop a measure to identify children in need of special attention at school, and how it was subsequently (mis)used in the U.S. From Goddard, who first popularized the IQ scale and used it to curtail interbreeding, to Terman who later standardized it and suggested it as a tool for determining suitable jobs, the IQ test grew farther and farther away from it's original purpose. Although Binet warned that it was not designed for such a purpose, people administered it and refined it to suit their ambitions.
The last chapter on factor analysis is extremely well written and is provided to give the reader an understanding of how scientists may come to different conclusions regarding the factors associated with intelligence. Depending on the factory analyic approach selected, one could validate the theory of multiple intelligence or of a single unitary intelligence. This chapter may be a bit tough to get through for those readers who are not inclined towards statistics, however, it is necessary to illustrate the final debate as to whether or not intelligence can be considered a single entity.
This book is very well written and could be read for a variety of purposes and levels. Quotes Gould provides assist in understanding the goals and ambitions of these scientists and their work. The chapter on factor analysis gives an idea of the tools we used to explore this theory of intelligence today. Readers who feel that intelligence can be measured by a single score on a given test, should be quite challenged by the material contained in this book and will gain an appreciation of those who feel otherwise, that is, if they don't change their opinion entirely.