Editing The Mismeasure of Man (section)

===Reassessing Morton's skull measurements===
In a paper published in 1988, John S. Michael reported that Samuel G. Morton's original 19th-century study was conducted with less bias than Gould had described; that "contrary to Gould's interpretation ... Morton's research was conducted with integrity". Nonetheless, Michael's analysis suggested that there were discrepancies in Morton's [[Craniometry|craniometric calculations]], that his data tables were scientifically unsound, and he "cannot be excused for his errors, or his unfair comparisons of means".<ref name="jsmichael">{{cite journal | last1 = Michael | first1 = J. S. | year = 1988 | title = A New Look at Morton's Craniological Research | journal = Current Anthropology | volume = 29 | issue = 2| pages = 349–54 | doi=10.1086/203646| s2cid = 144528631 }}</ref> Michael later complained that some authors, including [[J. Philippe Rushton]], selectively "cherry-picked facts" from his research to support their own claims. He lamented, "Some people have turned the Morton-Gould affair into an all or nothing debate in which either one side is right or the other side is right, and I think that is a mistake. Both men made mistakes and proving one wrong does not prove the other one right."<ref name="jsmichael2013">Michael, J. S. (2013) [http://michael1988.com/?p=114 "Stephen Jay Gould and Samuel George Morton: A Personal Commentary"] michael1988.com.</ref>

In another study, published in 2011, Jason E. Lewis and colleagues re-measured the cranial volumes of the skulls in Morton's collection, and re-examined the respective statistical analyses by Morton and by Gould, concluding that, contrary to Gould's analysis, Morton did not falsify craniometric research results to support his racial and social prejudices, and that the "Caucasians" possessed the greatest average cranial volume in the sample. To the extent that Morton's craniometric measurements were erroneous, the error was away from his personal biases. Ultimately, Lewis and colleagues disagreed with most of Gould's criticisms of Morton, finding that Gould's work was "poorly supported", and that, in their opinion, the confirmation of the results of Morton's original work "weakens the argument of Gould, and others, that biased results are endemic in science". Despite this criticism, the authors acknowledged that they admired Gould's staunch opposition to racism.<ref name="plosbiology.org">{{Citation |title=The Mismeasure of Science: Stephen Jay Gould versus Samuel George Morton on Skulls and Bias |date=2011 |journal=PLOS Biol |volume=9 |issue=6 |pages=e1001071+ | doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001071 |last1=Lewis |first1=Jason E. |last2=Degusta |first2=David |last3=Meyer |first3=Marc R. |last4=Monge |first4=Janet M. |last5=Mann |first5= Alan E. |last6=Holloway |first6=Ralph L. |pmid=21666803 |pmc=3110184 |doi-access=free }}</ref> Lewis' study examined 46% of Morton's samples, whereas Gould's earlier study was based solely on a reexamination of Morton's raw data tables.<ref>Kaplan et al. (2015) note that, "Gould did not 'bother' to re-measure the skulls, because Gould explicitly stated that, once Morton developed a method that made the unconscious 'fudging' of the results difficult, the results became reliable."</ref> However Lewis' study was subsequently criticized by a number of scholars for misrepresenting Gould's claims,<ref name="Kaplan et al"/> bias,<ref name="Kaplan et al"/><ref name="SciAmerican">Horgan, John (2011). [http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2011/06/24/defending-stephen-jay-goulds-crusade-against-biological-determinism/ "Defending Stephen Jay Gould's Crusade against Biological Determinism"] ''Scientific American'' Cross-Check (24 June 2011).</ref><ref name="Nature2011">Editorial (2011). [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v474/n7352/full/474419a.html "Mismeasure for mismeasure."] ''Nature'' 474 (June 23): 419.</ref> faulted for examining fewer than half of the skulls in Morton's collection,<ref name="Kaplan et al"/><ref name="SciAmerican"/> for failing to correct measurements for age, gender or stature,<ref name="SciAmerican"/> and for its claim that any meaningful conclusions could be drawn from Morton's data.<ref name="Kaplan et al"/><ref name="Weisberg">{{cite journal | last1 = Weisberg | first1 = Michael | year = 2015 | title = Remeasuring man | url = https://cbs.asu.edu/sites/default/files/PDFS/remeasuring-man.pdf | journal = Evolution & Development | volume = 16 | issue = 3 | pages = 166–78 | doi = 10.1111/ede.12077 | pmid = 24761929 | s2cid = 10110412 | access-date = 2015-08-23 | archive-date = 2015-11-17 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20151117031309/https://cbs.asu.edu/sites/default/files/PDFS/remeasuring-man.pdf | url-status = dead }}</ref>

In 2015 this paper was reviewed by Michael Weisberg, who reported that "most of Gould's arguments against Morton are sound. Although Gould made some errors and overstated his case in a number of places, he provided ''prima facie'' evidence, as yet unrefuted, that Morton did indeed mismeasure his skulls in ways that conformed to 19th century racial biases".<ref name="Weisberg"/> Biologists and philosophers Jonathan Kaplan, [[Massimo Pigliucci]], and Joshua Alexander Banta also published a critique of the group's paper, arguing that many of its claims were misleading and the re-measurements were "completely irrelevant to an evaluation of Gould's published analysis". They also maintain that the "methods deployed by Morton and Gould were both inappropriate" and that "Gould's statistical analysis of Morton's data is in many ways no better than Morton's own".<ref name="Kaplan et al"/>

A 2018 paper argued that Morton's interpretation of the data was biased but that the data itself was accurate. The paper argued that Morton's measurements were similar to those of a contemporary craniologist, [[Friedrich Tiedemann]], who had interpreted the data differently to argue strongly against any conception of racial hierarchy.<ref>Mitchell, Paul Wolff. "The fault in his seeds: Lost notes to the case of bias in Samuel George Morton's cranial race science." PLoS biology 16, no. 10 (2018): e2007008.</ref>