"He confronts a basic tool of the measurers—the statistical technique called factor analysis, developed by the influential English psychologist Charles Spearman—and demonstrates persuasively how factor analysis led to the cardinal error in reasoning of confusing correlation with cause, or, to put it another way, of attributing false concreteness to the abstract. It is this sort of performance that makes the book's eventual refutation of Arthur Jensen seem incidental, for it is far more absorbing to have our powers of reason challenged than it is to have our social consciences shaken."
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Academics from the United StatesSkepticsScience authors from the United StatesPaleontologists from the United StatesGeologists from the United States
Original Language: English
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Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "Books Of The Times" The New York Times, 1997-11-09, p. C29
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould
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Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould (September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was an American geologist, paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and popular-science author, who spent most of his career teaching at Harvard University and working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He was one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation.
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