Arthur Jensen - Jensen's Response and Criticism

Jensen's Response and Criticism

In Arthur Jensen's response to Gould's criticisms, in the paper titled The Debunking of Scientific Fossils and Straw Persons., Jensen begins his paper with this observation

Stephen Jay Gould is a paleontologist at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology and offers a course at Harvard entitled, "Biology as a Social Weapon." Apparently the course covers much the same content as does the present book. Having had some personal cause for interest in ideologically motivated attacks on biologically oriented behavioral scientists, I first took notice of Gould when he played a prominent role in a group called Science for the People and in that group's attack on the theories of Harvard zoologist Edward O. Wilson, a leader in the development of sociobiology...

While Jensen recognizes the validity of some of Gould's claims, in many places, he criticizes Gould's general approach

This charge of a social, value-laden science undoubtedly contains an element of truth. In recent years, however, we recognize this charge as the keystone of the Marxist interpretation of the history of science.

Jensen adds that Gould made a number of misrepresentations, whether intentional or unintentional, while purporting to present Jensen's own positions

In his references to my own work, Gould includes at least nine citations that involve more than just an expression of Gould's opinion; in these citations Gould purportedly paraphrases my views. Yet in eight of the nine cases, Gould's representation of these views is false, misleading, or grossly caricatured. Nonspecialists could have no way of knowing any of this without reading the cited sources. While an author can occasionally make an inadvertent mistake in paraphrasing another, it appears Gould's paraphrases are consistently slanted to serve his own message.