In Stephen Jay Gould’s 1981 article “Women’s Brains” Gould explores the immorality of using science to confirm one’s own bias. Gould does this through the example of a 19th century anthropometrist, Paul Broca, who compared the sizes of men and women’s brains in order to prove that men were mentally superior. Gould carefully analyzes Broca’s data and shows how his bias created flawed data, and how easily science can be flawed. In doing this Gould also shows how science is often reified and taken as fact, despite it being inferential. Gould quite skillfully breaks down every aspect of Broca’s experiments in order to prove this point, as well as articulates in a way readers would understand.
