What Gould did was much worse, involving deliberate misrepresentation of science. Many honest scientists have made honest mistakes. In the field of evolutionary biology at large, Gould's reputation is mud. Gould has ever said about evolutionary biology, I have some bad news for you. His impressive literary and historical erudition makes his work seem profound to most readers, but informed readers eventually conclude that there's no there there. Unfortunately, it appears that he avoids these sins not because he has transcended his colleagues but because he does does not seem to understand what they have to say and his own descriptions of what the field is about - not just the answers, but even the questions - are consistently misleading. That is, he is a wonderful writer who is bevolved by literary intellectuals and lionized by the media because he does not use algebra or difficult jargon. Now it is not very hard to find out, if you spend a little while reading in evolution, that Gould is the John Kenneth Galbraith of his subject.
What I encountered were quite a few references to Stephen Jay Gould, hardly any to other evolutionary theorists. Don’t trust a word Gould writes unless you have the time to check each individual reference.
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