[berntb]

Well, I already mentioned that you should check who the critics were. Maynard Smith, Wilson and Mayr. AFAIK, they each have more than double the cred in the field as Gould and Dawkins have -- together.

Marxist... Lewontin, Steven Rose Kamin et al can hardly be described as liberal or right wing... :-)

Can you mention three non-leftwing well known biologists in that camp? One?

The fun part about Gould is the criticism from intelligence researchers. They more or less accuse Gould of misrepresenting the contents of their field -- very similar to how Gould is described by evolutionary biologists...

Edit: I might also add that there were lots of discussion about how new "punctuated equilibrium" really where.

Edit II: First post by a user 460 days old? I am honored! :-)

[awkward]

Not to completely throw up a smokescreen to hide the fact that I think you're better read on this debate than I am, but your challenge is pretty reminiscent of what bugs me about this debate: It's often framed as a debate between politically motivated hacks vs their more sensible, less biased opponents, when there was real scientific disagreement at stake, and a disagreement that has at least some practical political implication. Admittedly, this defense works better when talking about controversy between Gould and Dawkins (who is not at all apolitical himself) than between Gould and Wilson.

That, and I thought that the best place I could find on the internet to defend Gould would be in the middle of a thread full of amateur evolutionary psychologists making up stories about why depression came into being. :-)

re your edit II: There was some stuff about this on Pharyngula recently that put it on my mind, and plus the combination of screeching flamewar and biological debate in this makes it pretty interesting reading.

[berntb]

Evolutionary biology interests me and to have a clue, I had to understand the controversy. Time wasted, which I want back. :-(

As I wrote, the easiest way to understand is to note that the heavy people of both evolutionary biology and intelligence research agree on Gould's intellectual dishonesty.

(Almost all positive reviews on Gould's book on intelligence came from the extreme left or from non-psychologists.)

The top levels of the intelligence researchers and the evolutionary biologists were incompetent idiots and/or in a conspiracy? (More or less what the creationists argue about evolutionary biologists, by the way!)

It is just not believable.

> when there was real scientific disagreement at stake

It was mainly Gould's public writing that was criticized, not the research.

Note that my previous comments were downvoted by someone that obviously disagrees, but lacks arguments... True believers are sad.