The Mismeasure of Man won the National Book Critics Circle award. Positive reviews focused on the book's critique of scientific racism, the concept of general intelligence, and biological determinism, while critics accused Gould of historical inaccuracy, unclear reasoning, or political bias. The book received many positive reviews in the literary and popular press, while scientific reception was highly polarized.
The second fallacy is that of "ranking", which is the "propensity for ordering complex variation as a gradual ascending scale". Examples of reification include the intelligence quotient (IQ) and the general intelligence factor ( g factor), which have been the cornerstones of much research into human intelligence. The first fallacy is reification, which is "our tendency to convert abstract concepts into entities". According to Gould, these methods possess two deep fallacies. Biological determinism is analyzed in discussions of craniometry and psychological testing, the two principal methods used to measure intelligence as a single quantity. Gould argues that the primary assumption underlying biological determinism is that "worth can be assigned to individuals and groups by measuring intelligence as a single quantity".
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