The notion that science is a dispassionate undertaking and that scientific inquiry is led by evidence and peer-reviewed study, is not true today, and certainly not true historically. The human prejudices of scientists regularly emerge, not only to taint their results, but often to buttress those biases.

The story of how scientists and their work have reinforced racist and sexist stereotypes, or what is called “biological determinism,” is told in a new book by Melissa N. Stein called Measuring Manhood: Race the and Science of Masculinity 1830 – 1934.

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