He raised a variety of objections, and supported some of them with texts, and wherever he convinced me I had misinterpreted him, I revised my draft accordingly. Gould kindly met with me in the summer of 1994, and we spent several hours going over his objections to the penultimate draft. I invited him to participate in my seminar that was reviewing the penultimate draft. I sent drafts of my critical chapters to Gould himself more than a year before I sent the final manuscript to the publisher, inviting him to meet with me at his convenience, or to respond in whatever way he chose. So I did my usual homework, and checked it all out with experts in the field, including experts sympathetic to Gould, urging them to correct any errors they spotted. I knew he was going to hate my book, and given the effectiveness of his past public attacks on sociobiology, IQ testing, and other targets of his disfavor, prudence alone would dictate that I should secure my criticisms against easy rebuttal and condemnation. One does not lightly embark on the course of demonstrating that a figure as famous and as honored as Stephen Jay Gould-“America’s evolutionist laureate”-has misled his huge public about the theories in his field. On the contrary, I went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that my account of his views was fair and accurate. Stephen Jay Gould complains that in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea I attack his views via “hint, innuendo, false attribution,” and “caricature”.
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