[freespirited]

Gould was a wonderful writer. Unfortunately he was a lousy scientist who put his political agenda before facts. I feel the same way about him as you do.

[Pharmboy]

What bothered me so much about him is that he used his academic and scientific credibility (a chaired professor at Harvard) to advance hokum, while accusing others of just that. He was and is an embarrassment to science, and it is nice to see the Times (one of his great enablers) finally admit it.

Yes...he was a gifted writer, but his baseball analogies grew tiresome. Further, I often got the feeling that he was too driven to show how smart he was rather than to shed light. Sort of the science writer's William Safire, another pedant.