The lies that skulls told us

Once upon a time, people believed you could ascertain a person’s character and personality traits by examining the bumps and shapes of their skull. Such study was called phrenology and its proponents were not just people on the fringe; established scientists beieved such a “science” had merit. “In origin was distinctly medical,” writes Robert E. Riegel in a 1933 article published in The American Historical Review. “Its originators being the doctors François Joseph Gall and John Gaspar Spurzheim, who did the greater part of their work in the first two decades of the century.” Gall received his doctorate in 1785 and became “a successful,......

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