No, he wasn’t. Marc made the point that the theories were not scientifically based, which is correct. Phrenology relies on the dumb ass premise that skull had different organs in it, which was something that had already been understood not to be true; brain is a brain. Doubling down and casting skulls and then trying to interpret them through size and shape
not really, because it wasn’t pervasive enough to be actually that widely accepted. It was popular among racists. The majority of the science community of the time didn’t think that the brain was composed of several other organs; medical literature at the time does not support those theories. It’s not dissimilar to the outcry over vaccines. We wouldn’t be here having this conversation if they didn’t work, yet you have RFK’s dumb ass