STANDARD BASAL METABOLISM CONSTANTS. 



233 



for women. Regarding signs, the men show an excess of 3.7 per cent 

 and the women an excess of 8.5 per cent. 



Thus the adult series of Magnus-Levy and Talk show supernormal 

 metabolism when compared with the standard which we have adopted, 

 whereas the subjects examined by Palmer, Means, and Gamble show a 

 subnormal metabolism. If, as judged by the Palmer, Means, and 

 Gamble series, our standards predict a metabolism somewhat too high, 

 when judged by the Magnus-Levy and Falk series they predict a basal 

 metabolism somewhat too low. Our standards can not be changed 

 without making the results of one or the other of these groups of 

 observers appear much more abnormal than they now seem. 



TABLE 90. Metabolism of the German men and women studied by Magnus-Levy and Falk 

 compared with American normal (multiple prediction) standard. 



Possibly such tendencies to subnormal or supernormal metabolism 

 as those seen in the two groups of men and women just studied may be 

 due merely to errors of random sampling in the selection of the subjects. 

 This seems, however, highly improbable. To another possible explana- 

 tion we shall return in a moment. That such tendencies are not 

 necessarily characteristic of subseries is evident from the following 

 further illustration. 



Table 91 contains the physical data and the actual and computed 

 heat-production of a number of men studied at the Nutrition Labora- 



