COLOUR VISION AND COLOUR-VISION 

 THEORIES, INCLUDING THE THEORY 

 OF VISION 



By F. W. EDRIDGE-GREEN, M.D., F.R.C.S. 



At the present time the whole subject of colour vision is in a 

 state of chaos. Misstatement and erroneous deduction are 

 found instead of actual fact, and in many books the reader 

 cannot obtain even the most elementary idea of the true facts. 

 This state of affairs is due to the very defective state of scien- 

 tific method of the present time. The official scientific methods 

 favour incompetence and ignorance, and are opposed to the 

 progress of science. It is necessary for me to support such a 

 sweeping statement, and I do so in the hope that it may lead 

 to an alteration in the present state of affairs. The official 

 methods of dealing with scientific papers and facts are the 

 referee system, and the appointment of scientific committees. 

 In the referee system, a scientific paper intended for publica- 

 tion is sent to a referee, who decides on its merit. If rejected, 

 neither the communicator nor the author of the paper is told 

 the reason of its rejection. A late secretary of the Royal 

 Society told me that he could ensure the acceptance or rejection 

 of any paper simply by the selection of the man to whom he 

 sent it. It is extremely difficult to select an efficient referee. 

 It is not of much use to send the paper to a man who knows 

 nothing about the subject, whereas if sent to a worker on the 

 same subject, the paper may entirely upset that worker's views, 

 and he may for that reason alone reject it. The present state 

 of things may be entirely remedied if a report giving the reason 

 of the rejection were sent at least to the communicator of the 

 paper. It would not be necessary that the referee's name 

 should be mentioned, but the author of the paper could then 

 have an opportunity of replying, and if the objection were one 

 of fact, the question of the correctness of the observation could 

 be submitted for demonstration and discussion to the special 

 scientific society under whose province it came, as, for instance, 



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