228 Biochemical News, Notes, and Comment 



This observ. must dispose of the commonly accepted belief concern- 

 ing the origin of bile pigm. ; namely, that they can be formed only 

 by the breaking down of red blood cells. Can one assume, that a 

 carbohy. diet will cause the dissolution of a small army of red bl.- 

 cells, to explain the fact that the output of bile pigm. may be almost 

 doubled in a sharp transition from a meat diet to a diet rieh in 

 carbohy.? C. W. Hooper and G. H. Whipple: Amer. Jour. of 

 PhysioL, 1916, xl, p. 349. 



CoNsciENCE OF THE EXPERT, For two Cent, thcre has been 

 growing up in the exper. lab. an ideal of exactness and a reverence 

 for tested fact. . . . The standing of a univ. as a research inst'n is 

 determined by its lab's. The buildings of a modern med. seh. con- 

 sist almost entirely of lab's. Nowadays the first thing wise men do 

 when they are face-to-face with a grave problem, relating, say, to 

 food values, or Ventilation, or juvenile delinquency, or whether ani- 

 mals reason, or the harmfulness of adulterants, is to equip a research 

 lab. for working it out. We have realized that the old-fashioned 

 reflection and discussion are but a poor method of finding truth. 

 The spirit of the lab. is a sense of the all-importance of fact, a 

 nervousness as to error, a willingness to take infinite pains in 

 measuring and verifying. Formerly only chemists and engineers 

 went out into their life-work with this spirit. But of late, lab's have 

 so multiplied in the univ's, in the research bureaus of gov't, and in 

 the big indust. concerns, that you will find this spirit in many groups 

 of social servants, such as physicians, psychiatrists, criminologists, 

 statisticians, sanitarians, charity agents, social workers, factory in- 

 spectors and probation officers. The lawyers and the preachers have 

 scarcely caught it, but in the school of journalism, with " Accuracy 

 Always " a wall motto and a daily prayer, the students are getting 

 it. Whether the conditions of newspaper employment will permit 

 them to act upon it remains to be seen. . . . E. A. Ross: School and 

 Society, 1916, iii, p. 522. 



New INSTITUTES. Indiis. Research Inst. The Univ. of Wash. 

 has established a Bur. of Indus. Research similar to the Mellon Inst, 

 of the Univ. of Pittsb. The plans for the Bur., which were de- 

 veloped by members of the fac. and business men of the northwest, 

 met with the approval of the board of regents of the univ. at its 



