EXPERIMEN-TS WITH LIVING HUMAN BEINGS. 751 

 EXPEKIME]S"TS WITH LIVING HUMAN BEINGS. 



By GEORGE M. BEARD, M. D. 



II. 



IN experimenting with living human beings, deception, whether vol- 

 untary or involuntary, can only be scientifically met by deception ; it 

 must be beaten with its own weapons. No experiment of this kind in 

 which the results depend in any way on the honesty of the subjects ex- 

 perimented on can be of any value in science ; and those who assume 

 that, because the subjects of these experiments are members of great 

 churches, and move in high society, they are therefore incapable of un- 

 truth, would do well to resign the task of investigations of this sort to 

 those who are better endowed with the scientific sense. Systematic^ 

 orderly, exhaustive deception, on the part of the experimenter, as here 

 suggested, will, in all cases, exclude both intended and unintended de- 

 ception on the part of the subject or bystanders. 



Sixth Soukce of Erkob : Chance and coincidences. — The subject 

 of chance and coincidences seems never to have received the attention 

 from men of science that its direct and practical bearings on experiment- 

 al research and the principles of evidence would long ago have demand- 

 ed. On the mathematical side the philosophy of chance has been inves- 

 tigated and discussed by various writers, and with not a little intelligence 

 and skill ; but with the effect also of misleading many amateur experi- 

 menters and reasoners, who have thereby been tempted to employ mathe- 

 matical estimates in departments of science Avhere they are sure to guide 

 into error. No forms of error are so erroneous as those that have the 

 appearance without the reality of mathematical precision. Of this sort 

 are the blunders of those physiologists who, at various times and under 

 various guises, have sought to solve physiological problems by experi- 

 ments half built up on rigid mathematical calculations, the other half 

 having no foundation at all ; for the average non-expert observer is awed 

 and overpowered by the very sight of figures, and assumes that an 

 investigation into which addition, subtraction, and multiplication enter, 

 must inevitably lead to precise and unerring results, forgetting that, as 

 quantitative truth is of all forms of truth the most absolute and satis- 

 fying, so quantitative error is of all forms of error the most complete 

 and illusory. Figures, to be of arty value in science, must go all around 

 the subject and thoroughly embrace it, else they fail to master i+, and 

 become its possessor : for, while the truth is apparently shut xw on one 

 side, it is all the time stealthily escaping at the other. Thus it is that 

 the most acute calculators, most logical reasoners, and most accurate 

 observers as well, are so often cheated out of the truths to the search 

 for which their lives are devoted; the instincts of the plow-boy often 

 outstripping the wisdom of the philosopher. 



