PARENTAL ALCOHOLISM AND THE PROGENY 281 



logical and genetic factors and phenomena than has ever been 

 incUided, or even approached, in any previous study regarding 

 the effects of parental alcoholism upon the progeny. They have 

 the further advantage of being characters which are measurable 

 (either statistically or otherwise) and on that account greatly 

 reduce, if they do not entirely eliminate the possibility of per- 

 sonal bias or prejudice influencing the results. For example, to 

 take but a single instance, the weighings for growth records 

 were made by my assistant Dr. Maynie R. Curtis, in the case 

 of all progeny of alcoholic parents, and for all ages except hatch- 

 ing where the writer himself did the weighing. The weights 

 made in the field by Dr. Curtis were posted into the permanent 

 record books by another assistant. Miss Hazel F. Mariner, and 

 were reduced to the form of frequency distributions some six 

 months later by the staff computer of the laboratory, Mr. John 

 Rice Miner. Not until after all the constants for these alcohol 

 distributions had been completely worked out were the control 

 data from the untreated matings of 1913, where all the weigh- 

 ings were made by the writer, put into the fonn of frequency 

 distributions. No one of these workers could possibly have 

 known, at any stage in this process before the final one, what 

 the net result in respect to growth was going to be. Similar 

 considerations obtain in regard to the other characters. 



The mutual accordance of the results from characters involv- 

 ing such a manifold range of physiological factors is striking. 

 This fact in considerable degree offsets the fact that as yet our 

 series of experimental animals is statistically small, leading to 

 such large probable errors that the individual differences are 

 not in every case significant in comparison with their probable 

 errors. The experiments are of course being continued and 

 expanded, and concurrently the probable errors of differences 

 are being reduced. If results in the same sense as the present 

 ones continue to appear (as seems to be the case) they are bound 

 presently to become very convincing to such persons as are not 

 prevented by prejudice from accepting or appreciating scientific 

 evidence on the problem of the effect of parental alcoholism upon 

 the progeny. 



