542 



SCIENCE 



rVoL. LVI, No. 1454 



sion wifchout eonsultation and stood eleven to 

 one for conviction, many would conclude tliat 

 the chances are eleven to one that the defendant 

 is guilty. As a matter of fact if the total pop- 

 ulation is divided in the same ratio and the 

 legal fiction is followed that a man is proved 

 guilty or innocent only by unanimous vote of 

 twelve peers, the chance of obtaining a j'oiy 

 which without consultation will ibe unanimous 

 for conviction are about one in three, of ob- 

 taining a jury unanimous for acquittal, only 

 one in manj' billions. The practise of the 

 courts must ultimately adjust itself to such con- 

 ditions, and learn whether the unanimous vote 

 of three or five jurymen without consultation 

 is more or less valid than the unanimous vote 

 of twelve after consultation. It must be de- 

 cided on what probabilities a man shall be con- 

 victed and to what extent the chances of inno- 

 cence shall be considered in imposing sentence. 



"When our rulers are selected and their legis- 

 lation is determined by votes, it seems strange 

 that knowledge concerning the variable and 

 constant errors is so completelj- lacking. A 

 decision of the supreme court, which may 

 involve the welfare of hundreds of thousands 

 of children or taxation amounting to billions of 

 dollars, is equally binding whether the vote is 

 unanimous or by a majority of one. It would 

 apparently be as reasonable to require a three 

 fourths vote of the supreme court to invalidate 

 a law passed by both houses of the congress 

 and signed by the president, as to require a 

 unanimoiis vote of a jury to award petty dam- 

 ages. 



The method of voting used to select scientific 

 men might have useful applications in indus- 

 try. For example, if a bank employs 100 

 clerks, some of whom will be promoted from 

 time io time, ali of them might be asked to 

 cheek the fifty per cent, and the five per cent, 

 most deserving of promotion. From the rec- 

 ords an order of merit for promotion would be 

 obtained, together with the relative value of 

 the men to the bank and the salaries deserved. 

 The data would also throw light on those 

 voting, for the value of the judgment of each 

 is measured by its departure from the average; 

 if any were prejudiced or unfair in their treat- 

 ment of friends or rivals this would be dis- 



covered. The combined judgment of associates 

 is probably a more valid method of selection 

 than the choice of a superior and would pre- 

 sumably lead to better service. 



In like manner a group of factory workers 

 or of laboring men might select a boss or 

 leader by vote. If the employer would agree 

 to take one of the five men receiving the most 

 votes, the employees would understand and 

 probably approve the method. Not only would 

 a good selection free from favoritism be made, 

 but the men would share in the control of their 

 work and would be more loyal and more effi- 

 cient. 



The writer has proposed a compromise be- 

 tween the competitive and the semi-communis- 

 tic systems for payment of the salaries of uni- 

 versity professors, according to which, say, five 

 super-professorships with relatively large 

 salaries and large freedom should be esta;b- 

 lished. The difficulty under our present 

 method is that the appointments would be by 

 favor of the administration. If, however, a 

 vote of the teachers in the university, and per- 

 haps of the students, were taken on the basis 

 of desert for research, teaching and service, a 

 method of selection would be used probably 

 more accurate than the choice of the president 

 and at the same time more conducive to co- 

 operation and goodwill. 



In the selection by votes of one thousand sci- 

 entific men the same number for each of the 

 twelve sciences was retained as in the two pre- 

 vious studies, this being nearly proportional to 

 the total number of workers in each science. 

 In the first edition of "American Men of 

 Science" there were listed about 4,000 scien- 

 tific men, in the second edition about 5,500, 

 and in the present edition, published some fif- 

 teen years after the first, the number is about 

 9,600. The present writer was in 1888 the 

 only professor of psychology in the world. The 

 number of memlbers of the American Psycho- 

 logical Association, which has a professional 

 qualification, increased from 127 in 1903, when 

 the first selection was made, to 432 in 1920. 

 The average number of doctorates conferred in 

 psychology during the five years prior to 1903 

 was 12.6; it was 40 in 1920. Competition for 

 inclusion among our fifty leading psycholo- 



