664 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. LV, No. 1434 



sugar, tea or coffee and the hard palates served 

 in the form of meat loaf. Butter was used in 

 the preparation of the meat loaf and it was 

 also served as a spread for the potatoes and 

 crackers. From the results of the digestion 

 experiments with the hard palate it was found 

 that the total fat of the diet was 94.6 per cent, 

 digested. Since the greater portion of the fat 

 consumed was butter this figure is virtually 

 that for the butter included in a protein rich 

 diet — an average of 131 gi-ams of protein 

 was ingested daily by men employed at seden- 

 tary occupations. This should be suifieient 

 indication that butter is very completely ab- 

 sorbed when eaten in conjunction with a high 

 protein diet of this character. 



SUMMARY 



Fi'om the foregoing results of numerous 

 digestion experiments it is evident that dairy 

 butter is very completely utilized by the human 

 body. In those diets in which the accessory 

 foods were very nearly if not entirely absorbed 

 by the human body, butter was found to be 

 practically completed digested. When coarser 

 materials, particularly those which provided 

 considerable refuse, were included in the diet 

 it was found that butter was somewhat less 

 completely absorbed by the body. The general 

 conclusion to be drawn from the results of the 

 digestion experiments cited above is that butter 

 eaten in conjunction with ordinary food mate- 

 rials is very completely digested and that for 

 the diets studied, the nature of the diet does 

 not produce a marked difference in the amount 

 of butter absorbed by the human body. 



Arthue D. Holmes 



KeSEARCH XiAEORATORIES, 



The E. L. Patch Co., 

 Boston, Mass. 



ARE SCIENTISTS ENCOURAGING 

 POPULAR IGNORANCE? 



I heartily agree with the view of Mr. 

 Halsey that readers of Science should become 

 familiar with the anti-metric case as presented 

 in the recent report of the National Industrial 

 Conference Board, The Centui-y Company, 

 $2.00. This report gives the pro-metric argu- 

 ment as well as the anti-metric argument and 



is, therefore, signed by the metric members of 

 the committee, but not as Mr. Halsey states, 

 "because they could not do otherwise." Scien- 

 tists do not need to be told the pro-metric 

 argument, but they should know the character 

 of the arguments advanced by the so-called 

 American Institute of Weights and Measures 

 against the metric system, Mr. Halsey being 

 their paid commissioner. Beyond quoting 

 them at length no comment of mine is neces- 

 sary. 



For years .... the minds of children have 

 been trained to believe in it (the metric system) 

 as the only scientific system certain to become 

 universal. Children leave school imbued with the 

 metric fallacy. . . . Editors of newspapers know- 

 ing practically nothing about the subject have 

 aped the schools and colleges, taught the fallacy 

 and increased the ignorance. In the encourage- 

 ment of the popular ignorance lies the chief 

 danger to our established standards, p. 193. 



Advocates of the English system deny most 

 emphatieallj' that there is any demand worth 

 serious consideration in favor of a change to the 

 metric system in the United States. The deduc- 

 tions drawn from lists of names presented by the 

 metric advocates . . . are wholly fallacious and 

 misleading. ... If this is the best the pro-metrics 

 can show, only 60,000 to 80,000 people in the 

 United States out of a population of one hundred 

 millions — less than one tenth of one per cent, of 

 the whole — favor a change. Such a demand . . . 

 could be accounted for by the scientific group in 

 this country, which comprises about this propor- 

 tion of the population and is known to advocate 

 the metric system. . . . The propaganda in favor 

 of the metric system has emanated from one or 

 two propaganda organizations working for the 

 purpose, which have spread broadcast throughout 

 the United States literature of an essentially 

 misleading character. . . . The prominent indi- 

 viduals most frequently quoted as favoring the 

 metric cause are not industrialists and business 

 men, but such professional men as teachers, doc- 

 tors, inventors and others who are interested 

 chiefly in the scientific aspects of the question and 

 have nothing of material value at stake or have 

 espoused the cause as fallaciously represented by 

 metric propagandists without having given due 

 consideration to the practical side of the issue, 

 p. 192. 



We note that the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science, the American 



