NOVEMBEE 30, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



699 



sented herewith, to show that such variation 

 occurs, whether the offspring be of uni- 

 parental or bi-parental ancestry, and to show 

 that this variation is no greater in amphi- 

 mixis than among parthenogenetically pro- 

 duced individuals. Yet Weismann's plausible 

 assumption will probably long continue to 

 hold its unproved own. 



Vernon L. Kellogg. 

 Staneobd Univebsity, Calif. 



a statistical study of american men of 



science. ii. 



the measurement of scientific merit. 



Many of the problems that the writer had 

 in view in the present research might be 

 solved by the study of any group of a thou- 

 sand American men of science, so long as 

 they had been objectively selected. The ob- 

 jective selection of a group sufficiently large 

 for statistical treatment is, however, essential. 

 As cases can be quoted to illustrate the cure 

 of nearly every disease by almost any medi- 

 cine, so examples can be given in support of 

 any psychological or sociological theory. The 

 method of anecdote, as used by Lombroso, 

 may be readable literature, but it is not sci- 

 ence. A thousand names might have been 

 selected by lot from all the scientific men of 

 the country, assuming a list to have been 

 available, but a group of the thousand leading 

 men of science arranged in the order of merit 

 has certain advantages. Information in re- 

 gard to them can be better obtained than in 



the case of those who are more obscure. Cor- 

 relations can be determined between degrees 

 of scientific merit and various conditions. 

 The comparison with a similar group selected 

 ten or twenty years hence, or with a similar 

 group of British, French or German men of 

 science, would give interesting results. The 

 list itself, if printed after an interval of 

 twenty years, would be a historical document 

 of value. Lastly, the data can be so used as 

 to carry quantitative methods a little way 

 into a region that has hitherto been outside 

 the range of exact science. It is the last 

 problem that I wish to take up in this paper. 

 It will be remembered that we have in each 

 science the workers in that science arranged 

 in the supposed order of merit by ten com- 

 petent judges, who made their arrangements 

 independently. If the ten arrangements 

 agreed exactly, we should have complete con- 

 fidence in the result, except in so far as it 

 was affected by systematic or constant errors. 

 If there were no agreement at all, the futility 

 of any attempt to estimate scientific merit 

 would be made clear. The conditions are 

 naturally intermediate. There is a certain 

 amount of agreement and a certain amount 

 of difference of opinion. Thus taking, for 

 example, the ten astronomers — I., II., III., 

 etc. — whose average positions were the highest, 

 the order given to them by each of the ten 

 observers. A, B, G, etc., is as shown in the 

 table : 



table I. THE ORDER ASSIGNED TO TEN ASTRONOMERS BY TEN OBSERVERS. 



