498 



THE AMERICAN NATURALIST 



* [Vol. XL VI 



woven. If mathematical elaboration is to serve any useful 

 purpose in showing how evolutionary progress is made the nature 

 of the machine, the specific organization or speciety of the 

 organic world, must be recognized. 



0. F. Cook 



Washington, D. C, 

 March 15, 1912 



ON FAIRNESS AND ACCURACY IN SCIENTIFIC 

 REVIEWING 



To the Editor of the American Naturalist : Any one who 

 takes a turn at the critical hoe with the object of ridding the 

 biological field of some of the noxious products of fertile imagina- 

 tions untrammeled by quantitative facts must expect just the 

 sort of attack which appears in your recent issue (Amer. Nat., 

 March, 1912, p. 165). 



1. Dr. Spillman has not felt the purpose, methods or results 

 of my paper worth statement. Instead he illustrates by it the 

 "noticeable degree of correlation between positiveness of state- 

 ment and inaccuracy of statement." And for the reason: "in 

 Dr. Harris's paper he represents me as having cited the fact 

 [sic] that these genotype norms [sic] form a frequency curve 

 [sic] as proof of the genotype hypothesis [sic]." 



One excuses the minor inaccuracies and would be glad to pass 

 over the whole assertion with the simple comment that it seems 

 unjust, but to protect himself against further accusations of 

 "inaccuracy of statement" he must add, it is not true. 



What I did do was to cite Dr. Spillman among three others in 

 substantiation of the opening sentence, "Several times recently 

 we have been told that the means of a character in a series of 

 pure lines form a 'Quetelet's curve.' " I based this on his state- 

 ment concerning pure lines, "They not only do not differ in all 

 their characters as the (Enothera mutants do, but their norms 

 present a regular series coming under 'Quetelet's Law' " (Amer. 

 Nat., Vol. 44, p. 760) . Surely no injustice has been done so far. 

 Later in the paper I did make a statement (which still holds 

 true) remotely similar to the one quoted above, and said specific- 

 ally "A case in point is a paper by Roemer." There was no 

 reference whatever to Dr. Spillman— expressed, suggested, in- 

 sinuated, intimated, implied, ... or intended. 



2. Although it is clearly without any justification, the fore- 

 going criticism would, it seems to me, have gained in strength by 

 specificity and moderation of statement. But Dr. Spillman con- 



