Modes of research in genetics / by Raymond Pearl.

  • Raymond Pearl
Date:
1915
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Modes of research in genetics / by Raymond Pearl. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    59/204 page 47
    BIOMETRIC IDEAS AND METHODS 47 is gradually coming to be clearly recognized by general biologists that biometrie methods when properly used add an important weapon of re¬ search to the investigator's armament. It is the purpose of this paper to attempt in a very modest way to help along, if possible, this better under¬ standing of and greater sympathy towards bio- metric work. II The underlying and essential point of view of biometry has been quite generally misunderstood by biologists. In the first place biometry is often strongly and quite unjustly criticized because it has developed primarily as a statistical science. It is supposed that this method of inquiry cannot prop¬ erly or profitably have anything to do with any problems not immediately reducible to frequency polygons and correlation tables. The charge is made that biometrical methods can deal only with mass phenomena, and that they intentionally disre¬ gard the detailed study of the individual, and therefore lead directly to experimental indeter- minism as a mode of biological thought. Such a charge is based on an entire misconception of the biometrical standpoint. This attitude, how¬ ever, has done a great deal of harm in hindering the wider use of these methods by biologists. Nothing has been more strongly emphasized by the trend of recent biological discovery than the
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image