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records arise normally out of studies of specific human traits, and are likely to be more critical when gathered for a specific purpose than when merely accruing as general records but as everyone who accumulates records on succeeding generations of animals and plants knows, systematically preserved pedigrees often themselves serve valuable ends, and are worth the effort of keeping even though they do not themselves solve problems. A record office might thus be an adjunct of a person or group actively engaged in the study of human heredity.
In this connection I think it is open to question whether it is wise to continue such a record office under the patronage of a research institution as a "Eugenics Record Office". "Eugenics" has come to mean an effort to foster a program of social improvement rather than an effort to discover facts. Those familiar with the field recognize that both purposes are pursued, but the public does not make this distinction, and it may appear from the dominance of the first motive in the popular mind that the facts have been discovered and the program sufficiently settled to have received the sanction of a great scholarly institution. I think the purposes of the institution to discover and disseminate knowledge would be served better by acknowledging in the title and aims of such an office the subservience of the program to the discovery of the facts. If this were done it would become an auxiliary of a laboratory of human heredity.