ID# 2133:
Raymond Pearl letter to Karl Pearson, discussion of conflict between biometrical and experimental approaches to study heredity (3/12/1910)
Date:
1910
Pages: (1|2|3)
Source:
University College London, KP, 782

Raymond Pearl letter to Karl Pearson, discussion of conflict between biometrical and experimental approaches to study heredity (3/12/1910)

[stamped]University College London Pearson Papers[end stamp] Maine Agricultural Experiment Station Orono, Maine Chas. D. Woods, Director Department of Biology Raymond Pearl, Biologist F. M. Surface, Associate Biologist Maynie R. Curtis, Assistant. Lottie McPheters, Computer Walter Anderson, Poultryman Prof. Karl Pearson, University College, London, W. C., England. My dear Pearson: - Your letter of February 28 has been received. I should like to reply briefly to certain of the points which you make. In the first place, you imply, though you do not say, that you consider some of my recent work as "superficial and careless". I can only say in regard to this that I should regret exceedingly to think that I had ever published any work so extremely superficial and careless as some of the work from your biometric laboratory is from the biological standpoint. Your contention that your work in inheritance relating to the law of ancestral inheritance has no theoretical implications, I do not propose to touch upon at this time, but expect to deal with it in a paper to be published shortly. You say that if I do not "believe" in the law of ancestral inheritance there are three alternatives, [crossed out 'either'] viz (one) that I do not believe in the data on which it is based. In regard to this point, I would merely say that I think that some of the statements which you have collected and on which you have based your statements in regard to the law of ancestral inheritance, exceedingly ill adapted to the discussion of any problem of inheritance. The second alternative is that I do not believe in the method involving "purely statistical theory by which it is reached." In regard to this point I may say frankly that I do [underscore]not[end underscore] believe in [end]

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