The Cordova daily times., 1922-12-08
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1922
roo MUCH SCIENTIFIC ADVICE


 It cannot have escaped the attention of close observers of public events, that there has come into the problems of the day an enor- nous amount of so-called .expert' and ssci- entific" advice. Never before have business men been so showered with such exhaustive, detailed and overpowering economic and IT. nancial statistics as now. The flood of 'sbus- mess services '-Babson, Brookmire, Moody ceives from 20 to 50 pamphlets or ex-parte nothing of the veritabe showers of circulars, reports and Niagara of speeches on the "slt- uation" and the ''outlook'-is bewildering.
 Caught laundering in this mass of status tics, maps, diagrams, price records, figures on pig iron production, car loadings, stock prlces, imports and exports as well as charts on un- employment, index numbers and declmal points and fractions 1t is almost impossible for the average business man or the average member of Congress to see any light what ever.
 Every member of the Senate and House re ceives from 20 to 50 pamphlets or exs parte statements and arguments from all sorts of bureaus. organizations or publicity agents, attempting to tell him what the economic and business situation is and what he as a responsible public servant should do Tn the premises. So-cal1ed ''experts'' and "sclen- tists'' on all sorts of subjects offer their opinions on proposed laws until Member of Congress is befogged and confused This was the case both when the tax laws and the tariff laws were framed in the last session of Congress- It accounted for much of the delay.
 October 1S, 1921, in the course of speech in the Senate en the tax revision bill Senator Moses said: 'f1he genesis of this bill before us is not difficult to trace. It's germ IS to be found in the tax law of 1918 measure fath- cred by the so-called experts, who now should take to themselves credit not only for the fathering and mothering of this child but also for its midwifing and wet-nursing. l hope shall not be understood as nveighing against the value of expert knowledge. l freely recog nizc it's proper place, especially in tic cryptic fields of financial legislation. But, sir, can not escape the conclusion so well set forth in queer little book from India entitled 'The Mental Limitations of an Expert that 'the opinion of an expert should never be taken outside his own little sphere (and even there only with caution), for his mind is so over loaded with remembered details that he is
 
 And the author still further reminds us that Babbage, the inventor of the famous calculat- ing machine, when reading in Tennyson' $ Vision of Sin the following quatrain-
 Fill the cup and fill the can;
 Have rouse before the morn;
 Every moment dies a man,
 Every moment one is born
 forthwith wrote to the poet the following ex- pert criticism: It must be manifest that were this true the population of the world would be at standstill. In truth, the rate of birth is slightly in excess of that of death. I would suggest that in the next edition of your poem you have it read:
 For every moment dies a man,
 Every moment one and a sixteenth is born
 Strictly speaking the virtuoso added this is not accurate. The actual fire is g decimal as long that can not get in sa line but believe one and one-sixteenth will be suf ficiently accurate for poery.'' s@sls f M F .Ssss