My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

VACCINATION 331a member of it, but declined, as I could not give upthe necessary time, but chiefly because I thought Icould do more good as a witness. I accordingly prepareda number of large diagrams, and stated the argumentsdrawn from them, and in the year 1890 gave myevidence during part of three days. As about halfthe Commissioners were doctors, most of the othersgave way to them. I told them, at the beginning ofmy evidence, that I knew nothing of medicine, butthat, following the principle laid down by Sir JohnSimon and Dr. Guy, that "the evidence for thebenefits of vaccination must now be statistical," I wasprepared to show the bearing of the best statisticsonly. Yet they insisted on putting medical argumentsand alleged medical facts to me, asking mehow I explained this, how I accounted for that ; andthough I stated again and again that there wereplenty of medical witnesses who would deal withthose points, they continually recurred to them ;andwhen I said I had no answer to give, not havinginquired into those alleged facts, they seemed to thinkthey had got the best of it. Yet they were so ignorantof statistics and statistical methods that one greatdoctor held out a diagram, showing the same facts asone of mine, and asked me almost triumphantly howit was that mine was so different. After comparingthe two diagrams for a few moments I replied thatthey were drawn on different scales, but that withthat exception I could see no substantial differencebetween them. The other diagram was on a greatlyexaggerated vertical scale, so that the line showingeach year's death-rate went up and down withtremendous peaks and chasms, while mine approximatedmore to a very irregular curve. But myquestioner could not see this simple point ;and later