Showing papers on "Biometrics published in 1972"

The program of the Biometrics Research Unit.

Abstract: I have often been asked what Biometrics Research is and what we do. Although I am sometimes tempted to respond that biometrics is what biometricians do, I feel that there is some justice in the query. I will therefore try to answer it as well as I can. In order to understand how biometrics research entered the field of psychopathology, we have to begin by taking a look at the status of the field during the middle third of this century. It was what you might call \"the time of the great invasion,\" when social scientists and biological scientists were \" invading\" psychopathology and establishing their territorial rights. From the social sciences there came those field theories in which ecological forces began to be examined--for example, in the studies by Faris and Dunham. From the biological field came the geneticists, the biochemists and the neurophysiologists, with their more atomistic approaches--for example, twin studies and studies of metabolic processes. Already well-established in the field were the phenomenological approaches of Jaspers; the psychodynamic approaches of Freud and his followers; the clinical approaches of Kraepelin; and, to a lesser degree, the laboratory approaches of the experimental psychologists, and the diagnostic testing approaches of the clinical psychologists. The appearance of all of these diverse disciplines in the same arena suggested that some form of rapprochement was necessary between these different viewpoints. Among the first to make such an attempt was Madison Bentley who, with F. V. Cowdry, undertook a study under the aegis of the National Research Council, which was published in 1934. Unfortunately, their efforts were dismissed at that time by some clini-