utility and whether findings can be implemented,

In the academic world, I do not subscribe to the idea that a disserta-
tion is any document that three people will sign, done only as a practice
exercise to meet formalistic reguirements. The typical input should not be
reguired and the potential larger output should not be denied on the basis
of considerations so lightly taken. Originality and significance, however,
are matters of degree. This does not have to mean that the possibility of
such a finding was never contemplated by humankind and that the implications
call for a reappraisal of human direction on this planet.  Lesser degrees of
originality and significance consistent with research done up to that point
on that guestion might be guite acceptable. Conclusiveness is also relative
in the kinds of research with which we are most concerned. Otherwise, en-
thusiasm for the whole development of inference and probability applied to
research is hard to explain.

In most research, conclusions are findings up to that point for the
population examined, given the way the guestion was put and the methods used.
Tightly constructed experiments with small populations are likely to be
more conclusive in one sense than studies of larger populations (even with
careful attention to sampling) but where the variables are less well identi-
fied and less controllable. Difficulties in generalizing, however, might
arise in both instances for different reasons,

Additionally, it has been observed that as fields such as those with
which we are most concerned approach any maturity, they abandon search and
claims related to universality, instead seeking generalization in the form
of explaining and predicting patterns and variations. This may be just one
more instance, even in the area of research, where events are ahead of the
more widely publicized and available materials intended to explain and predict
them.

—lje