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In pursuit of a science of agriculture: the role of statistics in field experiments

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Abstract

Since the beginning of the twentieth century statistics has reshaped the experimental cultures of agricultural research taking part in the subtle dialectic between the epistemic and the material that is proper to experimental systems. This transformation has become especially relevant in field trials and the paper will examine the British agricultural institution, Rothamsted Experimental Station, where statistical methods nowadays popular in the planning and analysis of field experiments were developed in the 1920s. At Rothamsted statistics promoted randomisation over systematic arrangements, factorisation over one-question trials, and emphasised the importance of the experimental error in assessing field trials. These changes in methodology transformed also the material culture of agricultural science, and a new body, the Field Plots Committee, was created to manage the field research of the agricultural institution. Although successful, the vision of field experimentation proposed by the Rothamsted statisticians was not unproblematic. Experimental scientists closely linked to the farming community questioned it in favour of a field research that could be more easily understood by farmers. The clash between the two agendas reveals how the role attributed to statistics in field experimentation defined different pursuits of agricultural research, alternately conceived of as a scientists’ science or as a farmers’ science.

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Notes

  1. An assessment of statistics as a tool capable of transforming agricultural research into an exact science is already found in Beckett (1929, p. 268).

  2. The definition of experimental cultures suggested here follows Rheinberger (2004).

  3. These references to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland can be found in the paper on the principles and practices of yield trials (in relation to variety trials), written by the agronomist Frank Leonard Engledow and the statistician George Udny Yule (Engledow and Yule 1926; quotations p. 112 and p. 146). Yule was employed as a consultant by the Cambridge School of Agriculture.

  4. The creation of the Development Commission (in 1909) and the establishment of the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) twenty years later, promoted the interest of scientifically trained people, like A. D. Hall, for British agricultural science (Brassley 1995). A. D. Hall acted as member of the Development Commission and later of the ARC and was an advisor to the Ministry of Agriculture.

  5. When experimental errors are distributed according to the normal curve (Gaussian), a range within one probable error on either side of the mean will include fifty per cent of the data. The probable error is 0.6745 times the standard deviation, mentioned later in the paper.

  6. See F. Yates’ certificate of election to the Royal Society (Ref. EC/1948/25). Yates’ election was proposed by R. A. Fisher and seconded by the botanist E. J. Maskell, a plant physiologist who had collaborated at RES with Fisher in the development of analysis of variance and experimental design. On Yates’ contributions to complex designs for agricultural experiments and tools for statistical analysis, see Finney (1995, pp. 559–560).

  7. Since the 1920s British agricultural science was an enterprise with ambitions for both the homeland and the colonies of the Empire. In 1927 an Imperial Research Conference was held for agricultural scientists. One immediate outcome of the conference was the publication of the Empire Journal of Experimental Agriculture. More information on the imperial ambitions of British agricultural research is provided in Charnley (2013).

  8. A more comprehensive overview of the philosophical contributions useful for understanding agricultural experimentation is provided in the introduction to this special issue.

  9. As mentioned below, confounding refers to the decision, in relevant cases, to sacrifice information on minor interactions by confounding them with soil heterogeneity.

  10. During the 1930s models of the half-drill strip method for testing cereals were presented for public interest by the NIAB at Royal Shows (Mercer 1931, p. 143; Watson 1932, pp. 157–158).

  11. The presentation of the experimental results became more difficult with the complex experiments (e.g. the factorial experiments) where combinations of several treatments were examined, but even in that case the RES reports gave some ‘rough rules’ to guide the readers (RES 1934, pp. 98–99).

  12. The correspondence related to this controversy is held in the archives of Rothamsted Research, E. J. Russell Papers, Ref. RUS 2.9. Information on the decisions of the Field Plots Committee is to be found in the minutes of 6th July 1933 and 24th January 1934 (both under the Ref. FX 1.1.2).

  13. Letter from D. J. Watson to B. A. Keen, 28th July 1933.

  14. Letter from H. G. Miller to B. A. Keen, 2nd August 1933.

  15. Letter from B. A. Keen to H. G. Miller, 3rd August 1933.

  16. Letter from B. A. Keen to H. G. Miller, 3rd August 1933; minutes 24th January 1934.

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Acknowledgments

A preliminary draft of this paper was presented at a panel on experiments in twentieth-century agricultural science at the annual conference of the British Society for the History of Science (2014). I would like to thank the audience at this event for the comments received. Helpful suggestions from two anonymous referees and from Staffan Müller-Wille improved further the manuscript. I am grateful to the Lawes Agricultural Trust for the permission to quote from materials held in the archives of Rothamsted Research.

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  1. Technische Universität Berlin and Berliner Zentrum für Wissensgeschichte, Berlin, Germany

    Giuditta Parolini

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Parolini, G. In pursuit of a science of agriculture: the role of statistics in field experiments. HPLS 37, 261–281 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-015-0075-9

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