Authentic Assessments and the True Multiple-Measures Approach

By Michael H. Kean

The best sleuths and scientists know the value of multiple measures. They insist on them to solve mysteries, garner information, and give meaning to raw data.

"When you follow two separate chains of thought, Watson, you will find some point of intersection which should approximate the truth,'' Sherlock Holmes said to his biographer in The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax.

And, when Marie Curie, Holmes's Continental contemporary, discovered that an unknown element in uranium ore was radioactive, she used multiple measures to determine the source of the radioactivity. After processing huge amounts of ore, Madame Curie obtained the first known pure sample of radium, and then she measured its chemical properties to prove that it was in...