ABSTRACT
Serving as a discussant for this exciting group of chapters fills me with a poignant sense of loss, as it makes me aware of just how provincial most American behavioral scientists are. Although I am a devout Francophile, one who can struggle through a paper written in French with a minimum of assistance, I simply don’t have access to the work of authors of the chapters in this section, unless, of course, they publish in American journals, as several of these authors have, or unless one is fortunate enough to be on a reprint exchange list, as I used to be with Therese Gouin-Décarie and Irene Lézine—two scientists whose work is quoted in this series. But most of the studies discussed by the authors were new to me, and I should have known about the work. Thus, it is clear that a major lesson to be learned from all the papers in this book is that it is time for American investigators to end their scientific isolationism, acting as though all the relevant literature that needs to be referenced in any research area is to be found in American journals written in the language we have convinced ourselves was used when the command came down to “Let there be light.”
