Yule used a regression model to conclude that outrelief causes pauperism

(section 1.4). He presented his paper at a meeting of the Royal Statistical Society on 21 March 1899. Sir Robert Giffen, Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, was in the chair. There was a lively discussion, summarized in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (Vol. LXII, Part II, pp. 287–95).

(a) According to Professor FY Edgeworth, if one diverged much from the law of normal errors, “one was on an ocean without rudder or compass”; this normal law of error “was perhaps more universal than the law of gravity.” Do you agree? Discuss briefly..

(b) According to Sir Robert, practical men who were concerned with poor-law administration knew that “if the strings were drawn tightly in the matter of out-door relief, they could immediately observe a reduction of pauperism itself.” Yule replied, “he was aware that the paper in general only bore out conclusions which had been reached before ... but he did not think that lessened the interest of getting an independent test of the theories of practical men, purely from statistics. It was an absolutely unbiassed test, and it was always an advantage in a method that it was unbiassed.”
What do you think of this reply? Is Yule’s test “purely from statistics”? Is it Yule’s methods that are “unbiassed,” or his estimates of the parameters given his model? Discuss briefly