  This brief communication analyzes the statistics and methods Lotka used to
derive his inverse square law of scientific productivity from the standpoint of
modern theory. It finds that he violated the norms of this theory by extremely
truncating his data on the right. It also proves that Lotka himself played an
important role in establishing the commonly used method of identifying
power-law behavior by the R^2 fit to a regression line on a log-log plot that
modern theory considers unreliable by basing the derivation of his law on this
very method.
