J. A. Rea's note in IJAL 24.145–50 (1958), Concerning the Validity of Lexicostatistics, is a telling example of partisanship on problems which are still open but on which attitudes tend too often to be taken either wholly favorable or wholly unfavorable.

Using the higher of two retention rates (85.4% against 80.5%), and therefore the one operating more slowly toward change, Rea tests eight Romance languages with 100 words, and finds the time depths of separation absurdly low and recent, as matched against knowledge of the actual history of the languages: less than one-half as great. He therefore denies that lexicostatistics has 'any usefulness or validity even for the languages upon which it is based'.