In the wikipedia article about infanticide,

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide

 

there is a paragraph that says:

 

"However, Milner's treatise includes at the same time cultural hypotheses for the practice, and his approach to the subject has been criticized as both scholarly and an idealized view of infanticide.^[143]"

 

What the heck does it mean that a scientific work is "scholarly?"

Given the context, it looks like the author was trying to suggest that this work is academic in nature and does not readily apply to the real world.

agree with iNow. Scholarly can sometimes be used as a pejorative in academic circles if the author is missing the wood for the trees. In pure science - which this most certainly is not - one can abstract a tiny segment of a process, control for the extraneous factors, and thus investigate the microscale. In the humanities - and a historical cultural survey of this would fall into that broad category - sometimes this approach can work and other times it is a complete waste of time and effort. ie you read this sort of criticism "It's a little overly scholarly and seems to forget the human context within which blah blah..."

 

That said I have read Cesar Tort's review in the Journal of Psychohistory and it is pretty crumby - he seems to be angry that Milner has attempted a disinterested and dispassionate survey of such an emotive topic; personally, I prefer surveys to be as rigorous as possible - comment and views can be personal if necessary, but not statistical and descriptive reviews.