Inevitably, commentators compared Thorndyke with Holmes. Binyon says that Thorndyke stands out from the other late Victorian and early Edwardian detectives in being a rival to Sherlock Holmes, rather than just owing their existence to him success. "Thorndyke is the most impressive and the most intellectually powerful of fictional detectives." Poupard notes that "In critical comparisons with Holmes, Dr. Thorndyke is deemed the more accurate thinker and ranked superior as a scientific authority, whereas Holmes is considered the superior literary creation." One immediate clue to the difference between Thorndyke and Holmes, is that Holmes calls his inductive reasoning deduction, a mistake that Thorndyke would never make. Binyon notes that Holmes often makes factual errors, referring to the blue carbuncle as crystallised charcoal, when it contains no carbon, and referring to non-existent species or martial arts.