The Mystery of the Vanished Citations
James McConnell’s Forgotten 1960s Quest for Planarian Learning,
a Biochemical Engram, & Celebrity
by Mark Rilling
The Missing 1960s Decade
Memory transfer: McConnell’s Blind Alley
McConnell’s Struggle With Critics Over Invertebrate Learning
Controlling for Experimenter Bias
Controlling for Pseudoconditioning & Sensitization
McConnell’s Origin Myth for Planarian Learning
Escaping peer review as a celebrity-scientist
The Worm Runner’s Digest: Peer Review Versus the 1960s Counterculture
Attracting the Unabomber. While overselling behavior modification
The Assassination Attempt
Overpopularizing Behavior Modification
Conclusion: Some Historical Lessons for Today from the 1960s
References
McConnell went on to predict that behavior modification ould eliminate the need for mental hospitals and prisons. His article concluded with the following predictions:
Mental hospitals as such will probably disappear in the next twenty years or so …. Indeed, we should be able to discover methods of retraining criminals that will be so powerful we can guarantee that, once released, the prisoners will be most unlikely to commit a crime again.
However, history shows that behavior modification led to the disappearance of neither crime nor mental illness.
By overselling behavior modification as a panacea for crime, McConnell helped plant the seeds for the public disillusionment with psychological interventions that haunts our profession today. McConnell did not realize that his overoptimism set a trap for the next generation of applied psychologists. Today, a social critic could say that these programs were not as effective as promised.
Brown (1992) demonstrated that the promoters of early applied psychology often drew metaphors from more prestigious professions such as medicine, as when the early promoters of IQ tests
An intelligence quotient (IQ) is a total score derived from a set of standardised tests or subtests designed to assess human intelligence.
compared the IQ tests with thermometers. Because physics had high prestige from the nuclear weapons developed during World War II and because McConnell (1973) also knew that scary stories made news, he combined fear and the metaphor of the atomic bomb as a public relations tool to sell behavior modification when he wrote the following:
The techniques of behavioral control make even the hydrogen bomb look like a child’s toy.
In Psychoanalysis Must Go, McConnell frightened his readers with a vision of an ascendant behavioral revolution
so powerful and so pervasive [that] it’s doubtful that your life will ever be quite the same again.
Totalitarian, antidemocratic threats also scared the American public. In a book devoted to the cultural significance of American psychology following World War II, Herman
Herman Meïr van Praag is a Dutch psychiatrist.
(1995) noted that
No science poked more holes in democratic ideals that psychology.
McConnell knew that he could scare his readers by comparing behavioral engineers with an Orwellian vision of a totalitarian state. Therefore, he ended his editorial in Psychology Today with a vision of a behavioral engineer with a license to redesign American society along anticivil liberties principles:
Today’s behavioral psychologists are the architects and engineers of the Brave New World.
With his most provocative statement, McConnell wove prophecy, behavior modification, and antidemocratic rhetoric into a very scary, antidemocratic scenario:
I believe the day has come when we can .., gain almost absolute control over an individual’s ‘behavior’ …, and there is no reason to believe you should have the right to refuse to acquire a new personality if your old one is antisocial
McConnell lived in a period in which the popular culture was saturated with revolutionary rhetoric (Farber, 1994). In the United States during the 1960s, there was rhetoric of a sexual revolution, a Black power revolution, a revolution in the culture of popular music called rock’n’roll, and the Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975.
produced calls for a political revolution. Therefore, it is not surprising that McConnell, who was closely attuned to popular culture, would adopt revolutionary rhetoric to advance his views. As a Skinnerian behaviorist, McConnell could honestly write that
Today’s revolutionary concept is that man’s behavior can be studied, and explained, in objective terms without any necessary reference to supernatural or spiritual or mentalistic entities. ‘Mind’ … is as useless an explanatory concept to today’s scientific psychologist as the mythical element phlogiston that chemists once believed caused all fires.
McConnell caught a high-water mark of behaviorism, just before its ebb and the rise of modern cognitive psychology.
Humor in Science Communication – How Much Is Too Much?
by Tyler Berrigan
From my experience, there is always a place for humor is a classroom. Students love a good sense of humor and it often endears them to their teachers. It can also be a powerful tool in terms of learning and motivation. However, the effectiveness of humor in the classroom setting appears to be related to the type of humor that is used and how it is used.
Positive, non-aggressive humor, as in a well-timed pun, science joke, funny video, meme or spontaneous fit of silly acting can aid in learning and re-call. On the other hand, negative and aggressive humor, such as impersonations, stereotypical jokes, and snide comments regarding a student’s classroom performance or academic trajectory can have a less than desirable effect. The latter is often done to establish power boundaries, or perhaps to jolt a student into action. However, it is more likely to jolt a student into feelings of embarrassment and the subsequent disengagement.
Don’t worry. I’ve done it before. Sometimes we get carried away and things come out by accident. I distinctly remember a time when I said something to a student that resulted in a wave of snickers across my class. At first, I thought I was pretty funny too. But once I realized that it could have, in fact, upset the student in question, I spent considerable time awkwardly trying to undo the damage. Thankfully, he was a rambunctious and happy-go-lucky kid by nature. Sometimes you won’t be so lucky. And there will be tears…
In matters of policy
oliticians place a huge value on having a sense of humor, especially in countries such as the UK and Australia. If they are seen engaged in humorous dialogue, or having a whale of a time in activities perceived to be normal, they feel they can counter common perceptions of elitism and win over the hearts of the public.
And so, it’s no longer a novelty to see politicians standing around with pints of beer, having a laugh with their buddies, dressed in funny outfits, being spontaneous. I’ll never forget when the former Prime Minister of Australia thought it would be a good idea to bowl a cricket ball in front of a crowd of curious spectators and media personnel, only to bowl it off target and straight into the ground. Or President Obama’s off-target ceremonial first pitch to open the 2010 Major League Baseball season at Nationals Park—hard to forget!
Although amusing, these scenarios highlight another potential consequence of the misuse of comedy in the communication of policy to the public. Along with the dignity and good reputation of the politician in question, the robust discussions between stakeholders and the public that policy making merits, can go straight out the window with wings. The effect on policy discussions is much like that described earlier— it can dilute their importance and lead to disinterest and disengagement.
Use of Humor in Science Communication – The Take Away Message
My words of advice? Use humor in line with the material at hand and remember who you are talking to. Be careful not to trivialize an otherwise critical issue or inspiring story with excessive humor. If you do use humor, focus on things that are universally funny. Be witty, but not condescending. Do not be overly casual and especially avoid stereotypical jokes.
How much humor is too much? Like eating an overly salty dish, it’s when it ceases to be pleasurable to ingest. If you can read your audience, you’ll know when that happens.
Reference
https://jcom.sissa.it/archive/16/04/JCOM_1604_2017_A01
