Confessions of a Scientific Humorist

by James V. McConnell

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The flatworm lacks a mouth; instead; it has a pharynx
Humour or humor is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement.
 
 
 
  in the middle of its body that it extrudes when it comes in contact with food. The pharynx latches on to whatever is to be the meal and the worm sucks the juices up through it as through a drinking straw. The problem is that this one organ acts both as input and output to the intestinal tract. How does one explain in analytic terms the psychosexual development of the planarian since its oral stage is so obviously confused with its anal stage?
Parenthetically, the worm’s pharynx got me in a lot of trouble back in 1962, when I lectured on my research at a meeting in San Francisco.
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California.
 
 
 
  The San Francisco Chronicle,
The San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California.
 
 
 
  perhaps the best of the northern California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast.
 
 
 
  newspapers, was kind enough to run a front-page story on what I had to say and illustrated it with a large two-column drawing of a worm. Unfortunately, the artist rather overemphasized the pharynx in his urge for scientific accuracy, and equally unfortunately, the night editor of the paper was no biologist. He didn’t know what that odd thing protruding from the middle of the worm was, but he had rather dark suspicions of what it might have been and he was very sure it didn’t belong on the front page of a family newspaper. So the story, complete with picture of worm with extruded pharynx, appeared on the first page of the earlybird edition of the Chronicle, but got shunted aside into a less obvious position (sans drawing) in later editions. I still have a copy of that gloriously obscene first edition. To the best of my knowledge, it is the first time in history that the early worm has gotten the bird.
But it wasn’t the worm’s sex life that attracted me to it in the first place. As a graduate student; at the University of Texas, I had undertaken a project with another student, Robert Thompson, to see if the planarian could be trained. Presumably, since it is the simplest animal to possess a true brain, it should be the simplest animal capable of showing true learning (or sow the psychological theories of the day insisted.) So Thompson and I set up an experiment in which we demonstrated — at least to our own satisfaction — that the flatworm could be taught the type of lesson that Professor Pavlov
Павлов Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was a Russian and Soviet experimental neurologist and physiologist known for his discovery of classical conditioning through his experiments with dogs.
 
 
 
  called the conditioned response.
Classical conditioning is a behavioral procedure in which a biologically potent stimulus (e.g. food, a puff of air on the eye, a potential rival) is paired with a neutral stimulus.
 
 
 
  Later, when I went to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor as a struggling young instructor, the head of the Psychology Department called me into his office for a friendly little chat.


Jim, he told me, you may have heard a nasty rumour that to survive in the academic world, you must ‘publish or perish’. I just want you to know that the rumour is true. I’m sure you know what is expected of you, but I have a favour to ask. If at all possible, will you please try to do good research. But if you can’t, for God’s sake, publish a lot of bad research, for the Dean won’t know the difference anyhow.

I got the message and right away set up the first worm lab. at the University of Michigan.
I was given a tiny little basement room and enough funds to purchase a very modest amount of equipment and a few worms. Like all eager young instructors, I was wise enough to talk two very bright young students (Daniel Kimble and Allan Jacobson) into doing all the actual work for me. But I had a problem; we had demonstrated that worms could learn, so what were we to do next? For a long time I puzzled over this problem, then recalled that one day when Thompson and I were working at the University of Texas, we had a wild idea.
Planarians not only reproduce sexually, but asexually as well (one might say they have by far the best of both worlds.) When a worm is first hatched from its egg, it is fully equipped to do everything but reproduce. After a few months of fattening up, it reaches puberty and begins mating. Sexual activity continues for three to four years, after which the animal seems to go into a senile decline, becomes all lumpy and misshapen — and then a miracle often occurs. One day as the animal is crawling along the bottom of some pond, the tail develops a will of its own and grabs hold of a rock and refuses to be budged. The head struggles to get things going again, but no matter how hard the head pulls, the tail remains obstinately clinging to the rock. Not able to convince the tail to get on with it, the head does the next best thing: it pulls so hard that the whole animal comes apart at the middle. The head then wanders off, leaving the tail to manage as best it can.
Now, if you cut a human being in half across the waist, he has a tendency not to survive the operation. But if you do this to a flatworm, you merely trigger off asexual reproduction in the same way that the animal occasionally does itself. For the head will grow a new tail in a matter of five or six days, and the tail, clinging gallantly to its rock, will regenerate an entire new head (complete with brain, eyes and full sensory apparatus) in a matter of a week or two. Furthermore, each of the regenerated portions of the beast will soon grow up to the same size as the original animal and, being rejuvenated as well as regenerated, will begin sexual mating again. (Now there’s a topic that need further research if ever I saw one!)

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WORM RUNNER’S DIGEST
TABLE OF CONTENT

Продолжение Назад

Volume 16 Issue 2
Published Dec 1, 1974

  1. James V. McConnell. Introduction: Confessions of a Scientific Humorist.
  2. F. E. Warburton. The Lab Coat as a Status Symbol.
  3. D. S. Greenberg. Reflections on Six Years of Progress.
  4. D. S. Greenberg. Questions & Answers with Grant Swinger.
  5. * * *1
  6. William C. Corning. Bringing It All Back Home.
  7. * * *1
  8. Ian Rose. The Professional Patient
  9. * * *1
  10. * * *1
  11. Julius S. Greenstein. Studies on a New, Peerless Contraceptive Agent.
  12. Ethelbert Lovett. In Search on the Gebentsher sperm.
  13. Mo Twente. The Exposure Phenomenon.
  14. Barry Tuscano. Lab Report.
  15. Roger Hayward. Bilvets-Research & Development.
  16. Peter R. Runkel. How to Teach a Cow a Damn Good Lesson.
  17. C. Peter Rosenbaum. Smorr Chen.
  18. Peter Suedfeld & Yakov M. Epstein. The Egghead & i.
  19. Frederic Wakeman. The Political Eptness of Flatworms.
  20. Tollan Dymas (J. A. Lindon.) Under Worm Wood.
  21. * * *1
  22. * * *1
  23. * * *1
  24. * * *1
  25. * * *1
  26. H. E. Marks. The Improper Use of the Vertical Runway; A Reply to Dr. Evans.
  27. Selby H. Evans. A Reply to Professor Marks’ Reply to Dr. Evans.
  28. H. E. Marks. A Reply to Dr. Evans’ Reply to Professor Marks’ Reply to Dr. Evans.
  29. Raymond J. Corsini. The Blind Men & the Elephant: Three Ends to One Tale.
  30. H. S. Wolff. The House Cricket as a Temperature Sensor.
  31. Allan Neil. Neil Illusions,

Volume 17 Issue 1
Published Jul 1, 1975

  1. James V. McConnell. Worms (and Things.)
  2. Peggy Ann Thompson & Robert Boice. Attempts to Train Frogs: Review & Experiments.
  3. James W. Kalat. Instrumental Conditioning in the Copperheaded Pluribus: A Methodological Article in Disguise.
  4. Don R. Powell. Behavior Modification: Students as Paraprofessionals.
  5. Leon Petchkovsky, Leisel S. Scholem, John J. Ashley & Robert J. Kirkby. An Attempt to Transfer Drug-Induced Activity via Brain Matter.
  6. Allen R. Klein & Carl D. Cheney. Within-Subject Analysis of Memory Transfer with Two Extraction Techniques.
  7. Arthur Rothschild, Arthur M. Guilford & James V. McConnell. An Investigation of the Use of Operant Conditioning Techniques in the Treatment of a 64-year-old Aphasic.
  8. Les L. Loomis & Anna M. Napoli. Transfer of Training Through Two Cannibalisms of Planarians.
  9. Luis M. Laosa & Robert Rueda. Psichological Testing in Cultural Contexts, Theodora M. Abel.
  10. Richard E. Miller. Foundations of Counseling Strategies, James R. Barclay.
  11. James W. Kalat. Biological Diagnosis of Brain Disorder, Samuel Bogoch (Ed.)
  12. David E. Campbell. Behavior as an Ecological Factor, David E. Davis (Ed.)
  13. Philip C. Kronk. Schizophrenia: The First Ten Dean Award Lectures, Stanley R. Dean (Ed.)
  14. James W. Kalat. Structure of the Human Brain, Stephen J. de Armond, Madeline M. Fusco & Maynard M. Dewey.
  15. Philip C. Kronk. The Teaching & Learning of Psychotherapy, Rudolf Ekstein & Robert S. Wallerstein.
  16. Charles C. Cleland. Human Infancy: An Evolutionary Perspective, Daniel G. Freedman.
  17. Robert N. Rothstein. Behavior Modification in Applied Settings, Alan E. Kazdin.
  18. Thomas L. Dynneson. The Heel of Achilles: Essays 1968 — 1973, Arthur Koestler.
  19. Robert N. Rothstein. Behavior Modification in Education, Donald L. MacMillan.
  20. James Alken. Mental Health Intervention in the Primary Grades (Community Mental Health Journal Monograph Series #7,) Ann M. Marmorale & FredBrown.
  21. H. W. Hise. The University & the Urban Crisis, Volume II in The Community Psychology Series, Howard E. Mitchell (Ed.)

1 We didn’t find an opportunity to read the text under the advertisement for the book by James McConnell & Marlys Schutjer Science, Sex and Sacred Cows. — T.C.A. Editorial.
 

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