by Melissa Birks and Jill Oserowsky
A University psychology professor’s assistant suffered minor injuries when a package addressed to Prof. James McConnell exploded in his arms last Friday afternoon.
Nicklaus Suino was at McConnell’s 2900 Delhi Road residence opening a package addressed to the professor when a concealed device within the package went off at 2:51 p.m. last Friday.
Suino was treated at University Hospital for flesh wounds to the arm and superficial cuts to the abdomen. He was released Saturday.
Neither McConnell or his assistant could be reached for comment.
The Washtenaw County Sheriff’s department is investigating the incident along with the Detroit Bureau of Alcogol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and U.S. Postal Inspection Service. So far, they have no suspects in the case, but anyone with information may call the sheriff’s confidential tipline at 973-7711.
Co-workers in the psychology department suspected that the bombingmight have been connected to a textbook authored by McConnell entitled Understanding Human Behavior.
McConnell, a member of the University faculty since 1956, teaches honors introduction to psychology. Co-workers and students say that his behavior modification theories have generated a lot of controversy.
Charles Morris, associate chair of psychology department, said it is fairly common for writers of textbooks to receive letters of criticism.
If half a million people read your book the chances are that some of those people Morris said.
Somebody somewhere who’s familiar with his book is sufficientle disturbed to send more than the typical letter be speculated.
Jonathan Bokor, an LSA senior who took McConnell’s class as a freshman, speculated that an opponent of behavior modification might have sent the explosive device.
A lot of people are opposed to behavior modification — how it’s done, what it’s used for — and some people think it can be abused Bokor said.
Although McConnell’s theories may have invoked the wrath of some, he is popular among his students.
I’m pretty shocked said LSA senior Gary Sugarman, a former student of McConnell’s. I would be very surprised if it were a student (who sent the package). He seems to be one of the most well-liked … and respected professors (at the University).
Bokor said that McConnell was popular because of his method of applying positive reinforcement in the classroom through a grading system which involved telling students everyone would receive an A if they put in the hard work indicative of an honors course.
Kathleen Stein. King of Worm Runners
The years of worm running are behind him: the Digest terminated after 20 years for lack of funds. McConnell now turns his attention increasingly to teaching, writing, and the formulation of a unified-field theory of the brain, though he’s too modest to call it that. This quest includes a decade-long wrestling match with the redoubtable Skinner over the existence of the mind.
When McConnell was a trembling
What I would say is that we’ll be able to specify what family of chemicals is involved, for example, in learning Chinese. Then we’d synthesize them and give you daily injections, enabling you to learn Chinese five to ten times faster than normal. And to remember it better.
Science is, to a far greater extent than most scientists realize, the behavior of human beings who suffer the same personality quirks and fits of temper that everyone else experiences.
When McConnell was a trembling grad student, Skinner told him that the mind is a theoretical concept that we are better off abandoning. McConnell went away to mull that one over for 20 years.
Today he says,
John Watson (the father of behaviorism) made the animal brain into an adding machine: Skinner turned it into a computer.
At one lecture I pointed out to him that he can’t explain what he does when he trains a pigeon. He sets a goal for the bird, then directs its movements toward achieving that goal. In the interim he rewards the animal until it attains the goal. The trouble is, the goal is in Skinner’s mind. It does not exist anywhere else.
I say the left hemisphere is the pigeon and the right is the ‘Skinner’ that sets the goals, anticipates what the consequences of actions will be, selectively reinforces behaviors that are emitted – Skinner’s word – by the left hemisphere. Skinner doesn’t like that at all.
McConnell thinks back over all the weird battles he’s somehow found himself in.
I suppose my only regret is that I still can’t tie all of the memory-transfer data and hemisphere studies into one pretty package. But the thing I’m proudest of – even more than my so-called honesty – is the fact that I didn’t push the transfer effect more than I did. If I have one talent, it’s for propagandizing. Look at my textbook – it’s a six-hundred-page commercial for my version of the scientific method. I flatter myself that I could have created a ‘school,’ or at least a large set of disciples, had I chosen to play the guru’s role. But at some deep level a little voice tells me that if the facts don’t sell themselves, they may not be valid.
Of course, had I understood ten years ago what I do now, much of controversy would never have taken place. Having been stocked to the core by the Nobel laureates, I’m sure I defended my own ego by resorting to humor. Part of my wit was bitter attack. But part of it was little more than the same submission response that a young wolf shows to the pack leader when he bares his throat in self-defense. Better to be laughed at than crucified, if you know what I mean.
Yes, except I would have qualified all my earlier statements with theoretical garbage and a barrage of ‘ifs’ and ‘perhapses.’ I never would have used the term memory transfer. ‘Transfer of response bias’ is so delightfully neutral. I would have appeared dead serious and refused to smile at anything. And I would have gone mad.
Perhaps, like the coyote in North American mythology, McConnell is the trickster who, in his ambiguous role and mischievous duality, is a crucial mediator in problem solving. The temptation is to take a long run along the worm’s magic electrified field, to sweep out science’s Augean stables with a good belly laugh.
