Dr. Amy B Hollingsworth Berkhouse
  • Home
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • The Seven Minute Scientist
  • About Me
  • Biology With Technology
  • Free Biology Resources for High School Teachers
  • Technology Tools for Graduate Students
  • Amy on The Web
  • Getting Organized as a Grad Student
  • Nerdy Inspiration
  • Blog
  • Five Ways to Get a Busy Professor to Answer Your Emails, That Don't Involve a Bribe
  • 3 Ways to Get or Give a Great Letter of Recommendation
  • The 13 Things That Motivated Me to Get A PhD

Monkeys or Mankind? Who do you see in “The Experiment?”

4/1/2014

4 Comments

 
There was a very popular post going around Facebook this week that generated a lot of comments. Check it out.
Picture
What was the thought process you had while reading this? Did you conjure up mental pictures of monkeys in a cage, or after a while, did you think about mankind? If you read the comments from the page where the picture is hosted, you can see some fascinating insights into what people think of when they see this picture.


First, there were people who took this at face value, and thought it was a real experiment. It's close enough to articles we've all read about animal research, or classes we took on psychology or science that we can picture the experiment actually happening. The experiment seems cruel, and unnecessary. People who dislike animal research are quick to condemn "the experiment" as cruel, instilling fear, and brutish. And really, it is a cruel experiment, in my opinion. But much of the animal research done in science and psychology has been cruel. What have we (man, scientists, or society) learned from these cruel experiments?


Here is one example of what seems to be a similar experiment, actually in the literature:

"Stephenson (1967) trained adult male and female rhesus monkeys to avoid manipulating an object and then placed individual naïve animals in a cage with a trained individual of the same age and sex and the object in question. In one case, a trained male actually pulled his naïve partner away from the previously punished manipulandum during their period of interaction, whereas the other two trained males exhibited what were described as "threat facial expressions while in a fear posture" when a naïve animal approached the manipulandum. When placed alone in the cage with the novel object, naïve males that had been paired with trained males showed greatly reduced manipulation of the training object in comparison with controls. Unfortunately, training and testing were not carried out using a discrimination procedure so the nature of the transmitted information cannot be determined, but the data are of considerable interest." 

Sources: 
Stephenson, G. R. (1967). Cultural acquisition of a specific learned response among rhesus monkeys. In: Starek, D., Schneider, R., and Kuhn, H. J. (eds.), Progress in Primatology, Stuttgart: Fischer, pp. 279-288. 

And do scientists continue doing cruel experiments, or do they learn from these experiments, and move on to something even more involved? One of the tenets of good science is that we build upon the research of others. Another tenet is repetition of experiments. How many times do you have to repeat this experiment to retain valid results? One criticism I often receive in biology class is during animal dissections. Students who don't like dissections say, "I'm not learning anything from this! It's cruel! All these fetal pigs (or rats, or frogs) died for nothing! (in the case of Anatomy and Physiology, the cats we dissected are collected from the animal shelters after they are put to sleep, and then preserved, so is it better that we use those animals to learn? That they did not die in vain?) Why can't we just watch a video?" I think it's an important curriculum decision in Biology. Do we keep dissecting frogs, just because that's what has always been done? (Hmmmm, another "experiment")



Did you see an allusion to the way religion has woven it's way through societies? People have been punished for certain religious beliefs, or for the lack of religious beliefs. One commenter said "Oh man, this reminds me of my work place!" Do you ever feel like you are surrounded by monkeys? Maybe you see superstition being "taught" through the experiment. An irrational fear that has no apparent purpose. Aspects of culture, civilization, religion, and evolution are unearthed, by a deeper inspection of "The Experiment."


Maybe you see "Monkey see, monkey do?" Maybe this post is meant to spur one to action, to think "out of the box," to question tradition, or to be brave. Should we resist the the urge to conform? Always, or just sometimes? Is there every happiness in conformity, or should you always buck the norms, throw tradition to the wind, and do your own thing, regardless of "being hosed?"


This morning, my son asked if he could take two toys to school. I asked him, "Does your teacher let you bring toys to school?" He said, "Well, only on Fridays. (it was Tuesday) And we aren't allowed to bring balls. Mr. Flinn says that bouncing balls in class breaks things." If you are the parent, what do you tell your child? Follow the rules? Break the rules? Why are there rules? Why do we listen (or not listen) to the teacher, or parents, or society's rules? If my son took a ball to class today, what might have happened? Maybe nothing. Maybe nothing would break, and my son would think the rules are stupid. Maybe he would bounce that ball, and something in class WOULD break, and then what? What did my child learn about rules then? How do we decide what rules count, and what rules should be challenged? What's good for one man, is not necessarily what's good for mankind. And what's good for one monkey, may make for monkey business in the larger monkey culture. Who decides?
4 Comments
    Picture
    Dr. Amy B. Hollingsworth

    Author

    Dr. Amy B Hollingsworth has worked in education for over 20 years. Most recently, she was a Learning Coach at the NIHF STEM School in Akron. She served as the Executive Director of Massillon Digital Academy. She was the District Technology Specialist at Massillon. She also was the Natural Science Biology Lab Coordinator at The University of Akron. She specializes in Biology Curriculum and Instruction, STEM education, and technology integration. She has written six lab manuals, and an interactive biology ebook. She has dedicated her life to teaching and learning, her children - Matthew, Lilly, and Joey, her husband Ryan, and her NewfiePoo Bailey.

    What's Amy Reading?

    • College Insurrection
    • The Chronicle of Higher Education
    • Digital Learning in Higher Ed
    • HuffPo College
    • Girls in STEM
    • The Simple Dollar
    • Tim Ferriss
    • Edudemic
    • Mashable
    • Inside Higher Ed
    • Gawker
    • io9

    Archives

    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    October 2012

    Categories

    All
    Academia
    Adjuncting
    Adjuncts
    AIDS
    Animal Research
    Animal Testing
    Being In Pain
    Best Ideas
    Big Data
    Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation
    Bill Gates
    Biology
    Blogging
    Brainstorming
    Budgets
    Bullying
    Career Paths
    Challenges
    Charter Schools
    Choices
    Civilization
    College Ready
    Common Core
    Community Colleges
    Creation
    Creativity
    Critics
    Cruelty
    Culture
    Debt
    Degrees
    Democracy
    Discipline
    Discrimination
    Diversity
    Dream Big
    Easy Courses
    Ed Tech
    Education
    Engaged
    Engineering
    Evaluation
    Evolution
    Experiments
    Facebook
    Facebook Memes
    Faculty
    Failure
    Finance
    First Generation
    Flexibility
    Flipping Classes
    Fluff Majors
    For-profit Institutions
    Free Apps
    Gender
    Global Education
    Goals
    Good Habits
    Google Docs
    Google Scholar
    Government
    Grad School
    Guppy
    Hard Courses
    Higher Ed
    Humble
    Inequality
    Inside Higher Education
    Inspiration
    Low Income
    Majors
    Minorities
    Money
    Motivation
    My Faith
    Natural Sciences
    NCLB
    Negative Talk
    Pedagogy
    PhDs
    Politics
    Positive Attitudes
    Poverty
    Professional Development
    Professionals
    Professional Teaching Model
    Psychology
    Q Methodology
    Racism
    Religion
    Rigor
    Rules
    Science
    Scientists
    Social Media
    Social Sciences
    Society
    STEM
    Strength
    Stress
    Students
    Student Success
    Success
    Support
    Syllabi
    Teaching
    Technology
    TED Talks
    Tenure-Track
    Test Bashing
    Testing
    The Game
    The Humanities
    Time Management
    Universities
    U Of Akron
    Vaccines
    Value
    Videos
    Vocational Classes
    Web 2.0
    What Is Education Worth?
    Women
    Writing
    Youtube

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.