2006jun09. Rat Park. A study of addiction swept under the rug. Reminds me of some old quotes in Macros magazine. One is filled with der bullshitten and the other presents one vector of explanation as to why this is so ... you can guess which is which at your leisure.
”Scientists were attempting to determine if learned skills could be passed on from parents to children genetically ... Indeed, the descendents of the taught mice knew how to get through the maze very quickly without instruction, but so did the descendents of the control group, who had never seen the maze at all! Later, a scientist decided to repeat his experiment on a different continent with the same mouse species, but they already knew how to go through the maze, too! As explained by morphic resonance, the traits need not have been passed on genetically. The information leak was due not to bad experimental procedure but to the morphogenetic field, which stored the experience of the earlier mice from which all subsequent mice could benefit.” – Douglas Rushkoff, Cyberia
“I looked into the subsequent history of [Young’s] research. The next experiment, and the one after that, never referred to Mr. Young. They never used any of his criteria of putting the corridor on sand, or being very careful. They just went right on running rats in the same old way, and paid no attention to the great discoveries of Mr. Young, and his papers are not referred to, because he didn’t discover anything about the rats. In fact, he discovered all the things you have to do to discover something about rats.” – Professor Richard P. Feynman in “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”