Approaches to Science of Dogs' (and cats') Behaviors
Key issues:
1. Who can do science?
2. Strategy and tactics?
3. "Breeds" of dog owners' dogs and companions?
4. Verification of Trust deserved by a project or paper?
5. US Kinds of Peer-Review Journals and Books
6. Guilds, Bunds and Association of Dog (and Cat) researchers?
7. US Social Enforcement of Politically Correct Peer-approved Science Views?
*** ***
1. Who can do Science?
Arising from meditation stimulated by Lorenz, Miklosi, Coren, Strain, Bekoff, Darwin and other - I would pose questions such as the following, and follow with related discussion:
1. Can science be done by anyone, or is it exclusively a province ‘owned by” a guild of peer-approved jacketed PH Ds, et al? (Is science limited to "priests"? Where can I buy an ‘indulgence?)
Answer: The question deals with a modern quasi-religious conflict between authoritarians and ordinary people! Until Martin Luther of Germany declared each person could seek their God directly, in Europe official religion was “owned” by the official priests of an authoritarian ‘government, which also misguidedly claimed to own all of science, i.e. what the world is and physically how it works. Again, in the 1960s a ‘religious war’ arose between those who attempted to ‘own’ all of the computer programmers versus others (such as those who taught me) who believed that every person who had the ability to think logically should be permitted to write computer programs, and that became true with personal computers. Conclusion: Yes, both us ordinary people and ‘Ph D priests’ can perpetrate science and with the Internet publish the observations. Progress has historically been most rapid when ‘ordinary’ people participate, because the ‘priests’ tend to limit publication of their nearly unreadable observations and conclusions to obscure expensive “peer-reviewed” journals read only by their fellow priesthood.
2. What is an "ethologist" - - How can you tell one when you see it? Any identifying markings or cries in the night? Where to ethologists come from? (Under cabbage leaves, by storks, Purdue University, et al?)
Answer: Scientifically, Ethologists of 2012 are intellectual descendants of Professor (medical doctor) Herr Konrad Lorenz, a post WWII Nobel Prize winner with Herr Tinneman. He popularized the direct detailed long – term observation of fishes, birds, dogs and cats (and conquered oppressed peoples). He was lavishly treated by the USSR after WWII, in recognition and exchange for his unique analysis of new methods for manipulating and controlling sentient beings. By 2012 in the US most ethology departments, under the ‘aura’ of K Lorenz, of academic institutions seemed to be floundering, as compared to rapid progress by scientists of other persuasions and orientation. Momentarily there was hope for a new renaissance in Eastern Europe of the research following the fall of the USSR about 1989. We concluded that like other under-developed branches of modern science, ethology – at least for research of behaviors of domestic cats and dogs, could be usefully pursued by any person with modest resources, and observations shared via the Internet – more or less as was done with paper in the 1700s for chemistry, physics, biology and medicine.
3. Is ethology limited to the study of animals and if so do ethologists study each other?
Answer: Yes, ethology is the study of behaviors of animals, and following the example of K Lorenz modern researchers study their peers and in books offer amusingly caustic commentaries on the oddities of those others. Lorenz and some of the modern ethologists seem to have a peculiar sense of humor involving pranks on their readers and shared jokes.
4. Has Ethology become a science? Mention the positive and the negative trends to 2012.
Answer: The scientists who attempt to do ethology have from the beginning adopted the tools and donned the public ‘apparel’ of their predecessors who developed the ‘hard-sciences’ of Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Biology, and modern medicine. The challenges of ethology to become a science parallel the difficulties of the development of modern medicine, in that the animals (human, dogs and cats) are of enormous variety and geographic dispersion, so it is difficult to conceptualize, verify and publish general “Laws”, axioms, principles or guidelines. When the modern ethologists of the Miklosi, 2007 “school” can sufficiently narrowly define an aspect of dog or cat behavior, they can indeed achieve essentially all of the characteristics of early years in the development of the ‘hard sciences,” say perhaps the 17th and 18th century. That is a splendid sort of incremental progress, which will get somewhere useful to ordinary human companions of dogs and cats eventually. [It risks the stultifying depressing processes described by T.S.Kuhn, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (Paperback - Dec 15, 1996). At the same time, in parallel, the appearance of numbers of substantial customers with money since the 1990s has as described by Miklosi, 2007 attracted increasing numbers of science-entrepreneurs to cynology (dogology) from the hard-sciences and softer ‘sciences’ such as Psychology. The new-comers tend to gather “low hanging” scientific fruit while achieving favorable publicity from such as National Geographic shows and financial grants. Conclusion: Ethology in the year 2012 is in the confused and chaotic condition of the development of chemistry and physics in the 1700s and 1800s, so far as the interests of most owner-companions of dogs and cats are concerned.
5. If "folk" have "folk wisdom" what do you call that which scientists and ethologists think they know?
Answer: As found in modern academic textbooks, and peer reviewed research papers – “science wisdom”. [See the affordable book “Creations of Fire”, 1995, by C.Cobb and H Goldwhite, for a historical review of “How” actually modern science was built up solidly piece by piece, during which as we learned to see more things, more accurately and precisely we discarded the olde Doctrines as they were shown to be incomplete or only partial in what they attempted to describe. Conversely, Kuhn, “----“ presented the counter-arguments that in every era ‘what was believed to be true’ about the world was “Good enough” - on behalf of stagnation, conformism, ceasing of investigation of anomalies such as a mysterious lack of female creativity, the rarity of patents by women and the astonishing intelligent behavior of dogs, etc.
6. Are ethologists scientists like physicists and if so, why are there no ethological textbooks with pages of beaten gold (or maybe papyrus?) revealing the received wisdom of Ethological Laws at least about cats and dogs? Comment: K Lorenz did quite well in observations of fishes and birds, but encountered serious difficulties in his studies of “higher animals” such as dog, cats, horse and humans. As might be reasonably expected, a fair number of Lorenz’s tentative conclusions about higher animals (which too many of his disciples seemed to regard as divine LAW) tended to be overly simplified, and consequently were refined or rejected by 2012.
7. Your turn ??
*** ***
2. Strategy and Tactics
Scientists of my acquaintance sometimes had a long term Grand-strategy of winning a Nobel Prize or a Chancellorship, where their “campaign” strategy was to attempt valuable innovative research projects and changing topics as needed, always in pursuit of their “holy grail”
a) Political-social parties, public media pandering; meeting rich, famous, beautiful drunks
b) Theoretical research [how things ought to behave], with minimal hands-dirty verification personally (relying on compatible experimentalists), e.g. possibly Einstein[?]
c) Experimentalists – clinicians, vivisectionists, hagiologists
d) “Leonardo da Vinci”, i.e. an optimal combination of the tactics for the particular time and place in history Plus a personally unique access and openness to wisdom in the “air” of an era. In my biased by observations opinion, the “great” dogologists (cynologists?) were some stunted version of the da Vinci paradigm. {References: “Strategy”, B.H. Liddell Hart, 1967, publ. Praeger et al; and “Creations of Fire”, C. Cobb and H Goldwhite, 1995, Perseus publisher and others.}
My review of Dr C-‘s biography and samples of his nearly 300 publications suggested that after achieving the goals of his personal “Grand Strategy”, he ceased the strife, pain and expenses of publishing in peer-journals (being himself unique and without peers, so-called peer reviews tended to be tedious) – and shifted to a strategy of attempting to enlighten us “common folk” and some other scientists about scientific aspects of living sanely with canine companions. Initially it seems he relied on writing affordable readable books [peer-journals rarely being affordable easily read and understood by most humans] for the public.] C--- recently seemed to write on the basis of information from peer-reviewed scientific publications, leavened by his personal research observations of human and doggish psychology. I can’t imagine psychology oriented research being met with applause in a peer review for the journals that welcome cynology. Apparently he inspired a host of critics to think more clearly in response to his occasional humorous thrusts at fallacies that had crept into the bits of peered wisdom. Lately it seemed that he shifted to attempting such goals by use of text via the Internet.
My preferred approach was the notional “da Vinci” strategy, like a few others having already accomplished my “Grand Strategy” goals excepting a few details. I hoped to ‘hand-off’ whatever useful science concerning people and dogs that I had managed to gather to April, 2012. That turns out to be surprisingly difficult, as a person tends to be verbally assaulted by the misguided incumbents, covens, Luddites, zealots, and some people that Professor S--- characterized as “extremists”. I sympathize with young (younger than 75 years) scientists seeking sanctuary among like-minded colleagues in compatible peer-journals with competible students.
I respectfully suggest that US scientists in my disciplines proved that confining one’s reading and scientific publication to a few compatible journals tended to have the drawbacks of multi-generational intellectual “purebred dog-Club-like” inbreeding, i.e. incest and occasional adverse mutations.
As an incorrigible optimist, I inferred that an excellent book had the potential personal and cultural assets to achieve a modern equivalent of an ethologist “Leonardo da Vinci”. Seen from the US, it seemed that a “Grand Strategy” might consist of promoting the best interests of your country, University and yourself jointly. Your strategy might be that of earning an impeccable reputation for scientific (ethological) integrity and the ability to incrementally advance accepted dog-science in the areas accessible to your staff and financial resources. Seen from the US, social-media tactics seem to include: a) a public relations program via PBS and YouTube, et al and the print-paper media; b) research papers on topics of interest within the ethologist-scientific community. That combination of strategies and tactics were likely to be successful with the mentioned “Grand Strategy” (in my opinion).
Historically, as indicated by Dr Feynman (Physics), total immersion in administering and managing a nationally important science department could eventually absorb your attention and energy to a point that would potentially make impossible personally achieving the highest science accolades such as a Nobel Prize. Along such a path, I respectfully suggest avoiding participation in the politically-hazardous Pit-Bulls and dog-breeds aggression controversies.
At least, if there is any justice in the world, immortality in future history is deserved for the 2007 statement: “There is probably no such thing as the dog ....”.
*** ***
3. “Breeds” of dog owners’ dogs and companions? (a la K Lorenz?)
Coppingers, 2001 discussed broad approaches to the study of dog(s) behaviors with humans individually and as part of mutual consensual societies. Minor subsets of such relationships were been observed, provisionally parsed as follows:
1. Show Trial dogs: Dogs publicly displayed to illustrate the social and financial class of their owners. Their people were said to be typically upper class, well off financially, concerned with the appearances of their dogs and themselves. Apparently they throw elegant parties, paid for at their own expense, and in general are wonderful people.
2. Agricultural product (like potatoes) dogs: Dogs raised as agricultural products, in bulk, sold usually wholesale to retailers; by pejoratively labeled “puppy-mills”, back-yard-breeders, or “irresponsible breeders people who are members of the AKC and their associated Breed Clubs. See the 1994 DCA Board of Governors approved “Red Book” for descriptive details. An alleged characteristic of this group and the Show dogs is an apparent propensity or willingness to dispose of (kill) any puppies that seem potentially unmarketable or not-show winners.
3. Obedience Trial dogs: In jest, their people in a conversation were unkindly said to be commonly obsessive compulsive authoritarians attempting to assuage urges that the persons were unable to satisfy in their human workplace, in their home with spouses and children, or on the public streets. Also alleged to engage in “dressage” competitions. Male dogs who failed their DGC tests were allegedly castrated in revenge: no known information re boyfriends and spouses.
4. Agility Trial Dogs: Based on observations, these are typically svelte fleet-footed companions who have been well trained by their dogs. An alleged high point for some persons was said to be when their dog beat those [expletive deleted] {sic, non-AKC} Border Collies. A notable achievement was the winning of the Canadian Gold by a deaf Dalmatian, who would have been prohibited from competing in the US on stereotypical adverse profiling by the AKC.
5. Hunting dogs: Dogs that were as puppies not deaf, but who were gradually rendered deaf if their owners shot guns across the dogs’ in the field. Alleged by advertisers that many hunters used electric shock collars to discipline and control their deaf dogs. Some breeders were reported to use highly advanced Lamarckian procedures to train the young dogs, by cultural transfer of behaviors from their adults as was scientifically observed and reported for many breeds of primates and some dolphins.
6. Companion Dogs: Varied roles included caregivers, therapy, social-peers, children, etc. As advocated by K Lorenz and observed by modern dog-behavior researchers successful companionate relationships typically exhibit shared temperament attributes, and some physically tend to resemble their companions: Charming little old ladies tend to be seen with cute little dogs, and thugs with ___.
7. Farm-herding and other work dogs: Still by 1965 most dogs were thought be researchers such as Scott and Fuller, 1965 to be independent employee-servants on farms, ranches, et al, although secondarily as in Sweden being family companion-peers of adults and children. Investigation questionnaires indicated that the human-preferred training methods generally correlated with reports of a Trainability hierarchy, i.e. easily trained dogs could be educated whereas less easily trained breeds tended to be ‘conditioned’.
8. Abused Dogs: See DCA Red Book, 1994 concerning behaviors of puppy-mill products and other badly abused dogs. Recent neurological research indicated that possibly any mammals can by stress and abuse be conditioned to act at the primitive survival self-defense level of instincts, or driven quite catatonic.
9. Fighting Dogs (i.e. PB, Dogos, et al) and other preferred dogs of criminals and would-be criminals: Published results of surveys by __indicated that collegiate would-be criminals tended to select “fighting dogs”. US star athletes were recently reported in US media to exhibit similar propensities in selecting and abusing dogs.
10. Bi-ear deaf dogs: Ordinary dogs whose ears were ornaments; usually employing all or parts of their redundant sensory repertoire to live a good live with kind humans who were bright enough to use sign language. It being illegal to kill babies who are of an unusual race, color, color-blindness, female or other unwanted features, some people instead apply their species purity doctrines to vulnerable puppies that they kill or try to ban from associating with the politically correct socially approved children and adults of their species {See on Internet AKC rules banning deaf dogs from competitions.} For background, GOOGLE:< compensatory sensory mechanisms>.
11. Blind-hearing dogs: They and their people are among the heroes and heroines of the dog-humans world. Together they demonstrate the incredible potential of dogs and humans to learn to use adaptive compensatory sensory mechanisms to live a happy remarkably normal life among good kind humans. Their mutual achievements defy description. For background, GOOGLE:< compensatory sensory mechanisms>.
12. Blind-deaf dogs: Contrary to typical human fears, actually no dog with good people must live in a totally sensory deprived world alone, fearful, anxious or a threat to itself or others. With a functioning nose and their typical redundant sensory modes of detecting analyzing and responding to vibrations (sounds and light) in their environment, no dog that is free to move about and alive is totally sensorily deprived. Adjustment to loss of optical vision and human-like hearing according to Web reports can require months of rehabilitation done with thorough bonding and kindness by good people.
Along comparable lines, we propose categories of domestic cats who own people:
1. Companions: Some cats allegedly have trained multiple people to believe they own the specific cat. It is not clear if free-roaming rural felines and urban cats are totally independent, or are perhaps all feminists?
2. Show-cats: Kept companions, so far as possible spoiled by living on caviar and too much sitting upon purple cushions?
*** ***
4.Verification of Trust deserved by a project or paper?
1. Consider Why the researchers did their research with dogs?
a. Some researchers observe dogs to learn what dogs of the dogs own initiative are intellectually and emotionally able to achieve.
b. Most researchers study dogs to learn what dogs can be taught by humans in artificial environments such as laboratories. Often a project is a safe small extension of previous research results of little or no value to dog owners.
c. Some researchers dispose of their dog-specimens, some or all, when a research project is completed: a) PTS (kill), b) send to adoptions or ‘rescues.’
2. No person gets 100 percent trust: typing errors and grammatical flaws can afflict anyone, e.g. accidental omission of the word “not” where intended.
3. Test their methods and observations against personal knowledge and compare to your accepted prior reported research, i.e. consistency laws of physics, chemistry and biology - with Newton’s laws.
On testable points of data and conclusions I hope to see 90 percent agreement with my independent knowledge, and an absence of obvious contradictions of the laws of physics, chemistry and biology.
4. Assign “extra trust” to researchers who display personal experience with puppies, from the moment of births through about eight weeks age, e.g. Scott and Fuller, 1965. Conversely Coppingers 2001 while claiming personal observations, published “universal-dog results” of their observations - contrary to data I obtained directly and from independent dog-owner sources.
5. Researcher papers and books ought to cite, if appropriate, references to A Miklosi, 2007, and the books of the Nobel Prize holder, K Lorenz.
On the general principle that there is probably no such thing as THE ethologist, several humorous distinguishing characteristics were identified tentatively. Observed variations:
a, Researchers of dog(s) behavior/biologies who were said to prefer cats.
b. Researchers of cat(s) behavior/biologies who were said to prefer dogs.
c. City-born and raised researchers who never discovered or admitted their knowledge gaps
d. Rural-born and raised researchers who never discovered or admit their knowledge gaps
e. A spectrum of researcher temperaments ranging from “totalitarian authoritarian voice of God” to “pseudo-Leonardo daVinci.” Authoritarians tend to lose their temper in print when doubted or teased by other personages. Possibly K Lorenz and Dr __ were exemplars; K Lorenz was said to have become angry sometimes because he was quoted correctly.
f. A spectrum ranging from “respecters of kernels of knowledge” to the “guilds of tribal-researchers” who converse only with others of the same narrowly defined and defended guild-tribe, i.e. specialist internationally renowned researchers who consult only with peers and also themselves by means of a mirror.
g. A “sense of humor” spectrum ranging from those with no detectable awareness of the humor of excessive seriousness, to those who without warning engage in practical jokes on other researchers and the general public (i.e. conceivably exemplified by K Lorenz, in some opinions). In ecumenical funny harassment, since 2004 it appears that Prof __ has gently harassed an adversary, Prof __ who tends to lose his temper in print.
h. A “transparency” spectrum ranging from those who disclose only their publicity seeking assertions about the implications of their research (such as ‘miserly’ Professor __, ranging to such as Prof __ S who disclosed methodology, analysis methods, statistics and even the errors, absurdities, unexpected results and implications of specific research.
i. Safe research topics versus useful for dog-owners high value advances: A spectrum of researchers and organizations range from those that entirely concern themselves with minor academic-interest extensions of results reported previously by other researchers and organizations, to those researchers and organizations who attempt to significantly extend the current body of dog-behavior scientific knowledge of value to dog-owners, perhaps by exploring a basis (if any) of technically plausible “folk-wisdom”.
j. Diversity of researcher connections with financial supporters and clients for dog-behavior research: such as a) Manufacturers of dog consumable products such as flea medications, b) Breed clubs such as the AKC and DCA, c) Independent researchers free of limitations from financial sources.
*** ***
5. US Kinds of Peer-Review Journals?
(Opinions from personal observation as a researcher and an occasional peer review committee.)
a. Traditional academic research journals that customarily have for a long time published papers by persons who are part of the recognized official academic community. Allegedly a “revolt” in 2012 took place among young scientists because of high costs for subscribing to journals, at alleged exorbitant profit rates of some publishers near 50 percent.
b. Opportunistic specialty “scientific journals” that specialize in papers of individuals denied acceptance by the reviewers of traditional journals (already commonplace by 1972). In 2012 some journals were specializing in advocacy publication of research supporting certain pre-determined acceptable results; (such as alleged to have been used to support a various quasi-scientific consensuses.)
c. Government Scientific Journals (distribution of many are legally limited to a limited approved clientele of the medical, diplomatic and military professions.)
d. Business Corporation Proprietary Scientific Journals: usually employees are restricted from submitting to public peer journal publications of any sort, excepting on topics of research totally funded by the specific employee and utterly divergent from past, current or potential future business interests of the corporation. These restrictions also typically apply to patentable discoveries of employees.
e. Foreign Scientific Journals/books: Formerly some US scientists obtained no-cost peer reviewed publication in journals, and reference cites in books of the USSR. All Soviet origin peer-comments that were examined were scientifically valid. At Purdue University, US, about 1972 an assistant professor was amazed and pleased to obtain published copies of his research papers in Russian, in the Purdue U library within a year of his release of the papers to a US prestigious public science journal, although the US journals at that time usually because of processing delays needed at least one year to two years to publish the same papers for Western (US and West Europe) customers. The art work on graphs and equations was usually superior to that of the US journals. He was promoted to “full professor” on the basis of his achievement of “international recognition and prestige” as documented by the Soviet publications of ALL of his research papers. In contrast, in the US the formerly asst. Professor’s research papers were in the US public peer-journals mentioned as modest advances. The Professor after several years was promoted to Chief of a prestigious internationally renowned research laboratory. NOTE: He maintained that the most valuable portions of US Ph D theses were usually found in the back where the unexplained and unexpected observed phenomena were reported, such as combustion propagation at the speed of light (contrary to the textbooks then used at Purdue), and shock waves propagating upstream in supersonic flow, et al. My Ph D research under his direction concerned unsteady discontinuous propagation of sound waves in variable cross-section passages {such as dogs’ ear canals} and in free space with irregular boundaries.
f. A collateral “linkages” indicator in the US was the Citation Index: After about 1972 according to knowledgeable US authorities, the value of the citation index was largely “captured” by various advocacy “communities” which exclusively cited individuals who agreed with the ‘political’ agendas of the group regardless of professional merits of the scientific papers cited; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_index
g. Personal Experience with Affordability - publishing US research in US peer-reviewed journals, etc.: In 1962 US Government employees who were members of the Societies of some peer-journals could publish at zero cost, if their work was approved by the incumbent senior scientists who were typically NASA employees/consultants. My first submitted research paper describing experimental results was rejected bluntly because it was presumed to be false because of my age and color, and the results conflicted with decades of laboratory scale research summarized in differential calculus equations by the reviewer. Last year I learned via the Internet that my 1960’s research is still in use by the US Government, despite 50 years of re-examination and attempted improvement. I was lucky to have the first project of that kind yield results near the long term statistical mean-ideal values.
By 1980 financial cost of publishing in a peer review journal in my research area reached over $2,000 per paper for one of my papers. I ceased publishing in public peer reviewed US journals, and thereafter published anonymously in US Government peer reviewed journals from which senior US person’s extracted material for publications under their own names. Subsequently most of my research was published in that manner, which was least expensive to me and sufficed to make public the research results deemed important for the future of the US.
When I publish as do my younger (almost all are younger than me) US peers on the Internet, I do so anonymously, leaving to the intellectual ability and knowledge of readers to use that which meets their criteria for valid science, such as compliance with known laws of Physics under axiom “Trust but verify” – each paper each must stand on its own intrinsic merits.
*** ***
6. Guilds, Bunds and Associations of Dog (and Cat) researchers?
We can suggest the following categories:
1. Clinical biology laboratory research (commonly disregards health of any specific dog and health of dogs in general, disregards considerations of dog relations to humans, intellectual capacities of dogs and humans, and emotional aspects of dog-human relationships).
2. Veterinarian Medicine (predominately concerned with the health of specific dogs, cata and other animals presented to them by owners, handlers, et al.; commonly less awareness and concern for health of dogs in general, minimal considerations of dog relations to humans, intellectual capacities of dogs and humans, and emotional aspects of dog-human relationships).
3. Canine-Feline Ethology (study to achieve unified understanding of dog/feline relations with humans, with consideration if the mental, intellectual and emotional capacities of the respective species.)
4. Independent Degreed [Ph D, DVM, etc] professional research (typically publish for general audiences and not publishing in most of the accepted journals of the previous categories; i.e. possibly exemplified by S Coren and M Bekoff)
5. Independent Private/Degreed research (Typically publishing for general audiences and not publishing in the accepted journals of the previous categories; i.e. possibly exemplified by some members of the Internet communities concerned with Show dogs, blind dogs, deaf dogs, blind-deaf dogs, et al- see the proposed categories of dog-owners dogs)
6. Ad hoc private research by exceptional persons: Typically such persons publish their observations on Web sites or in samizdat that specialize in their personal areas of interest. The best observations are on a par with those personally made and reported by K Lorenz. Observations tend to be of two kinds: a) those that give insight to the behavior and abilities of specific dogs, and b) those observations that give insight to how humans interact with their dogs and their mutual expectations day to day. Opinionated reviews of observations by “ordinary non-degreed persons” by some hostile academic non-peer reviewers unfortunately tended to be rude, unkind and disparaging, as well as in violation of known laws of Physics and biology.
Many of the vital seminal discoveries of modern science, as described in the book “Creations of Fire”, 2002, and other sources were initially private research until reified by courageous men and women and applied to the public and private uses of their current society. A classic example was the common knowledge that dairy maids rarely died of smallpox, whereas rich girls almost invariably died from the disease (the dairy maids having been immunized by contracting cow-pox). Pasteur [?] is typically given credit [1]for transferring (translating) common knowledge to one of the great advances in modern medicine – preventing small pox infections. Other books were widely available describing comparable achievements in other branches of science, excepting dog and cat behavior science.
Common knowledge possessors and reviewers were ranked by order of decreasing apparent esteem. Individuals and groups often were members of several categories according to the topic and likely profit:
1. Reviewers of submissions for “peer review” journals/books.
2. Authors of submissions for peer-review journals/books
3. Professional authors-journalists for “popular” publications including Internet
4. Activist authors-journalists for popular media including Internet
5. Dog-anti-science presidiums or “cults” who oppose non-clinical research by any/every organization or person; e.g. such as <d---.org>
6. Religious organizations who object to concepts such as evolution, sentience of non-humans, etc.
7. Official Dog-breed organizations and their research foundations; e.g. AKC, DCA, --
8. Ad-hoc Dog-affiliates organizations such as Yahoo for deaf, blind and blind-deaf dogs
9. Private skilled observers (i.e. instinctive ethologists, e.g. K Lorenz as a young man?)
10. Ranchers, owners and trainers of working dogs (some such dogs are also companions)
11. Dog breeders of puppy-mills and others who treat dogs and cats as disposable agricultural products
12. Generic drunks and persons of no fixed address
*** ***
7. US Social Enforcement of Politically Correct Peer-approved Science Views
US public school children from kindergarten are taught political and religious accepted attitudes toward science, basic but incomplete science facts, and the current approved versions of science theories. Unfortunately a fair amount of political and religious advocacy gets into the classroom also. And some accidental truth: Yes, intelligent design does exist and it is humans who are doing it to their dogs, cats, cattle, chicken, turkeys and each other. Yes, human created air high temperature increases are happening in our cities, and political legislatures – just watch a radar map of rain storms vanishing as they approach the hot air of Washington, D.C, Paris, London, --.
At this time (2012) the US Federal government had not yet set uniform enforcement of educational standards for indoctrination about science, biology and world history. Control by the former USSR was believed to be more effective and uniform, which was a source of worry to USSR senior academicians by about the year 1972, as a USSR visitor to the US explained to me and some of my colleagues. A Soviet Academician visiting the US leading educational institutions indicated that they suspected that excessive political control of science research resulted in mental constipation of the majority of scientists, rebellion by the most valuable few, and worrisome failures. Personal examples follow illustrating the scope and limitations of US social control approach to public knowledge of science, from as early as the year 1948.
1. In 1st grade school, about 6 year’s age, I was punished for saying that I had seen birds flying without flapping their winds (vultures on the edges of lifting thermal uplift vortices.) Albatrosses, vultures are recognized now as able to “glide-fly” for many hours or even days at a time without active flapping of wings. Lesson-learned: Official-science can be decidedly different from reality: even a country poverty child learns to “Trust but verify!”
2. About age 10 years in a science course, after being informed that a claim was nonsense that a person about 2,000 years before the present era had walked on water, I proposed that there was no contradiction with modern science - as I had done the same. I walked on water many times – when weather had been about -20 degrees C for two weeks and the body of water was a small lake; i.e. the water at the time was ice frozen about six inches thick. Lesson-Learned: Even a child can sometimes see that official text-book peer-reviewed politically correct consensus science can be different from reality.
3. Age 14, when required to sketch a tree, I drew the shape of a tree which I saw from the window; the teacher failed my exam because the official illustration was a circle on top of a rectangle-trunk with triangle roots at the base. Lesson Learned: Comply with politically correct views and directives of persons who are more “powerful” in a particular social-political case.
4. About age 15 in high-school Physics science class I was taught that always ice forms exclusively on the uppermost surface of water if the water temperatures was 0 C or lower. I was punished for pointing out that from my personal experience – folk wisdom- the text book peer-reviewed government official science was incorrect, if the specific body of water was flowing and the solid surfaces of the container were at temperatures less than 0 C. I had observed at close range under as much as one meter of water, that indeed ice can form on the bottom of containers such as river beds with unfrozen flowing water above the ice. Lesson-learned: Students might wisely keep their silence when their experience differs from the official answers demanded for promotion by the local authorities.
5. Age about 22, when ordered to design and use a small materials-test rocket; I asked for and obtained approval of the design and materials by the local peer-experts. On ignition, the item disassembled itself, during which a ½ Kg piece passed at a height of about 1 meter above the heads of five observers. Lesson Learned: Never rely on omniscience of designated authorities regardless of their academic degrees, published papers, or other rank or prestige.
6. Age about 23, assigned to manage a US government project allegedly of importance, I designed an instrumentation system comparable to the modern BAER systems (As the system was one of a kind, no peers existed to approve.); my “beasts” typically weighted nearly 200 pounds. The project’s importance was emphasized by assignment of an astronaut (in training), to manage instrumentation. The astronaut delegated actual work to technicians. When the reports of specific tests began to show results at odds with the laws of physics, I asked for review of the instrumentation integrity-accuracy, and was officially informed that “obviously” as the youngest member of the team clearly it was my part of the project that was defective.
When the astronaut-electronics chief became absent on other duties, I chatted with the technicians whose personal ‘folk-wisdom’ about their electronics exceeded mine. The techs described their day to day preparations for my project, and their scrupulous compliance with the orders of the astronaut who possessed academic degrees much “above” mine and theirs as well as great organizational prestige and “rank.” By careful professional replies to my questions, the techs let me know that key devices had gradually failed, and on orders they “adjusted” each device to falsely appear correct during pre-test calibrations and tests. Acting with legal authority in the absence of the senior instrumentation officer, I directed replacement of the failed instrumentation at the expense of my account as project manager. Contrary to local regulations, the incident was never reported for official management attention, because the astronaut as the instrumentation manager self-reviewer deemed the event of negligible importance. [Later the astronaut-in-training died while allegedly violating safety regulations.] Lesson-learned: Neither rank, titles, nor academic degrees are proof of integrity and wisdom nor protection against consequences for him or her and others of his or her actions if a responsible authority acts arbitrarily and capriciously.
7. As “chief-scientist” of the project I had to select the material of a component that would “see” corrosive gases at temperatures approaching 5500 degrees F. The local project peer review committee gave me recommendations: a.) material must be affordable – which prohibited use of tungsten, b) during operation the material must have negligible vaporization-losses, c) materials such as copper were best, based on the peer literature, typically describing success with gram sized “beasts” during tests of milliseconds duration. My analysis of the recommendations revealed that, based on basic laws of physics (contrary to the reports of peer-academic literature), in the US only a single type of affordable industrial material, very pure graphite, satisfied the project requirements. Lesson-learned: Reliance on recommendations of local peers and US academic reports were not enough to ensure the effectiveness and safety of research for which I was responsible.
8. Official academic and textbook “folk-wisdom”: For safety, the experimentalists were protected against inherent dangers of our “beasts” (rather like placing cats in a bag while subjecting them to BAER tests, per Strain, 2011). Two types of “bags” were recommended by the peer academics: a.) woven fiberglass, b) asbestos. I the idea of using paper bags. Full size tests verified that the glass fabric and the asbestos were both harmful to the “beasts.” Paper was most affordable and performed best. Only two tests of glass and asbestos were needed, because chemistry laws (versus academic-peer “folk-wisdom”) explained the surprising results of the full scale experiments. Lesson learned: Never totally rely on official ‘peers’, regardless of the source: Trust perhaps but always verify.
9. Abuse, misuse, misunderstanding, and misrepresentations of science data by using statistics AND “compensatory adaptive mechanisms can exist”: In the US a scientist during a time span of over ten years reported that for most breeds of dogs, the more of them who were BAER tested for deafness, the fewer statistically of the breed were deaf. On the Web by 2012, persons reported that their purebred puppy miraculously recovered bi-ear hearing during its second BAER test for deafness. Possibly even more deaf dogs would have bi-ear hearing if they were offered several BAER tests, each time by a different facility and technician.
In a different statistics ploy, a deafness-in-dogs researcher seemingly noticed that by assuming a breed-wise yes-no distribution of deafness, any Breed in which a dog was ever shown to have been born deaf or by abuse or medication became deaf can be listed in a Table of the US deaf-dog Breeds. Which pretty quickly looked like he ought to have a list of all of the US dog breeds, because probably almost all dogs become deaf as they die of injuries or old age.
Lesson-learned: IF you don’t understand where the statistics numbers came from, and how the researcher got the “results” – don’t trust stuff that doesn’t make sense from your experience.
10. Cultural ignorance: In England, a published presumably peer reviewed paper described retrospective research on medieval companion animals. Allegedly a village priest described an old woman who kept a companion toad, living in woods near a village, and reported that the woman claimed to feed her toad with saucers of milk. A researcher of urban origins, perhaps in London might report a pre-publication peer-review revealing that none of his [urban?] associates believed that a toad could be fed with a saucer of milk. Actually, on rural US dairy farms about 1954, I observed occasional toads fed by fresh milk – flies and beetles were attracted to the saucered milk and the toads ate the insects. Lesson-learned: Cultural ignorance caused by lacks in the childhood-academic-religious knowledge of a researcher about the real environments of the research ethnographic subjects can result in defective conclusions.
11. English grammar can be misunderstood: e.g. about 1979 a USSR report claimed that the US launched an ICBM from a military operational silo in the state of Montana, violating treaty obligations with the USSR. Indeed the missile was from a silo in Montana, but it had been transported by truck to Vandenberg, CA where it was launched from a treaty authorized test-facility. Lesson Learned: Try to prevent grammatical uncertainties.
12. Voting on Laws of Physics: About 1971, I presented to a US government “Science Board” observations from foreign research. When I spoke to about 30 leading US scientists, I learned that the purpose of the review was to examine alternatives to expensive research then being done in Canada, where the cost was said to be about $250,000 per event. An alternative procedure could cost less than about $50 US per event. I was permitted to remain in the conference room while the Board voted on their recommendations. The debate focused on whether the less expensive procedure was possible, i.e. “If it was not possible, then the described research was a fraud.” The vote by raised hands went against the simple procedure. When I obtained experimental US data I learned that the Board had voted against a textbook-known law of Physics that mechanical vibrations travel (speed of sound) much faster in solids than in gases. Lesson Learned: Votes on the truth of laws of Physics can be silly and dangerous.
13. Sound in a converging channel: About 1971, published peer research concerning basic Physics theory indicated that the energy of a packet of sound waves entering a “cone” is squeezed by the walls to infinite temperature and pressure at the tip-apex. Experiments revealed other results: often the tip of the cone and its instrumentation were exploded violently by the high pressures and temperatures. Applying science to dogs’ ears: their ears usually are equipped with convergent variable shape flexible wall channels to their inner ears. Sharp loud sounds such as nearby gun-shots can be “amplified” to physically dangerous levels at the inner ear. US hounds were observed shaking their heads as though in pain after a companion standing nearby “bayed” loudly to announce treeing a raccoon. Allegedly in Japan, several persons were diagnosed as deafened by a dog’s barking too near the humans’ ears. Lesson Learned: Thoughtfully applies science can sometimes explain or forecast results of real-world experience by dogs and people. Computer simulation of the unsteady chemical and ionization processes were accurate within the precision of our instruments.
14. Censored lethal science knowledge: US Physics textbooks and research papers taught that a flame in a combustible mixture will only spread at its natural speed of mixing if it is unconfined and never faster than the speed of sound inside the flame if it is confined in solid walls. In the back pages of some peer-reviewed papers there were remarks about unexplained “anomalous” events in laboratories and in field use and some were disastrous. During Ph D research I learned that the official knowledge was censored to discourage stupid students and nasty people from using the anomalous processes. Lesson-learned: Neglect of anomalous observations by graduate students and dog owners can be fatal: detonations and sudden aggression by certain breeds of dogs can be fatal. Never totally bet your life on the permanent validity everywhere all the time of peer reviewed research and textbooks. Textbooks and official papers are almost always “cleaned up” to appear more logical and certain than were the events; data from miscalibrated or defective instruments (for example) are commonly ignored. Allegedly data from certain dogs were ignored for one reason or another, such as the dog died, became pregnant, dog bit technician, etc.
15. Geostationary Satellite over Los Angeles and Soccer Balls: A government spokesperson assured his audience that the Secretary of Defense had been told about a Russian space satellite stationed above the US city of Los Angeles, California. Unwisely, I spoke up to explain that any such claim was nonsense, because stationing a fixed location satellite above a city far north of the equator was impossible within the laws of Physics. The government representative assured the audience that I was obviously wrong, because nobody would lie to the Secretary of Defense. Lesson(s)-learned (a little later): a) Government officials saying silly things should be left to lie, for the same reason that sleeping dogs should be left to lie; namely that when irritated they can bite. b) A satellite in a “forced-orbit” can be kept over any spot on the earth, as for example a soccer ball placed in a geostationary forced orbit over a solid fixed place on the earth’s surface by laying it down there, c) when making public statements, beware that some person in the audience may know of a rare situation or event where your claims are falsified.
____________________
[1] From a respected peer-reviewer, Ms A.S: It was a chain reaction that far pre-dated Pasteur (1822 - 1895), started by Lady Mary Ashley Montagu (1721, using live smallpox virus to vaccinate), picked up by Dr Fewster (who came upon the idea of using cow pox)...for the rest see the entry on Edward Jenner: Smallpox : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Jenner#Smallpox [The reason I found this at my fingertips was that I happened to be reading Women of Ideas (Dale Spender, 1982), just done the section about the 17th and 18th centuries. She was reminded of Montagu and also found this quote from Frances Wright (1795 - 1852): 'All the branches of knowledge, involved in scholastic learning, are wrapped in fogs of pompous pedantry' (Course of Popular Lectures, 1829). How delightful that a woman was writing this 183 years ago already.]
Key issues:
1. Who can do science?
2. Strategy and tactics?
3. "Breeds" of dog owners' dogs and companions?
4. Verification of Trust deserved by a project or paper?
5. US Kinds of Peer-Review Journals and Books
6. Guilds, Bunds and Association of Dog (and Cat) researchers?
7. US Social Enforcement of Politically Correct Peer-approved Science Views?
*** ***
1. Who can do Science?
Arising from meditation stimulated by Lorenz, Miklosi, Coren, Strain, Bekoff, Darwin and other - I would pose questions such as the following, and follow with related discussion:
1. Can science be done by anyone, or is it exclusively a province ‘owned by” a guild of peer-approved jacketed PH Ds, et al? (Is science limited to "priests"? Where can I buy an ‘indulgence?)
Answer: The question deals with a modern quasi-religious conflict between authoritarians and ordinary people! Until Martin Luther of Germany declared each person could seek their God directly, in Europe official religion was “owned” by the official priests of an authoritarian ‘government, which also misguidedly claimed to own all of science, i.e. what the world is and physically how it works. Again, in the 1960s a ‘religious war’ arose between those who attempted to ‘own’ all of the computer programmers versus others (such as those who taught me) who believed that every person who had the ability to think logically should be permitted to write computer programs, and that became true with personal computers. Conclusion: Yes, both us ordinary people and ‘Ph D priests’ can perpetrate science and with the Internet publish the observations. Progress has historically been most rapid when ‘ordinary’ people participate, because the ‘priests’ tend to limit publication of their nearly unreadable observations and conclusions to obscure expensive “peer-reviewed” journals read only by their fellow priesthood.
2. What is an "ethologist" - - How can you tell one when you see it? Any identifying markings or cries in the night? Where to ethologists come from? (Under cabbage leaves, by storks, Purdue University, et al?)
Answer: Scientifically, Ethologists of 2012 are intellectual descendants of Professor (medical doctor) Herr Konrad Lorenz, a post WWII Nobel Prize winner with Herr Tinneman. He popularized the direct detailed long – term observation of fishes, birds, dogs and cats (and conquered oppressed peoples). He was lavishly treated by the USSR after WWII, in recognition and exchange for his unique analysis of new methods for manipulating and controlling sentient beings. By 2012 in the US most ethology departments, under the ‘aura’ of K Lorenz, of academic institutions seemed to be floundering, as compared to rapid progress by scientists of other persuasions and orientation. Momentarily there was hope for a new renaissance in Eastern Europe of the research following the fall of the USSR about 1989. We concluded that like other under-developed branches of modern science, ethology – at least for research of behaviors of domestic cats and dogs, could be usefully pursued by any person with modest resources, and observations shared via the Internet – more or less as was done with paper in the 1700s for chemistry, physics, biology and medicine.
3. Is ethology limited to the study of animals and if so do ethologists study each other?
Answer: Yes, ethology is the study of behaviors of animals, and following the example of K Lorenz modern researchers study their peers and in books offer amusingly caustic commentaries on the oddities of those others. Lorenz and some of the modern ethologists seem to have a peculiar sense of humor involving pranks on their readers and shared jokes.
4. Has Ethology become a science? Mention the positive and the negative trends to 2012.
Answer: The scientists who attempt to do ethology have from the beginning adopted the tools and donned the public ‘apparel’ of their predecessors who developed the ‘hard-sciences’ of Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Biology, and modern medicine. The challenges of ethology to become a science parallel the difficulties of the development of modern medicine, in that the animals (human, dogs and cats) are of enormous variety and geographic dispersion, so it is difficult to conceptualize, verify and publish general “Laws”, axioms, principles or guidelines. When the modern ethologists of the Miklosi, 2007 “school” can sufficiently narrowly define an aspect of dog or cat behavior, they can indeed achieve essentially all of the characteristics of early years in the development of the ‘hard sciences,” say perhaps the 17th and 18th century. That is a splendid sort of incremental progress, which will get somewhere useful to ordinary human companions of dogs and cats eventually. [It risks the stultifying depressing processes described by T.S.Kuhn, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (Paperback - Dec 15, 1996). At the same time, in parallel, the appearance of numbers of substantial customers with money since the 1990s has as described by Miklosi, 2007 attracted increasing numbers of science-entrepreneurs to cynology (dogology) from the hard-sciences and softer ‘sciences’ such as Psychology. The new-comers tend to gather “low hanging” scientific fruit while achieving favorable publicity from such as National Geographic shows and financial grants. Conclusion: Ethology in the year 2012 is in the confused and chaotic condition of the development of chemistry and physics in the 1700s and 1800s, so far as the interests of most owner-companions of dogs and cats are concerned.
5. If "folk" have "folk wisdom" what do you call that which scientists and ethologists think they know?
Answer: As found in modern academic textbooks, and peer reviewed research papers – “science wisdom”. [See the affordable book “Creations of Fire”, 1995, by C.Cobb and H Goldwhite, for a historical review of “How” actually modern science was built up solidly piece by piece, during which as we learned to see more things, more accurately and precisely we discarded the olde Doctrines as they were shown to be incomplete or only partial in what they attempted to describe. Conversely, Kuhn, “----“ presented the counter-arguments that in every era ‘what was believed to be true’ about the world was “Good enough” - on behalf of stagnation, conformism, ceasing of investigation of anomalies such as a mysterious lack of female creativity, the rarity of patents by women and the astonishing intelligent behavior of dogs, etc.
6. Are ethologists scientists like physicists and if so, why are there no ethological textbooks with pages of beaten gold (or maybe papyrus?) revealing the received wisdom of Ethological Laws at least about cats and dogs? Comment: K Lorenz did quite well in observations of fishes and birds, but encountered serious difficulties in his studies of “higher animals” such as dog, cats, horse and humans. As might be reasonably expected, a fair number of Lorenz’s tentative conclusions about higher animals (which too many of his disciples seemed to regard as divine LAW) tended to be overly simplified, and consequently were refined or rejected by 2012.
7. Your turn ??
*** ***
2. Strategy and Tactics
Scientists of my acquaintance sometimes had a long term Grand-strategy of winning a Nobel Prize or a Chancellorship, where their “campaign” strategy was to attempt valuable innovative research projects and changing topics as needed, always in pursuit of their “holy grail”
a) Political-social parties, public media pandering; meeting rich, famous, beautiful drunks
b) Theoretical research [how things ought to behave], with minimal hands-dirty verification personally (relying on compatible experimentalists), e.g. possibly Einstein[?]
c) Experimentalists – clinicians, vivisectionists, hagiologists
d) “Leonardo da Vinci”, i.e. an optimal combination of the tactics for the particular time and place in history Plus a personally unique access and openness to wisdom in the “air” of an era. In my biased by observations opinion, the “great” dogologists (cynologists?) were some stunted version of the da Vinci paradigm. {References: “Strategy”, B.H. Liddell Hart, 1967, publ. Praeger et al; and “Creations of Fire”, C. Cobb and H Goldwhite, 1995, Perseus publisher and others.}
My review of Dr C-‘s biography and samples of his nearly 300 publications suggested that after achieving the goals of his personal “Grand Strategy”, he ceased the strife, pain and expenses of publishing in peer-journals (being himself unique and without peers, so-called peer reviews tended to be tedious) – and shifted to a strategy of attempting to enlighten us “common folk” and some other scientists about scientific aspects of living sanely with canine companions. Initially it seems he relied on writing affordable readable books [peer-journals rarely being affordable easily read and understood by most humans] for the public.] C--- recently seemed to write on the basis of information from peer-reviewed scientific publications, leavened by his personal research observations of human and doggish psychology. I can’t imagine psychology oriented research being met with applause in a peer review for the journals that welcome cynology. Apparently he inspired a host of critics to think more clearly in response to his occasional humorous thrusts at fallacies that had crept into the bits of peered wisdom. Lately it seemed that he shifted to attempting such goals by use of text via the Internet.
My preferred approach was the notional “da Vinci” strategy, like a few others having already accomplished my “Grand Strategy” goals excepting a few details. I hoped to ‘hand-off’ whatever useful science concerning people and dogs that I had managed to gather to April, 2012. That turns out to be surprisingly difficult, as a person tends to be verbally assaulted by the misguided incumbents, covens, Luddites, zealots, and some people that Professor S--- characterized as “extremists”. I sympathize with young (younger than 75 years) scientists seeking sanctuary among like-minded colleagues in compatible peer-journals with competible students.
I respectfully suggest that US scientists in my disciplines proved that confining one’s reading and scientific publication to a few compatible journals tended to have the drawbacks of multi-generational intellectual “purebred dog-Club-like” inbreeding, i.e. incest and occasional adverse mutations.
As an incorrigible optimist, I inferred that an excellent book had the potential personal and cultural assets to achieve a modern equivalent of an ethologist “Leonardo da Vinci”. Seen from the US, it seemed that a “Grand Strategy” might consist of promoting the best interests of your country, University and yourself jointly. Your strategy might be that of earning an impeccable reputation for scientific (ethological) integrity and the ability to incrementally advance accepted dog-science in the areas accessible to your staff and financial resources. Seen from the US, social-media tactics seem to include: a) a public relations program via PBS and YouTube, et al and the print-paper media; b) research papers on topics of interest within the ethologist-scientific community. That combination of strategies and tactics were likely to be successful with the mentioned “Grand Strategy” (in my opinion).
Historically, as indicated by Dr Feynman (Physics), total immersion in administering and managing a nationally important science department could eventually absorb your attention and energy to a point that would potentially make impossible personally achieving the highest science accolades such as a Nobel Prize. Along such a path, I respectfully suggest avoiding participation in the politically-hazardous Pit-Bulls and dog-breeds aggression controversies.
At least, if there is any justice in the world, immortality in future history is deserved for the 2007 statement: “There is probably no such thing as the dog ....”.
*** ***
3. “Breeds” of dog owners’ dogs and companions? (a la K Lorenz?)
Coppingers, 2001 discussed broad approaches to the study of dog(s) behaviors with humans individually and as part of mutual consensual societies. Minor subsets of such relationships were been observed, provisionally parsed as follows:
1. Show Trial dogs: Dogs publicly displayed to illustrate the social and financial class of their owners. Their people were said to be typically upper class, well off financially, concerned with the appearances of their dogs and themselves. Apparently they throw elegant parties, paid for at their own expense, and in general are wonderful people.
2. Agricultural product (like potatoes) dogs: Dogs raised as agricultural products, in bulk, sold usually wholesale to retailers; by pejoratively labeled “puppy-mills”, back-yard-breeders, or “irresponsible breeders people who are members of the AKC and their associated Breed Clubs. See the 1994 DCA Board of Governors approved “Red Book” for descriptive details. An alleged characteristic of this group and the Show dogs is an apparent propensity or willingness to dispose of (kill) any puppies that seem potentially unmarketable or not-show winners.
3. Obedience Trial dogs: In jest, their people in a conversation were unkindly said to be commonly obsessive compulsive authoritarians attempting to assuage urges that the persons were unable to satisfy in their human workplace, in their home with spouses and children, or on the public streets. Also alleged to engage in “dressage” competitions. Male dogs who failed their DGC tests were allegedly castrated in revenge: no known information re boyfriends and spouses.
4. Agility Trial Dogs: Based on observations, these are typically svelte fleet-footed companions who have been well trained by their dogs. An alleged high point for some persons was said to be when their dog beat those [expletive deleted] {sic, non-AKC} Border Collies. A notable achievement was the winning of the Canadian Gold by a deaf Dalmatian, who would have been prohibited from competing in the US on stereotypical adverse profiling by the AKC.
5. Hunting dogs: Dogs that were as puppies not deaf, but who were gradually rendered deaf if their owners shot guns across the dogs’ in the field. Alleged by advertisers that many hunters used electric shock collars to discipline and control their deaf dogs. Some breeders were reported to use highly advanced Lamarckian procedures to train the young dogs, by cultural transfer of behaviors from their adults as was scientifically observed and reported for many breeds of primates and some dolphins.
6. Companion Dogs: Varied roles included caregivers, therapy, social-peers, children, etc. As advocated by K Lorenz and observed by modern dog-behavior researchers successful companionate relationships typically exhibit shared temperament attributes, and some physically tend to resemble their companions: Charming little old ladies tend to be seen with cute little dogs, and thugs with ___.
7. Farm-herding and other work dogs: Still by 1965 most dogs were thought be researchers such as Scott and Fuller, 1965 to be independent employee-servants on farms, ranches, et al, although secondarily as in Sweden being family companion-peers of adults and children. Investigation questionnaires indicated that the human-preferred training methods generally correlated with reports of a Trainability hierarchy, i.e. easily trained dogs could be educated whereas less easily trained breeds tended to be ‘conditioned’.
8. Abused Dogs: See DCA Red Book, 1994 concerning behaviors of puppy-mill products and other badly abused dogs. Recent neurological research indicated that possibly any mammals can by stress and abuse be conditioned to act at the primitive survival self-defense level of instincts, or driven quite catatonic.
9. Fighting Dogs (i.e. PB, Dogos, et al) and other preferred dogs of criminals and would-be criminals: Published results of surveys by __indicated that collegiate would-be criminals tended to select “fighting dogs”. US star athletes were recently reported in US media to exhibit similar propensities in selecting and abusing dogs.
10. Bi-ear deaf dogs: Ordinary dogs whose ears were ornaments; usually employing all or parts of their redundant sensory repertoire to live a good live with kind humans who were bright enough to use sign language. It being illegal to kill babies who are of an unusual race, color, color-blindness, female or other unwanted features, some people instead apply their species purity doctrines to vulnerable puppies that they kill or try to ban from associating with the politically correct socially approved children and adults of their species {See on Internet AKC rules banning deaf dogs from competitions.} For background, GOOGLE:< compensatory sensory mechanisms>.
11. Blind-hearing dogs: They and their people are among the heroes and heroines of the dog-humans world. Together they demonstrate the incredible potential of dogs and humans to learn to use adaptive compensatory sensory mechanisms to live a happy remarkably normal life among good kind humans. Their mutual achievements defy description. For background, GOOGLE:< compensatory sensory mechanisms>.
12. Blind-deaf dogs: Contrary to typical human fears, actually no dog with good people must live in a totally sensory deprived world alone, fearful, anxious or a threat to itself or others. With a functioning nose and their typical redundant sensory modes of detecting analyzing and responding to vibrations (sounds and light) in their environment, no dog that is free to move about and alive is totally sensorily deprived. Adjustment to loss of optical vision and human-like hearing according to Web reports can require months of rehabilitation done with thorough bonding and kindness by good people.
Along comparable lines, we propose categories of domestic cats who own people:
1. Companions: Some cats allegedly have trained multiple people to believe they own the specific cat. It is not clear if free-roaming rural felines and urban cats are totally independent, or are perhaps all feminists?
2. Show-cats: Kept companions, so far as possible spoiled by living on caviar and too much sitting upon purple cushions?
*** ***
4.Verification of Trust deserved by a project or paper?
1. Consider Why the researchers did their research with dogs?
a. Some researchers observe dogs to learn what dogs of the dogs own initiative are intellectually and emotionally able to achieve.
b. Most researchers study dogs to learn what dogs can be taught by humans in artificial environments such as laboratories. Often a project is a safe small extension of previous research results of little or no value to dog owners.
c. Some researchers dispose of their dog-specimens, some or all, when a research project is completed: a) PTS (kill), b) send to adoptions or ‘rescues.’
2. No person gets 100 percent trust: typing errors and grammatical flaws can afflict anyone, e.g. accidental omission of the word “not” where intended.
3. Test their methods and observations against personal knowledge and compare to your accepted prior reported research, i.e. consistency laws of physics, chemistry and biology - with Newton’s laws.
On testable points of data and conclusions I hope to see 90 percent agreement with my independent knowledge, and an absence of obvious contradictions of the laws of physics, chemistry and biology.
4. Assign “extra trust” to researchers who display personal experience with puppies, from the moment of births through about eight weeks age, e.g. Scott and Fuller, 1965. Conversely Coppingers 2001 while claiming personal observations, published “universal-dog results” of their observations - contrary to data I obtained directly and from independent dog-owner sources.
5. Researcher papers and books ought to cite, if appropriate, references to A Miklosi, 2007, and the books of the Nobel Prize holder, K Lorenz.
On the general principle that there is probably no such thing as THE ethologist, several humorous distinguishing characteristics were identified tentatively. Observed variations:
a, Researchers of dog(s) behavior/biologies who were said to prefer cats.
b. Researchers of cat(s) behavior/biologies who were said to prefer dogs.
c. City-born and raised researchers who never discovered or admitted their knowledge gaps
d. Rural-born and raised researchers who never discovered or admit their knowledge gaps
e. A spectrum of researcher temperaments ranging from “totalitarian authoritarian voice of God” to “pseudo-Leonardo daVinci.” Authoritarians tend to lose their temper in print when doubted or teased by other personages. Possibly K Lorenz and Dr __ were exemplars; K Lorenz was said to have become angry sometimes because he was quoted correctly.
f. A spectrum ranging from “respecters of kernels of knowledge” to the “guilds of tribal-researchers” who converse only with others of the same narrowly defined and defended guild-tribe, i.e. specialist internationally renowned researchers who consult only with peers and also themselves by means of a mirror.
g. A “sense of humor” spectrum ranging from those with no detectable awareness of the humor of excessive seriousness, to those who without warning engage in practical jokes on other researchers and the general public (i.e. conceivably exemplified by K Lorenz, in some opinions). In ecumenical funny harassment, since 2004 it appears that Prof __ has gently harassed an adversary, Prof __ who tends to lose his temper in print.
h. A “transparency” spectrum ranging from those who disclose only their publicity seeking assertions about the implications of their research (such as ‘miserly’ Professor __, ranging to such as Prof __ S who disclosed methodology, analysis methods, statistics and even the errors, absurdities, unexpected results and implications of specific research.
i. Safe research topics versus useful for dog-owners high value advances: A spectrum of researchers and organizations range from those that entirely concern themselves with minor academic-interest extensions of results reported previously by other researchers and organizations, to those researchers and organizations who attempt to significantly extend the current body of dog-behavior scientific knowledge of value to dog-owners, perhaps by exploring a basis (if any) of technically plausible “folk-wisdom”.
j. Diversity of researcher connections with financial supporters and clients for dog-behavior research: such as a) Manufacturers of dog consumable products such as flea medications, b) Breed clubs such as the AKC and DCA, c) Independent researchers free of limitations from financial sources.
*** ***
5. US Kinds of Peer-Review Journals?
(Opinions from personal observation as a researcher and an occasional peer review committee.)
a. Traditional academic research journals that customarily have for a long time published papers by persons who are part of the recognized official academic community. Allegedly a “revolt” in 2012 took place among young scientists because of high costs for subscribing to journals, at alleged exorbitant profit rates of some publishers near 50 percent.
b. Opportunistic specialty “scientific journals” that specialize in papers of individuals denied acceptance by the reviewers of traditional journals (already commonplace by 1972). In 2012 some journals were specializing in advocacy publication of research supporting certain pre-determined acceptable results; (such as alleged to have been used to support a various quasi-scientific consensuses.)
c. Government Scientific Journals (distribution of many are legally limited to a limited approved clientele of the medical, diplomatic and military professions.)
d. Business Corporation Proprietary Scientific Journals: usually employees are restricted from submitting to public peer journal publications of any sort, excepting on topics of research totally funded by the specific employee and utterly divergent from past, current or potential future business interests of the corporation. These restrictions also typically apply to patentable discoveries of employees.
e. Foreign Scientific Journals/books: Formerly some US scientists obtained no-cost peer reviewed publication in journals, and reference cites in books of the USSR. All Soviet origin peer-comments that were examined were scientifically valid. At Purdue University, US, about 1972 an assistant professor was amazed and pleased to obtain published copies of his research papers in Russian, in the Purdue U library within a year of his release of the papers to a US prestigious public science journal, although the US journals at that time usually because of processing delays needed at least one year to two years to publish the same papers for Western (US and West Europe) customers. The art work on graphs and equations was usually superior to that of the US journals. He was promoted to “full professor” on the basis of his achievement of “international recognition and prestige” as documented by the Soviet publications of ALL of his research papers. In contrast, in the US the formerly asst. Professor’s research papers were in the US public peer-journals mentioned as modest advances. The Professor after several years was promoted to Chief of a prestigious internationally renowned research laboratory. NOTE: He maintained that the most valuable portions of US Ph D theses were usually found in the back where the unexplained and unexpected observed phenomena were reported, such as combustion propagation at the speed of light (contrary to the textbooks then used at Purdue), and shock waves propagating upstream in supersonic flow, et al. My Ph D research under his direction concerned unsteady discontinuous propagation of sound waves in variable cross-section passages {such as dogs’ ear canals} and in free space with irregular boundaries.
f. A collateral “linkages” indicator in the US was the Citation Index: After about 1972 according to knowledgeable US authorities, the value of the citation index was largely “captured” by various advocacy “communities” which exclusively cited individuals who agreed with the ‘political’ agendas of the group regardless of professional merits of the scientific papers cited; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_index
g. Personal Experience with Affordability - publishing US research in US peer-reviewed journals, etc.: In 1962 US Government employees who were members of the Societies of some peer-journals could publish at zero cost, if their work was approved by the incumbent senior scientists who were typically NASA employees/consultants. My first submitted research paper describing experimental results was rejected bluntly because it was presumed to be false because of my age and color, and the results conflicted with decades of laboratory scale research summarized in differential calculus equations by the reviewer. Last year I learned via the Internet that my 1960’s research is still in use by the US Government, despite 50 years of re-examination and attempted improvement. I was lucky to have the first project of that kind yield results near the long term statistical mean-ideal values.
By 1980 financial cost of publishing in a peer review journal in my research area reached over $2,000 per paper for one of my papers. I ceased publishing in public peer reviewed US journals, and thereafter published anonymously in US Government peer reviewed journals from which senior US person’s extracted material for publications under their own names. Subsequently most of my research was published in that manner, which was least expensive to me and sufficed to make public the research results deemed important for the future of the US.
When I publish as do my younger (almost all are younger than me) US peers on the Internet, I do so anonymously, leaving to the intellectual ability and knowledge of readers to use that which meets their criteria for valid science, such as compliance with known laws of Physics under axiom “Trust but verify” – each paper each must stand on its own intrinsic merits.
*** ***
6. Guilds, Bunds and Associations of Dog (and Cat) researchers?
We can suggest the following categories:
1. Clinical biology laboratory research (commonly disregards health of any specific dog and health of dogs in general, disregards considerations of dog relations to humans, intellectual capacities of dogs and humans, and emotional aspects of dog-human relationships).
2. Veterinarian Medicine (predominately concerned with the health of specific dogs, cata and other animals presented to them by owners, handlers, et al.; commonly less awareness and concern for health of dogs in general, minimal considerations of dog relations to humans, intellectual capacities of dogs and humans, and emotional aspects of dog-human relationships).
3. Canine-Feline Ethology (study to achieve unified understanding of dog/feline relations with humans, with consideration if the mental, intellectual and emotional capacities of the respective species.)
4. Independent Degreed [Ph D, DVM, etc] professional research (typically publish for general audiences and not publishing in most of the accepted journals of the previous categories; i.e. possibly exemplified by S Coren and M Bekoff)
5. Independent Private/Degreed research (Typically publishing for general audiences and not publishing in the accepted journals of the previous categories; i.e. possibly exemplified by some members of the Internet communities concerned with Show dogs, blind dogs, deaf dogs, blind-deaf dogs, et al- see the proposed categories of dog-owners dogs)
6. Ad hoc private research by exceptional persons: Typically such persons publish their observations on Web sites or in samizdat that specialize in their personal areas of interest. The best observations are on a par with those personally made and reported by K Lorenz. Observations tend to be of two kinds: a) those that give insight to the behavior and abilities of specific dogs, and b) those observations that give insight to how humans interact with their dogs and their mutual expectations day to day. Opinionated reviews of observations by “ordinary non-degreed persons” by some hostile academic non-peer reviewers unfortunately tended to be rude, unkind and disparaging, as well as in violation of known laws of Physics and biology.
Many of the vital seminal discoveries of modern science, as described in the book “Creations of Fire”, 2002, and other sources were initially private research until reified by courageous men and women and applied to the public and private uses of their current society. A classic example was the common knowledge that dairy maids rarely died of smallpox, whereas rich girls almost invariably died from the disease (the dairy maids having been immunized by contracting cow-pox). Pasteur [?] is typically given credit [1]for transferring (translating) common knowledge to one of the great advances in modern medicine – preventing small pox infections. Other books were widely available describing comparable achievements in other branches of science, excepting dog and cat behavior science.
Common knowledge possessors and reviewers were ranked by order of decreasing apparent esteem. Individuals and groups often were members of several categories according to the topic and likely profit:
1. Reviewers of submissions for “peer review” journals/books.
2. Authors of submissions for peer-review journals/books
3. Professional authors-journalists for “popular” publications including Internet
4. Activist authors-journalists for popular media including Internet
5. Dog-anti-science presidiums or “cults” who oppose non-clinical research by any/every organization or person; e.g. such as <d---.org>
6. Religious organizations who object to concepts such as evolution, sentience of non-humans, etc.
7. Official Dog-breed organizations and their research foundations; e.g. AKC, DCA, --
8. Ad-hoc Dog-affiliates organizations such as Yahoo for deaf, blind and blind-deaf dogs
9. Private skilled observers (i.e. instinctive ethologists, e.g. K Lorenz as a young man?)
10. Ranchers, owners and trainers of working dogs (some such dogs are also companions)
11. Dog breeders of puppy-mills and others who treat dogs and cats as disposable agricultural products
12. Generic drunks and persons of no fixed address
*** ***
7. US Social Enforcement of Politically Correct Peer-approved Science Views
US public school children from kindergarten are taught political and religious accepted attitudes toward science, basic but incomplete science facts, and the current approved versions of science theories. Unfortunately a fair amount of political and religious advocacy gets into the classroom also. And some accidental truth: Yes, intelligent design does exist and it is humans who are doing it to their dogs, cats, cattle, chicken, turkeys and each other. Yes, human created air high temperature increases are happening in our cities, and political legislatures – just watch a radar map of rain storms vanishing as they approach the hot air of Washington, D.C, Paris, London, --.
At this time (2012) the US Federal government had not yet set uniform enforcement of educational standards for indoctrination about science, biology and world history. Control by the former USSR was believed to be more effective and uniform, which was a source of worry to USSR senior academicians by about the year 1972, as a USSR visitor to the US explained to me and some of my colleagues. A Soviet Academician visiting the US leading educational institutions indicated that they suspected that excessive political control of science research resulted in mental constipation of the majority of scientists, rebellion by the most valuable few, and worrisome failures. Personal examples follow illustrating the scope and limitations of US social control approach to public knowledge of science, from as early as the year 1948.
1. In 1st grade school, about 6 year’s age, I was punished for saying that I had seen birds flying without flapping their winds (vultures on the edges of lifting thermal uplift vortices.) Albatrosses, vultures are recognized now as able to “glide-fly” for many hours or even days at a time without active flapping of wings. Lesson-learned: Official-science can be decidedly different from reality: even a country poverty child learns to “Trust but verify!”
2. About age 10 years in a science course, after being informed that a claim was nonsense that a person about 2,000 years before the present era had walked on water, I proposed that there was no contradiction with modern science - as I had done the same. I walked on water many times – when weather had been about -20 degrees C for two weeks and the body of water was a small lake; i.e. the water at the time was ice frozen about six inches thick. Lesson-Learned: Even a child can sometimes see that official text-book peer-reviewed politically correct consensus science can be different from reality.
3. Age 14, when required to sketch a tree, I drew the shape of a tree which I saw from the window; the teacher failed my exam because the official illustration was a circle on top of a rectangle-trunk with triangle roots at the base. Lesson Learned: Comply with politically correct views and directives of persons who are more “powerful” in a particular social-political case.
4. About age 15 in high-school Physics science class I was taught that always ice forms exclusively on the uppermost surface of water if the water temperatures was 0 C or lower. I was punished for pointing out that from my personal experience – folk wisdom- the text book peer-reviewed government official science was incorrect, if the specific body of water was flowing and the solid surfaces of the container were at temperatures less than 0 C. I had observed at close range under as much as one meter of water, that indeed ice can form on the bottom of containers such as river beds with unfrozen flowing water above the ice. Lesson-learned: Students might wisely keep their silence when their experience differs from the official answers demanded for promotion by the local authorities.
5. Age about 22, when ordered to design and use a small materials-test rocket; I asked for and obtained approval of the design and materials by the local peer-experts. On ignition, the item disassembled itself, during which a ½ Kg piece passed at a height of about 1 meter above the heads of five observers. Lesson Learned: Never rely on omniscience of designated authorities regardless of their academic degrees, published papers, or other rank or prestige.
6. Age about 23, assigned to manage a US government project allegedly of importance, I designed an instrumentation system comparable to the modern BAER systems (As the system was one of a kind, no peers existed to approve.); my “beasts” typically weighted nearly 200 pounds. The project’s importance was emphasized by assignment of an astronaut (in training), to manage instrumentation. The astronaut delegated actual work to technicians. When the reports of specific tests began to show results at odds with the laws of physics, I asked for review of the instrumentation integrity-accuracy, and was officially informed that “obviously” as the youngest member of the team clearly it was my part of the project that was defective.
When the astronaut-electronics chief became absent on other duties, I chatted with the technicians whose personal ‘folk-wisdom’ about their electronics exceeded mine. The techs described their day to day preparations for my project, and their scrupulous compliance with the orders of the astronaut who possessed academic degrees much “above” mine and theirs as well as great organizational prestige and “rank.” By careful professional replies to my questions, the techs let me know that key devices had gradually failed, and on orders they “adjusted” each device to falsely appear correct during pre-test calibrations and tests. Acting with legal authority in the absence of the senior instrumentation officer, I directed replacement of the failed instrumentation at the expense of my account as project manager. Contrary to local regulations, the incident was never reported for official management attention, because the astronaut as the instrumentation manager self-reviewer deemed the event of negligible importance. [Later the astronaut-in-training died while allegedly violating safety regulations.] Lesson-learned: Neither rank, titles, nor academic degrees are proof of integrity and wisdom nor protection against consequences for him or her and others of his or her actions if a responsible authority acts arbitrarily and capriciously.
7. As “chief-scientist” of the project I had to select the material of a component that would “see” corrosive gases at temperatures approaching 5500 degrees F. The local project peer review committee gave me recommendations: a.) material must be affordable – which prohibited use of tungsten, b) during operation the material must have negligible vaporization-losses, c) materials such as copper were best, based on the peer literature, typically describing success with gram sized “beasts” during tests of milliseconds duration. My analysis of the recommendations revealed that, based on basic laws of physics (contrary to the reports of peer-academic literature), in the US only a single type of affordable industrial material, very pure graphite, satisfied the project requirements. Lesson-learned: Reliance on recommendations of local peers and US academic reports were not enough to ensure the effectiveness and safety of research for which I was responsible.
8. Official academic and textbook “folk-wisdom”: For safety, the experimentalists were protected against inherent dangers of our “beasts” (rather like placing cats in a bag while subjecting them to BAER tests, per Strain, 2011). Two types of “bags” were recommended by the peer academics: a.) woven fiberglass, b) asbestos. I the idea of using paper bags. Full size tests verified that the glass fabric and the asbestos were both harmful to the “beasts.” Paper was most affordable and performed best. Only two tests of glass and asbestos were needed, because chemistry laws (versus academic-peer “folk-wisdom”) explained the surprising results of the full scale experiments. Lesson learned: Never totally rely on official ‘peers’, regardless of the source: Trust perhaps but always verify.
9. Abuse, misuse, misunderstanding, and misrepresentations of science data by using statistics AND “compensatory adaptive mechanisms can exist”: In the US a scientist during a time span of over ten years reported that for most breeds of dogs, the more of them who were BAER tested for deafness, the fewer statistically of the breed were deaf. On the Web by 2012, persons reported that their purebred puppy miraculously recovered bi-ear hearing during its second BAER test for deafness. Possibly even more deaf dogs would have bi-ear hearing if they were offered several BAER tests, each time by a different facility and technician.
In a different statistics ploy, a deafness-in-dogs researcher seemingly noticed that by assuming a breed-wise yes-no distribution of deafness, any Breed in which a dog was ever shown to have been born deaf or by abuse or medication became deaf can be listed in a Table of the US deaf-dog Breeds. Which pretty quickly looked like he ought to have a list of all of the US dog breeds, because probably almost all dogs become deaf as they die of injuries or old age.
Lesson-learned: IF you don’t understand where the statistics numbers came from, and how the researcher got the “results” – don’t trust stuff that doesn’t make sense from your experience.
10. Cultural ignorance: In England, a published presumably peer reviewed paper described retrospective research on medieval companion animals. Allegedly a village priest described an old woman who kept a companion toad, living in woods near a village, and reported that the woman claimed to feed her toad with saucers of milk. A researcher of urban origins, perhaps in London might report a pre-publication peer-review revealing that none of his [urban?] associates believed that a toad could be fed with a saucer of milk. Actually, on rural US dairy farms about 1954, I observed occasional toads fed by fresh milk – flies and beetles were attracted to the saucered milk and the toads ate the insects. Lesson-learned: Cultural ignorance caused by lacks in the childhood-academic-religious knowledge of a researcher about the real environments of the research ethnographic subjects can result in defective conclusions.
11. English grammar can be misunderstood: e.g. about 1979 a USSR report claimed that the US launched an ICBM from a military operational silo in the state of Montana, violating treaty obligations with the USSR. Indeed the missile was from a silo in Montana, but it had been transported by truck to Vandenberg, CA where it was launched from a treaty authorized test-facility. Lesson Learned: Try to prevent grammatical uncertainties.
12. Voting on Laws of Physics: About 1971, I presented to a US government “Science Board” observations from foreign research. When I spoke to about 30 leading US scientists, I learned that the purpose of the review was to examine alternatives to expensive research then being done in Canada, where the cost was said to be about $250,000 per event. An alternative procedure could cost less than about $50 US per event. I was permitted to remain in the conference room while the Board voted on their recommendations. The debate focused on whether the less expensive procedure was possible, i.e. “If it was not possible, then the described research was a fraud.” The vote by raised hands went against the simple procedure. When I obtained experimental US data I learned that the Board had voted against a textbook-known law of Physics that mechanical vibrations travel (speed of sound) much faster in solids than in gases. Lesson Learned: Votes on the truth of laws of Physics can be silly and dangerous.
13. Sound in a converging channel: About 1971, published peer research concerning basic Physics theory indicated that the energy of a packet of sound waves entering a “cone” is squeezed by the walls to infinite temperature and pressure at the tip-apex. Experiments revealed other results: often the tip of the cone and its instrumentation were exploded violently by the high pressures and temperatures. Applying science to dogs’ ears: their ears usually are equipped with convergent variable shape flexible wall channels to their inner ears. Sharp loud sounds such as nearby gun-shots can be “amplified” to physically dangerous levels at the inner ear. US hounds were observed shaking their heads as though in pain after a companion standing nearby “bayed” loudly to announce treeing a raccoon. Allegedly in Japan, several persons were diagnosed as deafened by a dog’s barking too near the humans’ ears. Lesson Learned: Thoughtfully applies science can sometimes explain or forecast results of real-world experience by dogs and people. Computer simulation of the unsteady chemical and ionization processes were accurate within the precision of our instruments.
14. Censored lethal science knowledge: US Physics textbooks and research papers taught that a flame in a combustible mixture will only spread at its natural speed of mixing if it is unconfined and never faster than the speed of sound inside the flame if it is confined in solid walls. In the back pages of some peer-reviewed papers there were remarks about unexplained “anomalous” events in laboratories and in field use and some were disastrous. During Ph D research I learned that the official knowledge was censored to discourage stupid students and nasty people from using the anomalous processes. Lesson-learned: Neglect of anomalous observations by graduate students and dog owners can be fatal: detonations and sudden aggression by certain breeds of dogs can be fatal. Never totally bet your life on the permanent validity everywhere all the time of peer reviewed research and textbooks. Textbooks and official papers are almost always “cleaned up” to appear more logical and certain than were the events; data from miscalibrated or defective instruments (for example) are commonly ignored. Allegedly data from certain dogs were ignored for one reason or another, such as the dog died, became pregnant, dog bit technician, etc.
15. Geostationary Satellite over Los Angeles and Soccer Balls: A government spokesperson assured his audience that the Secretary of Defense had been told about a Russian space satellite stationed above the US city of Los Angeles, California. Unwisely, I spoke up to explain that any such claim was nonsense, because stationing a fixed location satellite above a city far north of the equator was impossible within the laws of Physics. The government representative assured the audience that I was obviously wrong, because nobody would lie to the Secretary of Defense. Lesson(s)-learned (a little later): a) Government officials saying silly things should be left to lie, for the same reason that sleeping dogs should be left to lie; namely that when irritated they can bite. b) A satellite in a “forced-orbit” can be kept over any spot on the earth, as for example a soccer ball placed in a geostationary forced orbit over a solid fixed place on the earth’s surface by laying it down there, c) when making public statements, beware that some person in the audience may know of a rare situation or event where your claims are falsified.
____________________
[1] From a respected peer-reviewer, Ms A.S: It was a chain reaction that far pre-dated Pasteur (1822 - 1895), started by Lady Mary Ashley Montagu (1721, using live smallpox virus to vaccinate), picked up by Dr Fewster (who came upon the idea of using cow pox)...for the rest see the entry on Edward Jenner: Smallpox : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Jenner#Smallpox [The reason I found this at my fingertips was that I happened to be reading Women of Ideas (Dale Spender, 1982), just done the section about the 17th and 18th centuries. She was reminded of Montagu and also found this quote from Frances Wright (1795 - 1852): 'All the branches of knowledge, involved in scholastic learning, are wrapped in fogs of pompous pedantry' (Course of Popular Lectures, 1829). How delightful that a woman was writing this 183 years ago already.]