From Glyn Williams
Robert Matthews says that psychologist James McConnell “did something that
would have landed Pavlov in a bit of trouble had he tried it with his dogs:
McConnell cut the worms in half”
(Review, 5 June, p 50).
Clearly Matthews is unaware of the rather unsavoury denouement to Pavlov’s
experiments, in which the dogs were indeed cut in half or, to be more precise,
beheaded. The heads were kept alive for long enough to demonstrate that they
still salivated in response to the conditioned stimulus of a bell ringing.
As far as I know, nobody got into any trouble over this. Thankfully, things
have changed since then . . . or have they?
gw@synergy-logistics.co.uk
