Larry Stern

Personal Cost — Early Years

Despite the fact that there were critics at every turn McConnell was, in fact, riding high for at least the seven years following the publication of the first regeneration study. He was not teetering on a tightrope without a safety net. Quite the contrary. First, many prominent researchers voiced their support.

Hebb was fully supportive, thanking McConnell for advance notice of the regeneration study and referring to it as work of the greatest importance:

A dozen years later Hebb still considered McConnell’s work to be somewhat of a breakthrough – even if the interpretation of the results needed revision:

Harry Harlow, editor of JCPP, was no less supportive and offered kind words of encouragement:

When McConnell asked Harlow if he could use some of his comments as supporting material in his grant proposals, Harlow readily agreed.

When, in late 1964 criticisms of the planarian work began to mount Karl Pribram, 

Karl H. Pribram was a professor at Georgetown University, in the United States, an emeritus professor of psychology and psychiatry at Stanford University and distinguished professor at Radford University.

 
 
 
 
wrote encouraging words,

Karl Gordon Bower, 
Gordon H. Bowerr is a cognitive psychologist studying human memory, language comprehension, emotion, and behavior modification. He received his Ph.D. in learning theory from Yale University in 1959.

 
 
 
 
too, voiced his support, writing that should a fight ensue, he was firmly in McConnell’s corner.

At the same time, McConnell was offered a seat at the table – he was invited to share a platform with top-flight molecular biologists and electrophysiologists at important conferences. He joined such luminaries as Seymour Benzer, 

Seymour Benzer was an American physicist, molecular biologist and behavioral geneticist. His career began during the molecular biology revolution of the 1950s, and he eventually rose to prominence in the fields of molecular and behavioral genetics.

 
 
 
 
Mack Calvin, ,

Mack Calvin is an American former basketball player.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
D.A. Glaser, 

Donald Arthur Glaser was an American physicist, neurobiologist, and the winner of the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the bubble chamber used in subatomic particle physics.

 
 
 
 
 
Marshall Nirenberg, 

Marshall Warren Nirenberg was a Jewish American biochemist and geneticist.

 
 
 
 
 
 
and Holger Hyden for a small, specialized conference on the role of RNA in memory processes at UCLA, 

The University of California, Los Angeles, is a public research university in the Westwood district of Los Angeles, United States. was a Jewish American biochemist and geneticist.

 
 
 
 
in 1962. One year later, McConnell was invited to join such heavyweights as John Eccles, 

Sir John Carew Eccles was an Australian neurophysiologist and philosopher who won the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the synapse.

 
 
 
 
 
Roger Sperry, Neal Miller, 

Neal Elgar Miller was an American experimental psychologist.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
David Krech, 
David Krech was a Polish-born American experimental and social psychologist who lectured predominately at the University of California, Berkeley.

 
 
 
 
Eugene Roberts, 
Eugene Roberts was an American neuroscientist.

 
 
 
 
– the list goes on – at the First Conference on Learning, Remembering and Forgetting held at Princeton. No ostracism, here.

Nor was McConnell hurting for money during this time. Considering only those decisions made up through 1965, we can see that the Atomic Energy Comission, 

The United States Atomic Energy Commission, commonly known as the AEC, was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by U.S.

 
 
 
 
provided close to $114,000, while the National Institute of Mental Health, 

The National Institute of Mental Health is one of 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health.

 
 
 
 
provided roughly $42,000 specifically for the planarian work in addition to a prestigious Career Development Award. In house funds from the University of Michigan amounted to $53,000.

Nor was job security much of an issue. Hot on the heels of the cannibalism studies came an offer to become the Associate Director of the Britannica Center for Studies in Learning and Motivation in Palo Alto, 

Palo Alto is a charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area.

 
 
 
 
at the handsome salary of 15K plus a percentage of the profits. By the way, that’s about 100K+ in today’s dollars – for a guy without tenure yet. McConnell spent a year there and, to get him back to Michigan he was promised – and received – accelerated promotions, coming back as Associate Professor with tenure in 1962 and promoted to Full Professor the following year.

All told, this sounds like one heckuva safety net, don’t you think?

And, quite frankly, it was good that he had it.

Personal Cost — Later Years

Circumstances changed dramatically in late 1965 when the first successful transfer experiments using rats were reported more or less simultaneously by four independent labs – none of which were McConnell’s. One of the difficulties with the planarian experiments was that many simply couldn’t believe that a worm was capable of learning, much less pass that on via cannibalism or injection. But nobody doubted that rats could learn. Although he had planned some experiments with rats, McConnell was now behind the curve. Dozens of labs tried their hand at eliciting the transfer phenomenon as the field heated up. Those that obtained promising results worked together in a spirit of cooperative competition, each trying to nail down the best learning paradigm – and then convincing the others to drop what they were doing to replicate their findings.

McConnell – a primadonna – was no longer the top dog. He switched to rats – and, in fact developed what he thought was a darn good paradigm – but he couldn’t convince others to try it out.

His grant money dwindled. NIMH refused to renew either his planarian grant or extend his career development award. Neither the National Science Foundation, 

National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering.

 
 
 
 
NASA, 

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research.

 
 
 
 
nor the Office of Naval Research, 

The Office of Naval Research is an organization within the United States Department of the Navy that coordinates, executes, and promotes the science and technology programs of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps through schools, universities, government laboratories, nonprofit organizations, and for-profit organizations.

 
 
 
 
chose to fund the worm work. NIMH passed on a proposal using amphibians as experimental subjects. The University gradually withdrew its support as well.

Most – but not all – of McConnell’s rat proposals were turned down as well.

As can be seen, a few mini-grants were awarded and, finally, NIMH approved one in 1969. The earmarked funds, however, never materialized due to governmental budget cuts. All told, McConnell’s research funds after the field moved to rats was $33,000 – roughly 10% of the amount he had in previous years.

McConnell has stated that he lost grants and that his credibility suffered because of the Worm Runner’s Digest and his tell it like it is style. Perhaps.

But letters from grant agencies cite other reasons that, on the face of it, seem equally compelling. After all these years McConnell was still asking for funds to develop a simple, reliable technique for demonstrating the phenomenon. He was still proposing parametric studies. It didn’t appear as if he’d been making much progress, while others, like Georges Ungar, was in the process of isolating and determining the chemical structure of a putative memory molecule. McConnell with no biochemist on his team, had no intention of doing this. One might say that he field had outpaced his competences and passed him by.

There is no question that McConnell felt wounded. By the early 1970s he felt slighted by other transfer workers, no longer being invited to serve on panels at meetings. And there is no doubt that many still working in the area were trying to put as much distance as they could between themselves and McConnell. But not because of his style. It was his theory that denied the importance of neural networks. It was troublesome in the beginning, and more so now that other approaches had begun to bear fruit.

By 1971 McConnell closed down his lab, began writing what was to become a best selling textbook. Living well, he always said, was the best revenge.

And he returned to one of his first loves – Skinnerian behavior modification – with the same subtlety that was his trademark.

Which brought severe criticism from Angela Davis, 

Angela Davis is an American political activist, academic, and author.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
and, far worse, from Ted Kaczynski, 

Ted Kaczynski also known as the Unabomber, is an American domestic terrorist.

 
 
 
 
 
AKA, The Unibomber.

Picture me, twenty years ago, wearing my stylish aviator sunglasses. Is it any wonder that McConnell set the feds on my trail – but that’s another story – perhaps after drinks at the banquet tonight.

But what about the transfer field as a whole? Did it suffer because of McConnell’s supposed antics? I think not.

There’s no doubt that McConnell did not do himself or his colleagues pursuing the transfer phenomenon any favors with what many perceived to be his unfortunate style of presentation. And it is certainly true that many researchers simply stopped reading the literature that continued to see the light of day as the episode proceeded. But despite all this, some stubborn facts remain:

At least 170 independent researchers or research teams devoted differing amounts of their time, energy and resources conducting transfer experiments.

These were reputable scientists – not fringe fanatics. On average, those scientists conducting MT received 3X as many citations to their work each year than their counterparts, and more in one year than most receive in 5.

Nearly 20% of transfer workers received 30 or more citations the year they conducted their transfer experiments. Typically, only 2% of all scientists do so.

More than $1 million in grants were awarded specifically for transfer experiments

Two-hundred forty-seven experimental reports were published, 75% in journals other than the Worm Runner’s Digest/Journal of Biological Psychology.

Although it is difficult to say precisely how many researchers and how much money is needed to investigate any given phenomenon, it seems to me that a critical mass had been achieved.

And to say that scientists stayed away because of McConnell – and not because of cognitive assessments… well, maybe the more pedestrian ones.

But let me conclude with one point that sorely needs to be further developed. As odd or strange or amusing as this case may appear to be, I would argue that the overall reception of this work was quite in keeping with the normal state of affairs in the scientific community. That is to say, nearly all philosophers of science – including the likes of Kuhn, Popper, Lakatos, Feyerabend, Agassi – folks who ordinarily can’t agree over whether it is raining or sunny outside – all agree that extraordinary scientific claims – claims that depart in significant ways from prevailing cognitive frameworks – must be accommodated in some way – at least for a time. There is no sure way of knowing when a claim is first introduced whether it will be a boon or a bust. Bold conjectures should be vigorously discussed and be granted a grace period, or these claims should be sheltered. And, as sociological fine-grained analysis of case studies have indicated, this is where much of the action is in science as outcomes are socially negotiated within the parameters set by cognitive constraints. But all this remains for another day.

Let’s leave the last words to McConnell: