Reply: The myth of a myth

نویسنده

  • Tim Tully
چکیده

Tim Tully recently gave a fascinating account of his mission to Russia to find the names of Pavlov’s dogs [1]. Unfortunately, his essay perpetuates one of the most enduring myths in science: that Pavlov routinely used a bell in training salivary conditioning in dogs. Tully says: “For several repetitions, Pavlov would ring a bell just before giving food to a hungry dog. Before long, he noticed, the dog started salivating whenever it heard the bell.” This description is fiction. One may hunt in vain in the famous work cited [2] for any such mention. Pavlov related there that he used, among other conditioned stimuli, a buzzer, black square, mechanical stimuli, rotating object, “hooter”, whistle, lamp flash, even electric shock, and most often, the sound of a beating metronome. But never a bell. Thomas [3] noted that Pavlov, in an early published lecture [4], did make brief mention of the use of the “violent ringing of a bell”. But Pavlov cites this case only to indicate its unsatisfactory effect on salivary conditioning. Significantly, no trace of this experiment was included in Pavlov’s later major account of his research [2]. Thomas also noted early secondhand accounts, not in a scientific publication but in Time magazine, of Pavlov’s use of a bell. These are the sole references known of the use of this stimulus by Pavlov in salivary conditioning. So the idea that Pavlov habitually used a bell in his salivary conditioning research and that his discoveries are founded on this particular stimulus is doubtful, despite its nowlegendary status. We can ask for whom the bell tolls, but we know this: it wasn’t for Pavlov’s dogs.

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عنوان ژورنال:
  • Current Biology

دوره 13  شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2003