Approved For Please 2001/03/26
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s mav react
to the same sound ~
I
"
r,
monkeys may react
to the same sound
quite differently.
The vervets are not absolutely consist-
ent about what intruder triggers an alarm
call, so the scientists in the field kept track
of
the
“mistakes." They found
that
the
adult monkeys seldom
err, juveniles
err
more frequently and infants err most fre-
quently of all. The juveniles, for instance,
give the eagle call on occasion at the sight
of an innocuous bird such as a stork or a
spoonbill. Infants carry their caution even
further; one gave the eagle alarm at the
sight of an airborne leaf.
‘Although they make mistakes, there is
an order to the errors," Marler says. The
young monkeys, for instance, may give an
eagle call at the sight of a pigeon, but they
never mistakenly give the eagle call in re-
sponse to a leopard.
“It’s as though they
have a generally preordained mechanism,
which specifies that the eagle alarm call
should be given to something that may be
defined as ‘moving up above’ of a certain
size and with a certain trajectory,” he pro-
poses.
Initially
for
the young monkey,
many
stimuli
satisfy
that requirement.
Gradually, however, the animals’ percep-
tion becomes more
discriminating,
like
children sharpening their semantic sense,
Marler says.
Marler suggests
that
these animal
studies
offer a glimmer of hope
for ex-
perimental elucidation of the process by
which a child brings “innate knowledge” to
the task of developing understanding. “We
blind ourselves
to
the prospect of new
discoveries if we insist on treating animals
as though
they were automata. The
knowledge they have of companions and
their surroundings is probably as intricate
and complex as our own, though with an
emphasis that is unique to each species,”
Marler says. In other work Marler observes
among songbirds a complex mix of innate
tendency, imitation, modification and in-
vention (see p. 362). In discussion at the
.
recent meeting in Atlanta of the Society for
Neuroscience, James
L. Gould of Prince-
ton
University challenged the
idea
that
complexity of a behavior necessarily im-
plies cognition. He says that what appears
to be animal
awareness and
intentions
may just be preordained, preprogrammed
learning
routines combined
with
scien-
tists' ignorance of how complicated such
programs can
get.
His work with
bees
(SN:ll/17/79, p. 342) indicates that appar-
ently complicated feats of communication
can be
described
by simple
rules
that
could be genetically determined.
Donald R. Griffin of Rockefeller Univer-
sity emphasizes the importance of gather-
ing information about whether nonhuman
animals have intentions or are aware of
themselves in relation to their surround-
ings. “A cognitive ethology can thus hope
Fluoride: Prevents
caries longer
Tooth decay may not be the most seri-
ous or
painful
health problem
in
the
United States, but
is probably the most
common and certainly the most enduring.
Most — but not
all — dental researchers
consider
fluoridation
the most
effective
means
of preventing
dental
caries
(SN:
9/1/79,
p.
152). Now,
in the most recent
follow-up
of a
clinical study started
in
1969, it looks as
if fluoride’s protective ef-
fects continue after treatment with fluo-
ride tablets ceases. A year and a half after
treatments were discontinued,
the
chil-
dren in the Wayne County, North Carolina
Public Health Service study who had re-
ceived one or two fluoride tablets daily for
six school years had fewer dental caries
than those who had received a flavored
placebo
tablet. Both
during and
after
treatment, the fluoride group had between
32 and 35 percent fewer caries than the
control group.
The study — conducted by Wiliam
S.
Driscoll, Stanley B. Heifetz and Janet A.
Brunelle of the National Institute of Dental
Dean justifies
psychic research
isions
to illuminate the fundamental dim
of those attApt^nOViSCkr
o
and which, in their most versatile manifes-
tations, are the sources of our most pro-
Many respectable scientists, from Ein-
stein on down, have speculated on
the
credibility
of
so-called
“psychic”
phenomena and on how they can
be
studied
scientifically. Generally such
ef-
forts
to legitimize
this study have been
thwarted by the obvious presence of char-
latans and fools among reputed psychics
and by open hostility from the scientific
community at large. Perhaps worst of all,
few new theoretical or experimental ap-
proaches to the subject have been gen-
erated.
Now a fresh set
of
“psi” experiments
involving
sophisticated
technology
has
been designed by Princeton University’s
dean of Engineering and Applied Science,
Robert
G. Jahn, and
his co-workers. Al-
though Jahn is not yet ready to publish any
conclusive
results, he has offered some
thoughts on a
theoretical approach
to
psychic phenomena and has concluded
that “once the overburden of illegitimate
activity and irresponsible criticism
is re-
moved, there is sufficient residue of valid
evidence to justify continued research.”
Jahn,
best known
for
his
pioneering
work with plasma discharges, summarized
his two-year experience with psychic re-
search
during a recent science
writers’
meeting in Palo Alto
Research— started in 1969 when the 1,064
children were
in
first or second
grade.
After the original check-up, they were re-
examined
at
intervals
of 30 months, 55
months and six years. Following the six-
year
check-up,
the
fluoride/placebo
treatments were stopped. Then
in
1977,
after one and a half treatment-free years,
354 children who had also been checked
after six years were re-examined. This ex-
amination showed
that
“...
cariostatic
[anti-caries]
benefits continue to be ap-
parent
for
both
[one and
two]
tablet
treatment procedures at the end of seven
and one half years— Thus, the caries pre-
ventive benefit did not diminish as a result
of discontinuing such treatment.”
The study examined not only the pro-
tective effects of fluoride tablets, but also
looked at the cost-effectiveness of using
the treatment on large numbers of chil-
dren. Overall, the fluoride treatments cost
about $25 per child for six school years
and — if the post-treatment period
is in-
cluded — prevented 3.65 “decayed, miss-
ing or filled” tooth surfaces from occurring
in each child during seven and a half years.
This means that it cost about $7 to prevent
each decay, compared with the $10 to $20
it costs to have a decayed tooth filled.
Chart produced by physical changes in a
Fabry-Perot interferometer clearly shows
different effects when a subjectjust relaxed
(base) or tried to influence the instrument
through psychokinesis (PK).
Cl
mot
tion of anecdotes of spontaneous events,
which tend to be spectacular but unverifi-
experiments,
results
of which
can
be
scrutinized
but
not
clearly
interpreted.
What the Princeton researchers have tried
to do is design experiments in which the
jto statis-
The work started when an undergradu-
ate, Carol K. Currv. asked Jahn fn
fica
data
processing
skills. The
researchers NASA back into
began
with
soffie
simple
extrasensory
,,
n
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we were indeed capable of generating ef^^
fects to study”— then moved on to design-
ing equipment to measure psychokinesis
— a palpable disturbance
of a physical
system by thought alone.
The
psychokinesis
experiments
illus-
trate well why such research can be both
tantalizing and frustrating. Rather than try
to reproduce spectacular, “macroscopic”
effects, such as spinning a compass with-
out touching it (which has been reported
i
, poorly documented studies), Jahn and
‘'urry concentrated on
easily observed
nicroscopic” phenomena. In one exper-
aent, a subject was to raise the tempera-
:
re of a thermistor by a few thousandths
a degree. In another, the goal was to
Tange the separation of two mirrors in a
i abry-Perot interferometer by a hundred-
thousandth of a centimeter. The observa-
tions were
specific and even
dramatic.
Subjects
did,
indeed, seem capable
at
times of raising the thermistor tempera-
ture or changing the optical pathlength of
tiie interferometer at will. But neither ex-
periment was
fully “reproducible”
in the
scientifically accepted sense: The effects
varied unpredictably from person to per-
son and from day to day. Because of this
unpredictability, Jahn prefers to
call the
results of work so far "tutorial” rather than
technically
conclusive.
That
is,
they
should be used as models for more exten-
sive research rather than as any sort of
“proof”
of
the
validity
of
psychic
phenomena.
Nevertheless,
analysis
of
these experiments has offered two impor-
tant insights that can be further tested in
future research.
First, the ability to produce measurable
psychic
effects appears
to be
trainable.
Neither Jahn nor Curry was aware of any
initial psychic ability and both got better
as they went along. An important element
in such training appears
to be feedback
that is “visible and attractive,” Jahn says.
Second, Jahn speculates
that psychic
phenomena may have an inherently statis-
tical
nature.
If so, theories dealing with
such phenomena
are
likely
to
involve
abstruse concepts
related
to
the
for-
malism of quantum mechanics or statisti-
cal mechanics,
rather than some
easily
grasped intuitive explanation. In particu-
lar, psychokinesis appears to involve a re-
duction of entropy— a statistical measure
of disorder— and the equivalence of phys-
ical “information" and energy.
An ad hoc committee of the university
has established a charter for Jahn’s work
on psychic phenomena to proceed and he
has brought in developmental psycholo-
gist Brenda Dunne to work full time on the
program. In an interview Dunne said that a
growing number
of reputable
scientists
are becoming active in psychic research,
but that “the field as a whole is struggling
for recognition as £ legitimate science.”
RCA Satcom HI: Due soon, but then what?
Satellite communications, more
inti-
mately woven into contemporary life than
perhaps any other aspect
of Space Age
technology, owes much of its solid footing
to years of research and development by
the National Aeronautics and Space Ad-
ministration, which was ultimately able to
pass on most of the effort to private indus-
try as a self-sustaining enterprise. In 1973,
prompted by tight budgets, nasa virtually
dropped its R and D program in the field.
Now nasa
is back in the game, with a
five-year program “aimed at retaining U.S.
world leadership in satellite communica-
tions research and technology.”
Several factors have contributed to the
restored
effort:
Early
in
1977, a special
committee
of
the
National Research
Council’s
Space
Applications
Board
strongly recommended just such action
(SN: 4/9/77, p. 231). A year later, President
Jimmy Carter’s reorganization plans pro-
duced the National Telecommunications
and Information Administration, charged
in part with easing the way for nasa com-
munications
experiments
into commer-
cial use. Further support came from vari-
ous federal agencies and industries in the
form of responses to a questionnaire from
the White House's Office of Science and
Technology Policy. The satellite-allocated
portions of the communications spectrum
have become increasingly crowded, and,
nasa points out, the U.S.
is facing more
foreign
technology competition.
The new nasa effort, based at the agen-
cy’s Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, is
concentrated on
the high-frequency, 20-
to-30-gigahertz portion
of the spectrum
known as the Ka band. Lower frequencies
are fast approaching saturation, and, says
nasa’s Donald
K. Dement, “this Ka-band
allocation is the last potential opportunity
for significant new capacity to be devel
power levels.” But, he adds, “this band has
been inadequately explored, and technol-
9€^78^ROO^0GH9SOti26,yer
intne United States? The agency will be
studying multi-beam antennas, on-board
signal-switching and other technologies,
but there is far more to the satellite com-
munications problem than the opening of
additional frequencies.
As the sab committee’s report empha-
sized, there are many potential
satellite
communications users who are too small
or widely scattered
to form a
feasible
commercial
market. The Ka band
is
primarily
relevant
to
large-scale,
wide-
band
traffic, while the small users often
can use
narrow-band, lower-frequency
equipment — which
is
also
less
costly.
Some of nasa’s new technologies will be
applicable there, but much of the small-
user
activity
is
being studied amid
a
thicket
of
other
agencies and
organi-
zations. The matter
is thorny — and
far
from solved.
O
Lasker Awards:
DNA and the brain
The 1979 Albert Lasker Basic Medical
Research Awards were presented to three
scientists whose basic research has po-
tential for
clinical as well as laboratory
use. Roger W. Sperry of the California Insti-
tute
of Technology
received
a
$15,000
award for his investigations into the work-
ings of the brain’s hemispheres, and Walter
Gilbert of Harvard University and Freder-
ick Sanger of the Laboratory of Molecular
Biology
in
Cambridge, England shared
another $15,000 for their independent de-
velopment
of new methods
of
rapid
sequencing of dna.
In 1953, Sperry developed the technique
of “split brain” research, in which he se-
vered the bundle of nerve fibers that con-
nects the two halves of the brain. He dis-
covered that the two hemispheres func-
tion independently
in
this situation; the
right brain does not know what the
left
brain is learning. Sperry found that the two
halves of the brain govern two sets of ac-
tivities; there is no one “dominant” hemi-
sphere for all mental processes.
The second Basic Research Award was
presented jointly to Sanger and Gilbert (a
1949 Westinghouse Science Talent Search
winner), whose
rapid sequencing
tech-
niques will allow molecular biologists to
discover
the sequence
of dna compo-
nents
in a few days, instead
of months.
Gilbert’s method uses chemical reagents
to break
the dna
molecules
into
frag-
ments, and
Sanger’s employs an
enzy-
matic
reaction
in
its sequencing proce-
dure.
The Lasker
Special
Public
Service
Award was presented to Sir John Wilson,
President of the international Agency for
; a leeitimate science, u
ior sigmiicaui new eupcieny
iu uc ucvci-
the Prevention of Blindness
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NOVEMBER 24, 1979
359