Talk:Boiling frog

message: "While some 19th-century experiments suggested that the underlying premise is true if the heating is sufficiently gradual, according to modern biologists the premise is false: a frog that is gradually heated will jump out. Changing location is a natural thermoregulation strategy for frogs and other ectotherms, and is necessary for survival in the wild."
Okay, no. Thermolocation and thermoregulation are elementary survival mechanisms, and they are integral to the survival of invertebrates, from salamanders to fish to bison to human beings. It's pretty much being able to tell cold from hot, and we owe this facility to nerve endings called thermoreceptors. Frogs have them. So do you. Just as it would be perfectly insane to suggest that if you *slowly* increase the temperature in your Aunt Bessie's bubble bath, she will boil to death, it is perfectly insane to suggest that any other (healthy) vertebrate will suffer the same fate. This can be demonstrated syllogistically:
All VERTEBRATES have THERMOREGULATION. All FROGS are VERTEBRATES. Therefore, all FROGS have THERMOREGULATION.
If those premises are true, then what follows is also true: all (healthy) vertebrates will jump out of water as it gets dangerously hot, even if the temperature is slowly increased. Your Aunt Bessie, your Golden Retriever, and, yes, frogs too. This has been demonstrated by modern science. It is true. If these "nineteenth-century experiments" suggested otherwise, then they are false. Why does this article not make that abundantly clear? Clearly everyone likes the frog story too much to bear the truth. They want their frog story to be true—it's too good not to be true! What bunkum. This so-called 'good article' needs to be revised immediately, or else Wikipedia is King Bullshit.
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You’re an imbecile with poor reading comprehension. The paragraph you called “mealy mouthed bullshit” says the same thing you’re attempting to correct it with. Autist  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:283:4B81:9EE0:3CC5:12B2:2197:1DAC (talk) 17:31, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: The second paragraph is nothing but mealy-mouthed meaninglessness

message: * 
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~AFA ʢűčķ¿Ю 13:33, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: couple more sources which I may or may not add to the article 

message: Somebody removed it earlier, but I think it's important to mention that the debunkers cited experiments (it's not clear to me if there are multiple refs to one experiment or multiple experiments) in which the frogs were heated much more quickly than the original experimenters did.  Until somebody replicates the original experiment and finds a different result, it's not really debunked.Rsheridan6 04:00, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That does seem odd, although without knowing more about frogs I wouldn't swear that it's obviously insane.  There's an article, cited by the book from which I quoted that in the first place, that may explain it better , but I'm not paying $18 to find out.  If anybody has access to this article, they might be able to clear this up. Rsheridan6 13:51, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

text: Here's an article about a frog that dies at 85° F: .  I don't think it's implausible that a 18° C difference could kill.  Rsheridan6 13:56, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

text: I removed this sentence from the article "However, in these experiments, the temperature was increased at a rate of 2°F. per minute (or 0.019°C. per second), almost 10 times faster than the rate of temperature increase in the 1882 experiments." It's WP:SYNTH at best or WP:OR at worst. Instead I added the description of the experiment given in the sources. Siawase (talk) 07:55, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

text: Also truncated this down to a shorter sentence since it doesn't describe the outcome of any experiments: " An article co-written by G. Stanley Hall from 1887 indicates that many experiments were performed on frogs in the 1870s and 1880s for the purposes of determining how reactive their nervous systems were to various types of stimuli, with temperature change being one of these." Siawase (talk) 09:08, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

text: I am quite flummoxed how to deal with these very old sources, so I brought it to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. Siawase (talk) 05:38, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

text: Would you be ok with summarizing that long blockquote in the article instead of using the whole paragraph verbatim? Also, right now the text gives the impression that the 1883 blockquote somehow addresses the experiment described in the 1897 source: "One author sought to resolve this contradiction", but it does not - it discusses other experiments. Siawase (talk) 00:39, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: They were referring to the same experiments.  The 1897 source cites the 1883 source, which cites Goltz, and they both cite the same two older German sources.  I will try make this more clear. Rsheridan6 (talk) 03:41, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you, I think it was the unclear Sedgwick reference in particular that confused me. If anyone is up for it, I think it might be helpful to create a list of all the 19th century sources we're working with here, the citation details (author(s)/editor(s), year of publication, publisher, and whatever is necessary) as well as which researchers and experiments/papers (with year) they in turn refer to, because right now, it's really not very clear. Siawase (talk) 03:00, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

text: I changed it to cover the experiments in roughly chronological order, and to make it more clear which experiments are which so they don't get confused with review articles. Rsheridan6 (talk) 05:44, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks again, it's much clearer now. The contemporary Offerman source you found seems quite valuable, and it would probably be good to rely on it even more. I have some minor WP:OR concerns as the "3.8°C per minute" and "0.2°C per minute" rates that are now in the text does not appear to be in the Offerman source which you cite. The question is basically if the calculation falls under WP:NOR#Routine calculations. Maybe we should ask on WP:OR/N if it's ok, if we can't come to a consensus here. Siawase (talk) 11:49, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

text: I thought the calculation (showing the rate in degrees per minute) was trivial enough to fall under Routine Calculation.  If not, hopefully there's a way to make it clear that the rates differed without violating the policy Rsheridan6 (talk) 20:44, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry it so long, but I have posted asking at WP:NOR/N#Boiling frog, I hope you're still around. Siawase (talk) 13:55, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Looking at the passage again, I don't think it's really necessary.  It's clear from the previous and following paragraph that the rates differed.  I think it makes the page better to give some detail, and I have the original 1872 paper as a pdf in which the rate is given by the author as 1/350 degree per second for one of the experiments (there were several successful experiments with differing rates), but I don't know how useful that would be without context. Rsheridan6 (talk) 14:52, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

text: Scripture (the 1897 source) referenced 3 experiments, but failed to mention which one used that particular procedure. Rsheridan6 (talk) 20:41, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I can only access bits and pieces from the 1897 source via google books, so it's hard to get a good overview, but if the referencing in the book is so vague that it cannot be determined where that procedure orginated, I think that segment perhaps should be excluded from this article. Siawase (talk) 13:58, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The entire 1897 source is linked in the reference page.  Use archive.org, not Google Books.  Rsheridan6 (talk) 15:01, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

text: My mistake, it's not at archive.org, but the full text is available at Google Books.  The old link was broken so I fixed it.  I don't really understand what the problem is.  It's still an academic book from an academic publisher written by a professor in a relevant field.  If this is not good enough, surely Victor Hutchinson's unpublished experiment, and about 90% of wikipedia in general isn't either.  At any rate, if you insist we can refer to Heinzmann's original German-language paper, which is hidden behind a paywall, but that would make the article worse, not better, because it's tougher for the reader to verify. Rsheridan6 (talk) 15:17, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

text: From what I can see you edits did not remove the Offerman source, nor anything else besides the Hutchinson reference and one external link. If you look at the Hutchinson reference and the EcoViews article you will see that the reference for his homepage verifies material not found in the EcoViews article so it was inappropriate to remove it. Siawase (talk) 17:52, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  To clarify, I meant that the statements which are cited with Offerman are now cited by other sources so they don't depend on him anymore, but I see I missed one. As for Hutchinson's credentials, the Eco-Views article says "I am sending your question to Dr. Victor Hutchison at the University of Oklahoma to see what he says." which, in my opinion, establishes Hutchinson's credentials nicely. Rsheridan6 (talk) 13:10, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Both of these edits have the same issue. The references are there to verify the text in the article. When references are changed, the corresponding text should also be changed so that the text of the article reflects what the sources found in the article say. And as the Offerman reference is still in the article I don't see why you keep saying that Offerman is "no longer used" or that the text doesn't "depend on him anymore". You added the Sedgwick reference, but for the article to actually no longer depend on Offerman, the text need to be edited such that it only contains details that can actually be found in Sedgwick and the Offerman reference can be removed completely. Siawase (talk) 13:33, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Veracity

message: Adding this link here for, well, reference: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2007 January 13#Frog in boiling water Siawase (talk) 09:43, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reference desk 

message: After looking at these sources again I found a few things. First off, the "Offerman" paper is not WP:RS as it has not been peer reviewed. It's just a seminary paper. Also, the Heinzmann experiments does not refer to a submerged frog. Per Sedgwick: "the whole body was heated by allowing the frog to sit upon cork floating in a cylinder of water". Sedgwick also says that "The frog destitute of cerebral hemispheres could be heated easily, the normal frog for obvious reasons with some difficulty, until death ensued" [bolding mine] (Sedgwick p390) These sources need a closer look to be accurately represented in this article. Siawase (talk) 09:54, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I created an overview of available 1800s sources at Talk:Boiling frog/sources. Siawase (talk) 15:36, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Offerman is not peer-reviewed, but neither are any of the modern assertions that the boiling frog phenomenon is fake. I like Offerman because it's the most readable and only modern source explaining the 19th century experiments, and I like Melton because he's the main debunker and the debunking is of cultural significance, even if it's incorrect, so I think they should all stay. But if we're going to delete Offerman as an unreliable source, all of the debunkers should be deleted too, as none of them were peer reviewed. Rsheridan6 (talk) 13:50, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Rsheridan6, I'm glad you're back so we can discuss this. I'm sorry I wasn't clear. The Offerman paper is likely not WP:RS because it was never published in a peer reviewed journal or indeed under any kind of editorial control, but likely falls under self-published sources. The modern sources fall under WP:RS because they are articles published in magazines which are under editorial control. I have brought Offerman to the Reliable sources noticeboard to hopefully get some community input. Siawase (talk) 15:00, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Newspapers referencing unpublished studies and articles in "Fast Company" magazine are reliable for scientific claims but a seminar paper summarizing published work isn't? Whatever. Go ahead and delete Offerman if you want, we can just link to Sedgwick and some German language stuff that says the same thing in a less readable way. Google books has improved since 2009 so it's easier to source things now. Rsheridan6 (talk) 21:14, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Fast Company is a business magazine magazine, and a reliable source yes, and it's used to reference the opinions of experts in the relevant field. If you disagree with my assessment of the sources, please do comment at Reliable sources noticeboard, or start a new topic there on the sources you think are questionable. Siawase (talk) 21:57, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Fast Company is not a scientific source. What they cite in their commentary is the opinion of experts and their own kitchen non-experiment (no data etc).  The experts they ask cite "modern science" on critical thermal maximum, but if you look at that literature, it doesn't cover this case.  See for example "Variables Affecting the Critical Thermal Maximum of the Leopard Frog, Rana Pipiens Schreber", Roberta V. Seibe, Herpetologica, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Jun., 1970), pp. 208-213 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/3890740?seq=1), or "The Rate of Thermal Acclimation in Anuran Amphibians", Bayard H. Brattstrom and Penny Lawrence, Physiological ZoologyVolume 35, Number 2 (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/physzool.35.2.30152723).  None of these experiment with temperature changes of a fraction of a degree per minute, typically it's 10-100 times faster (e.g. 1 C/min).  The Fast Company experiment is obviously meant as a joke - they reference their "Consultant Debunking Unit".  Even taking it at face value, their "experiment" is summarized as "We placed Frog A into a pot of cold water and applied moderate heat. At 4.20 seconds, it safely exited the pot with a leap of 24 centimeters. We then placed Frog B into a pot of lukewarm water and applied moderate heat. At 1.57 seconds, it safely exited the pot with a leap of 57 centimeters."  In other words their two experiments lasted 2 and 4 seconds respectively.  The cited 1897 write-up used 0.002 centigrade per second, which in the Fast Company "experiments" would have changed the water temperature by between 0.004 and 0.008 centigrades.  If they were replicating the 1897 experiment. Which they obviously were not. Ergo, not debunked by these sources.  If you want a fair modern commentary, it would say that modern scientists do not believe the phenomenon to be real, but there have to date been no modern attempts at recreating the cited 19th century experiments.  Psm (talk) 23:08, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

text: Actually, that in itself is a myth, that you picked up along your uncritical-reading path in life.  I looked for those once.  There aren't any "scientific demonstrations", by any reasonable definition, from the 15th century claiming the world was flat.  And you haven't seen them either, you just think they exist.  In fact there isn't really much direct evidence that any remotely educated person in the middle ages ever believed that.  The closest I've come is the "Etymologiae" by Isidore of Seville from around the year 630, which, once I got past flawed modern translations, appears to have asserted that the world was a dome, or a hemisphere (Latin "duomo"). Which is actually a lot harder to disprove than you might think (and that belief might have pervaded among illiterate seamen, we don't appear to know).  The "flat earth is easy to disprove" is a straw man.  E.g. Columbus didn't argue the world was round against an ignorant populous that thought it was flat, he argued two things: (1) that the circumference of the world was (much) less than generally believed, and (2) that Asia was (much) bigger than generally believed, and those things combined created the opportunity.  That's why he didn't realize the land he found was entirely new, since it just happened to roughly match his (incorrect) calculations.  Etc etc.  "People used to be dumb but now we know better" is generally not (entirely) true.   Psm (talk) 23:08, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources on 1800s experiments 

message: This image of a submerged frog without evidence that it is being boiled is more for cosmetic purpose than for explaining boiling frog. It should be replaced or deleted.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ancos (talk • contribs) 15:07, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Per the Images guideline: "Images must be relevant to the article that they appear in and be significantly related to the article's topic." An image of a frog in an article on a story about frogs is well within that definition. Siawase (talk) 04:41, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: A partially submerged frog without evidence that it is being boiled is not significantly related to boiling frog. It is significantly related to frog or amphibian. Ancos (talk) 06:21, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, since we don't already have any free images of a frog with clear visual evidence that it is indeed being boiled alive as the anecdote describes, a Wikipedia editor would need to boil a frog and take pictures of the process in order to create such an image. In my opinion that would be unethical and cruel. I just don't get what you're after. Do you really think that an image where a frog is clearly and visibly being boiled alive would be the only acceptable way to illustrate this article? Siawase (talk) 07:19, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: According to reference # in boiling frog, the frog will not be boiled to death so there is no cruelty to the frog. A Wikipedia editor has no need to set up such experiment. An image of past experiments if any or a hand/computer drawing is enough. Even better if there is no image because readers can imagine what boiling a frog is. Encyclopedic content does not need non-explanatory decorative image. Ancos (talk) 08:46, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: What exacly would be depicted in a hand/computer drawing that is acceptable to you? If, as you say, even a photograph depicting an experiment as described in the story would not actually show a frog being boiled anyway, wouldn't it just show a frog submerged in water, ie exactly what is already used in the article? Siawase (talk) 09:04, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The normal experiment apparatus (Bunsen burner, thermometer, beaker, tripod with wire mesh) can be depicted in the image. If there is no such image, then it is better not to have image for this article for reason stipulated above. Ancos (talk) 12:51, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Most of the modern versions of the anecdote include a "pot" and "heat on low" though, not laboratory type equipment. But this is getting really tangential and hypothetical, and I'm getting the sense that you are much more interested in removing the image and making sure the article stays un-illustrated, rather than finding an acceptable alternative image. Am I wrong? Siawase (talk) 15:11, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The reason why someone already knows what to be depicted but still asks what to be depicted cannot be interpreted. Boiling frog does not need an image as mentioned above.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ancos (talk • contribs) 02:09, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

text: Here are some photos which have the right licensing and may be better:   --FormerIP (talk) 01:34, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Great find! Those look like good possible replacements or additions to the current image. Siawase (talk) 16:48, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I took those images - and for anyone interested in the ethicalness of the images, I can assure you that I released the frog unharmed back into the wet-lands after it posed for its photos. While I did turn on the burner for one photo , that was after I had already taken the frog out of the water. Jronaldlee (talk) 19:06, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for making that clear. Since there is no indication in the images that the water is actually heated it doesn't look like the frog is being harmed, but it's good to have confirmation. (Nice pictures by the way, thank you for releasing them under a free license!) Siawase (talk) 19:44, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Not quite on topic, but I find it slightly odd that culturally we are ok with dissecting a frog for the purpose of studying its anatomy, but are revolted at the idea of boiling a frog for the purpose of studying its nervous system.  At the same time, I admit to feeling equally revolted. Mysticete (talk) 14:58, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Non-explanatory image 

message: i'm new to editing wiki's. thought i might through this out here, in the cultural usage secion, should there be a mention about SOPA and how america is reacting to it? --50.35.185.72 (talk) 00:52, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Not unless it's "notable" according to Wikipedia standards... AnonMoos (talk) 06:42, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  SOPA mention? 

message: have been all over this article. I really pity anyone with the inability to understand metaphor.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.205.242.66 (talk) 20:25, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: It's pure interest at this point, buddy. no one fails to see the metaphor.Cornelius (talk) 06:35, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Literalists and autists... 

message: Ok, so I skimmed through the Talk page here, but I feel like this is one of those rare cases where the people from 100 years ago actually used science and proof over the moderns. Like some biologist and some museum curator THINK it isn't true. Well, there were experiments that showed it is. The frog jumping out in the modern experiment was heated 5 and 10 times faster than the 19th century experiments (which were verified and are repeatable), so I don't see how they debunked anything. Please let's fix this before someone decides to post a real-live experiment on Youtube and churn more innocent amphibians! Cornelius (talk) 06:38, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  19th century experiments vs 21st century HYPOTHESES