The Monkeys Made a Man

Science is powerful and makes changes to our lives everyday.  I was thinking it was time science started changing more subtle things for the better.  That is how it started.

The Monkeys Made a Man

It started off with a paper published in an obscure journal entitled Physical Effects and was hardly commented on.  Indeed so few read it, even its author felt its only saving grace was that it meant he could add one more recent publication to his CV. And it was also one less paper required yearly by his university from their academic staff.  He did no follow up research on the field and moved instead into the much more popular field of biomedical research.  Of course no one, not least the author, could have guessed that a major discovery had been stumbled on that would not only rock political and scientific circles, but also change society fundamentally and irreversibly.

In his article on neuroscience he had simply pointed out that development in understanding the plasticity of adult human brains to change had been initially driven by a discovery in the 1980’s, as a result of experiments on monkeys.  When amputation had been undertaken of limbs of monkeys it had been possible to show that the part of the brain, in the motor cortex, responsible for that limb soon moved on to monitor information from an adjacent site on the remaining body.  This research of the 1980’s raised considerable hope.  The article proposed that perhaps the understanding of a parallel plasticity of the human brain would enable recovery from serious debilitating diseases - even perhaps severing of the spinal cord.  He closed his article with a dig at animal rights activists who had managed to close one of the most productive experimental centers on the Silver Spring monkeys at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.  He commented that the progress in this field had been seriously impacted as a result.  In fact much of the experimentation on humans had been disastrous in this field as a result of incomplete testing on animals.  Of course, his article had gotten things completely back to front, but it was undoubtedly the beginning.  An economic magazine published an article on the woes of Enron and pointed out unethical practices that had foreshadowed the huge disaster.  In a throwaway comment the writer had said that it would seem the means determined the end and not vice a versa!    A clever play on words which was picked up by a researcher who had read the first article and wondered if there was a principle of sorts behind both. 

He himself had been investigating the results of data obtained form German concentration camps - a highly controversial set of experiments on human inmates that drove the frontiers of science forward but left ethics completely at the starting post.  He discovered that developments built on the back of this research had all ended badly.  From water treatments used to torture inmates, to operations conducted on twins, it seemed that the lack of morals in obtaining the results coloured the eventual use of the science.  Quoting from the earlier two papers, this researcher postulated that it would seem when progress is on the back of immoral actions, the end was invariably bad in the long term.  Sometimes the mills ground slowly but the end result seemed universally contaminated.  This article was greeted with utmost skepticism and it was not until the Rwanda massacres and the huge oil spills of the coast off Spain were traced back to their root causes that the tide turned.  Soon everyone began to accept the, “means determines the ends” principle, as it was called. 

It began to colour the actions of terrorist organizations, who, until this principle was clearly elucidated, felt that the quickest road to change was surely by violence.  It seemed almost perverse that just as terrorism was reaching a crescendo in world politics, with corruption among world leaders rife, a principle so clean and pure and devastating would be discovered.  For if the means coloured the ends what place had bombs and killings, for surely they became the death knell of the objectives of the organization for which they acted.  There was that memorable scene in the United Nations where the PLO representative burst into tears at yet another bus bomb exploding in Israel, during a press conference, and pronounced that it was not the number of Jews killed he lamented but the damage done in the action to the aspirations of a Palestinian State.  Shortly after, a leaked memorandum from the Israeli cabinet had condemned in the strongest possible terms the recent taking of innocent Palestinian lives by Israeli security forces in the West Bank, not for humanitarian reasons, but on the purely pragmatic grounds that it would negatively affect the State of Israel and cited the worrying implications of the M.D.E. (Means Determines Ends) principle.  If, as it appeared, science research was coloured by the lack of ethics, then politics probably played by the same rules.  So playing foul might have devastating consequences.  It seemed to some as if justice had become personified in the new principle, which joined Conservation of Momentum, Relativity and Quantum Mechanics in its more prosaic title, “Unethical Methodology Dominates Consequences.” 

The media tried desperately to downplay and undercut the new findings, driven as they were by very suspect and highly unethical practices.  As in Animal Farm they tried to rename the new principle ‘Demonstrated Unethical Methodology Dominates Consequences”.  By this they sought to imply that only where unethical practices were actually discovered did the principle hold.  It then seemed horribly cruel that this renaming of the principle by newspapers across the world coincided with a huge scandal in the media world.  As one wit put it, this principle did not take kindly to interference, corruption, misinterpretation or vested interests.  It seemed to have always been in play, like gravity, but its discovery appeared to underscore its virulent consequences in ways that made everyone wonder why it had taken so long to learn of its existence.  Hypocritical attempts by some politicians to hijack the new principle foundered, as unsuccessful as the media’s attempt to re-name it. 

In a strange way it was as if the rules of life had suddenly come into focus and however much the cheaters tried and the liars prefabricated, one by one they fell victim to the remorseless law.  When it found its way into the education system there was hell to pay.  For no sooner had young minds grasped the principle than they pointed out the unjust nature of human society - where large portions starved - as being undoubtedly a negative means which would impact negatively on everyone eventually.  From economics to society to parenting, people paid attention to the necessity of protecting their acts from negative means.  It took, however, two generations to actually inculcate the principle properly.  But the change was dramatic and society itself was shocked by the speed.  The older generations felt judged by the continual discovery of wrongs done with horrific consequences for today’s generations.  The younger generation felt as if they were walking an unnatural moral tight rope from which they fell repeatedly.

It took the next generation to truly feel comfortable and reassured by the principle rather than threatened by it.  However, it was leadership that was changed forever.  Desire for power was recognized as a dangerous illness and noble souls who hated positions of authority were elected into leadership positions.  They suffered dreadful moral dilemmas but were rewarded by the act of service they made in taking on the unwanted burden.  Motives were questioned and examined in detail and often endeavours completely abandoned mid development because of some major moral flaw at their foundation.  The M.D.E. principle made such sacrifices the cheaper option.  Discovering and righting a wrong drew a collective sigh of relief from society and spurred on the search for a better civilization.  Many commentators mentioned the strange historical parallel that just as humans evolved from monkeys, perhaps human society had evolved on the discovery of the dangers of our own inhumanity, and the first published evidence in that early paper chronicling the Silver Springs Monkey experiments had been the fulcrum. 

To Torture or Not.

Teaching is a funny profession.  At the end of the day it is not what you put into a student's head but what you discover hidden within, that matters.  Discovering those hidden gems is what teaching should be about.  I, on the other hand have struggled to learn this skill and have not mastered yet.  But here is an account of a good day with a good class.  I wonder what, ten years on, they are all doing now.

To Torture or Not.

Kostas came into my class crying.  A short plump boy with hair that stood as if at attention.  It looked as if it had been grafted from a husky and dyed a dark brown colour before being stuck too far forward on top of his head.  His mother was petite and quick with nervous half smiles/sneers and anxious hands.  Her eyes darted about from Kostas to the classroom, to the other children, to me and then around again.  Just once they seemed to gaze through the classroom window with a longing for something.  I pictured her as a bird trapped indoors and frantic to find freedom.  She was ignoring the fact that her son was sobbing at her side and I felt duty bound to follow suit.  I mean she was his mother.  She knew him, knew presumably what made him feel better, and soothed him.  It did not take a year of teaching for me to discover that was not the case. 

For instance, here she was talking to me, prolonging the awkwardness, when she would have been better ushering Kostas to his seat and speaking to me in private later.  Instead, above his head she whispered, “separated, doesn’t care, it’s been difficult, sensitive boy, only us now, his father…”, raised eyebrows and eloquent shrug that could have meant is a wonderful person but I was pretty sure did not.  Her words of distress beat like wings against the windows, slightly incoherent but persistent and relentless.  Please leave, I urged inwardly. 

I’ve found urging people to do or say things can be productive.  It’s not that they hear your instruction by some telepathic power; it’s more that your face betrays your hopeful expectations and that can panic most people into running away or guessing what it is you want.  Try it the next time you are having a conversation with someone and want to end it.  Just say loudly in your head, “Please go away..now!”, while smiling politely.  Your body language generally gives the game away and subconsciously or consciously they respond.  She did.  She shuffled out of the classroom reluctantly and I told Kostas to sit.  He had not stopped crying and the other children began to question him, “Why are you crying?” interspersed with,”Cry baby”, and laughs from others. 

Children are not extra cruel. They are just worse at pretending than adults, who probably think you are a crybaby but would never say it to your face only to everyone else behind your back.  To you they will mutter meaningless phrases like, “There, there..it will be alright”.  I have to say I am not a natural teacher.  In fact I’ve long announced to all who care to hear that I should not be left in the presence of small children!  Having brought up my own three I can recognize someone entirely unsuited to child rearing.  It’s not that I don’t love children.  Usually, when exposed to them long enough, I do grow to love almost all children.  I don’t lack educational skills nor determination.  I am not a nervous person. On the contrary, I’m fairly confident.  So what is it about me that makes being   with children not my forte? 

I discovered it when my eldest son was two and fascinated by a creeping insect on the dining room floor.  His face was a picture of concentration as he edged closer, tentatively and nervously, to get a better view.  I waited until he came as close as his own confidence would allow, let the silence and wonderment develop and then shouted “BOO!” and pounced on him.  He screamed satisfyingly and I hugged him, barely able to control my laughter until he stopped.  Now your own children grow accustomed to this sort of abuse.  I come from a long line of people who did this to their children.  My grandfather greeted his daughter, my Mum, one day by telling her that she had failed all her O’levels, with a deadly serious and disappointed face.  Only to announce later he had been joking.   My mother, in her turn, had a wicked habit of taking you by surprise and always, whether it was Granda or Mum, the hoots of their laughter would soothe the shock/fear or discomfort. 

When I had my own children I just could not help doing it too.  It was strangely satisfying and hugely rewarding.  When you spend all day seeing to the practical needs of a little person, it can balance things wonderfully to see them jump in surprise.  It also keeps them on their toes.  I noticed, when young, other people’s mothers were so predictable and put upon even by their own children.  My mum was a different kettle of fish entirely and it wasn’t fear that stopped me provoking her, more a dread of her sense of humour.  After all even when you were good, things could happen, so why put your head in the noose?  There was hardly any shouting with my Mum, just lots of laughter - as if bringing up children was such an effortless thing that only really unimaginative Mums did it without a backdrop of easy good humoured torturing and constant laughter.

So here I was teaching a small class of 9-11 year olds for a year and torturing them as I’d been and they seemed to enjoy it just as much!!  For example, one game I designed consisted of me going around the class and accusing each child of different crimes in turn.  I would play the role of prosecuting attorney and the accused would be put in an impromptu dock in front of the class, or in this game the jury.  I would begin, ”I put it to the jury that the plaintive did, on the 4th of this month, a terrible deed.”  Silence would usually follow as I would try and come up with some novel crime that I had not used before.  Tiny, sensitive girls would at first be shaken to be singled out for such treatment but rapidly grew more capable. 

Small bird-like Alex, who everyone took pencils from (she always kept an immaculate pencil case) was typical.  I never heard her say even an aggressive word to anyone in the class and in the face of downright rudeness just endured silently and sadly.  She had stammered a blushing feeble excuse on her first time in the dock but shocked us all the second time.  I accused her of killing a famous actor.  When she claimed she had not done it I asked her why his body parts had been found in her school bag!  There was a delicious moment of shocked silence as the class listened and stared at our gentle Alex.  How would she get out of this?  Talk about a tough situation.  Alex lifted her chin and proceeded to tell the class exactly how she had killed him and dismembered his body with a chainsaw and how the blood had flowed everywhere.  With every new revelation the class rocked in riotous approval and by the time she ended her account with putting his fingers and toes in her school bag the class was hysterical with laughter.  To crown her success the jury voted her innocent on the grounds of her total honesty about it all.  As Alex walked back to her desk, head held high, a free person, she seemed taller, smarter and more in control than any of us.  As a teacher I was totally unorthodox, of course, and a danger, but the kids loved the fact that for the whole hour they were with me, things were unpredictable, surprising, provoking but never boring.

Kostas, when put in the dock would squirm while being accused, like a puppy wanting to be patted but unable to stay still to enjoy it.  Once my accusation had been made he would answer with the same line in his defense to everything.  Only the order of the phrases ever changed.  “I wasn’t there.  I didn’t do it.  It wasn’t me.”  This would be repeated again and again despite everything I said and the rest of the class would groan and find him guilty every time.  But for some reason Kostas loved it.  Delighted in this game.  In fact sometimes when things were really fraught at home he would come up to me at the end of the class and beg for two more crimes.  Tired, I would be packing away my books and wanting to be off home, but Kostas would be there in front of my desk holding up two fingers with the other hand and pleading ,”Only two!  Please, please, please..?”  So as the room emptied I would accuse him of some dastardly crime and he would glow with contentment and wriggle in excitement until he was allowed to come out with his final, usual punch line. “I wasn’t there.  I didn’t do it.  It wasn’t me.”  One more. His eyes again would blaze in delight, quivering as every detail of his crime was absorbed and he could once again use his deadly defense.  Sometimes I gave in to his requests and mostly it was to see his happiness as he sailed out of the class beaming at his own cleverness - and no jury to ruin his great moment.  

Another game was the .”Do Something New Game.”  It started simply enough.  I would get everyone to sit in a circle and begin clapping my hands. Everyone would copy me.  Then I would point at someone else and shout change and they would have to do a new action that everyone else would copy.  You could not re-use any action that had already been done.  I found that children nowadays lacked creativity and this game would gradually make that apparent.  The longer it went on the more panicked players became as change was called and no more original gestures could be conjured up.  Soon cries of “we’ve already done that”, or “same, same..” would be directed at the victim who would look at their hands in despair desperate to find something new to do with them as everyone else looked on in disgust and delight at their predicament.  One child burst into tears and cried “No one has taught me this game before”, a comment I took to be a condemnation of our whole education system. This was greeted with hoots of derision as others pointed out no one had been taught this game. 

Usually there was one child who just never ran out.  Every time I would shout change and point at them they did not hesitate and would tap/twist/point/scratch/slap something totally and wonderfully original that everyone would be stunned by.  They would betray their skills by having a completely relaxed posture and you just knew they could go on for a complete lifetime with novel inventions.  Watching those knowing eyes is a rare privilege and their creativity is contagious.  Children love games and they love to get better at them, so they watch and they learn.  Gradually they all became so good that I would introduce ridiculously unfair rules.  “Today you can only move one finger on one hand.”  But towards the end of the year, whatever tortuous rule I thought up, I would be faced with a circle of confident faces daring me to really challenge their expertise.  That’s the really scary thing about teaching.  Pretty soon you realize that however fast you try, progress, adapt, the little guys in front of you are a hundred times faster.  Their ability to learn, change and adapt is truly frightening and at times I would feel like a carthorse trying to control a herd of thorough breeds.  But the laughter was good.  Oh, how I loved to hear the class laugh.  A great big belly laugh from all of them that cleared from the room all the worries, jealousies, fears and nastiness.  Hope, encouragement, growth, progress, change all felt suddenly possible and in their happiness I glimpsed the real joy of teaching.

A Process Genius

Everyone you meet teaches you something.  At times it reminds you how different we all are and that alone is a precious gift.  I don't know about the rest of you but a world filled only with types like me would be truly awful!  So here's a tale of gratitude that you are unique and maybe one day I'll get to learn from you too.

A Process Genius

Working in the small office in the physics department had its drawbacks. There were three of us in the office and our desks practically touched. That could have been considered cosy if it had not been for Ronnie’s BO. He was a longhaired, beer-bellied, cheerful chap whose excitement about jazz and films kept him in a permanent sweat.

Ronnie was in the process of completing his PhD in metal-semiconductor interfaces and was one of the most unlikely looking research students in the department. With his fat pink face and round spectacles mounted on a curved double chin, atop a rotund torso, supported by a pregnant belly and tiny legs he had the chubby cheerful comical look of a truly stupid person.

When he went to the states for a six-month research project we found ourselves missing his cheerful presence. “In the States”, Ronnie gave us his impressions after returning, “everything is wrapped in cellophane and packaged to sell, even the people. These guys kept coming up to me and telling me I smelt! I told them I knew that, but they kept coming to say the same thing.” The thought of our Ronnie being singled out made me feel curiously defensive for him.

He got excited over jazz and films and would watch these weird pieces involving nothing more than a shot of a door, zooming in close and then panning out again. They never had a plot and left you feeling disorientated like a migraine headache. Ronnie would wax lyrical about the hidden meaning, the symbolism, the captivating photography, the subtlety of expression, the minimalist approach etc. It didn’t take much to amuse Ronnie. He would form a square frame with his fingers and examine various perspectives of the corner of the office for an hour. On one memorable occasion he was captivated by the empty dejectedness of a garage forecourt at night and while searching for the best angle for a camera shot managed to fall down a flight of steps and badly bruise one side of his face. Watching him in the student film theatre quivering with excitement at the jazz sound track of another useless film, I could only envy his passionate love of such things. The rest of us could only sit appalled by the pathetic acting and plot but Ronnie was in a state of ecstasy over the sound track alone. It was all that was needed to transport him to another plane.

I treated my tutorials as SAS assignments. Prepared for those unexpected stinker questions, underlying hidden principles, past exam questions were consulted in detail. Even so the tutorials were tricky as the students we were teaching had distinct advantages. Not only were they reading textbooks and papers and having lectures on the subjects covered but for us it had been usually four years since we’d encountered many of the topics. Time has a way of blurring the memory and erasing the finer detail and eroding one’s understanding.

Ronnie seemed to sail through his tutorials unprepared and unscathed. His technique was unusual and effective, based more on chemistry rather than physics. When the situation, during his tutorial, became fraught with difficult concepts and questions, etc, Ronnie would let off a couple of pluffs, his ‘slow and deadly ones’ as he called them. In the small cramped tutorial rooms this form of chemical warfare was incredible successful. “That soon shuts them up”, he explained enthusiastically.

Ronnie also had a different approach to experiments. All his were done on a department made ultra-high vacuum machine that the rest of us called “The Pig”. It was temperamental and had a definite will of it’s own. This machine would only work in Ronnie’s hands. He would stroke its metal curved body with infinite love and patience coaxing her to do her stuff. Mind you perhaps a lot of his success was due to his unusual data handling. For me the data that arose from experiments was akin to the Holy Grail, something to be respectfully analysed and examined. Ronnie had an altogether alternative approach. The grotesque care he took with getting his machine to perform was juxtaposed by his totally cavalier attitude to the data actually produced. Points that did not conform to the appropriate straight line on the log graph paper were simply moved. Either nudged slightly until they lay in the right place or if totally unacceptable just erased. Ronnie had no scruples about a search for eternal truth. He was a process person. The end result was not really important.

Everything seemed strangely inverted. All that was vital and critical to me, scientific truth, laws, discovery, etc, were playthings to Ronnie that deserved nothing more than his casual attention. Jazz and film, these were the bread of his life and were analysed with scientific precision and passion. Undertones felt, quality of colour, scenery, directors - these were the serious issues. The rest were pastimes, a mere game for the philistines.

Getting a PhD is a painful affair and for Ronnie no less than the rest of us, it caused its fair share of pain. He likened getting doctored to being castrated and swore our professor kept the organs of every successful student in huge glass sealed jars on a shelf beside the hardbound copy of each of their theses in his office. As his theses was nearing completion he would often groan and mutter. “It’s the bloody slowness of being de-balled I can’t stand. I mean for cattle it’s one quick snip and they’re gone. I feel I’ve been having mine ripped off for over a year now!”

Towards the end of his work Ronnie developed a strange form of paranoia. Having written seven chapters of his thesis he became anxious in case this material so long sweated over should accidentally be lost. He kept one copy in the boot of his car, another in his case which he carried everywhere and a third in the office. This caused it’s own problems as when he did corrections he never remembered which version he’d been working on. As a result he ended up doing three sets of corrections, each slightly different.

One of his closest friends in the department was James. James tackled everything in life with earnest sincerity. He was the only theoretical physicist among us experimentalists. He investigated the theory behind some of the instruments that we used to study our semiconductor surfaces. As a result, James was always in a state of doubt. We just took data and plotted and interpreted. James fretted over the edge effects, spurious anomalies. And as a result, data was not points on a piece of paper to him but the end point of a complicated projectile path subjected to magnetic, electric and gravitational fields, absorption, reflection and God knows what else. He regarded data as an evil confusion seeking to lure the unwary into hasty interpretations. Ronnie summed it up one coffee break “ The problem with James is that he’s so far ahead of us all he’s coming up behind!’

Ronnie got his PhD and typically then left to do a course on movie making. He wanted to do what he loved. He had a kind of genius. I doubt he’ll ever make a brilliant film or become famous because he’s a real genius who is only interested in the perfection of the process, not the finished article. There’s a kind of admirable fidelity about that kind of genius. I hope wherever he is now, there’s jazz music playing and a screen nearby because his happiness could then be guaranteed. That’s one of the many advantages of being a process genius: your happiness is not in the finished product (whatever illusive goal that might be) but in the here and now. That quite simply is enough.

Laura Is A Pig and What Can We Do?

Childhood is a fraught time!  I did not enjoy school and for many years when passing my old school had an irrational urge to roll down the car window and spit!  I have matured since then and now just avoid the town completely.  Here is a memory of those days.

Laura Is A Pig and What Can We Do?

When I was a child, life was so fragile. It wasn’t that my family was not loving, nor my school so very awful; it was just the fact that every aspect of one’s life was so obviously dependent on others. That dependence meant that when things went wrong in the playground, at home, in me or wherever, there was always that deep conviction that I, a child, couldn’t really do anything to change matters. Your very happiness, existence, recognition lay in others’ hands. The process of life that has gradually empowered me to believe that I am in control (well, in any event, more in control of myself than any one else) has soothed the ageing process. Those who announce at dinner parties that childhood was the happiest time of their lives quite stun me still.

I have a vision of being back in room 4L, doing Maths with Mr Bell, whose room not only rhymed with hell, but also at times seemed it. Those dreadful expectations that adults make of children whatever their circumstances - homework. How many children have longed to announce ‘the reason I was unable to do my homework last night was because my Dad has left home and the sound of my Mother’s constant crying has signalled the collapse of my entire life’. The completion of homework in such circumstances is a bit like expecting the condemned man to fill in his tax returns just before being executed.

At school we had a lovely teacher, a Mr Smyth - good teachers do exist - who had returned to N. Ireland after teaching in Africa for decades. He was quite old and spoke Swahili. He said, one day in our class, ‘the only sure sign of intelligence is adaptability’. Strange how twenty years later I can quote what he taught verbatim. I suppose that is what a good teacher can achieve. Anyway he had been to a funeral one morning, and was teaching us Geography still dressed entirely in black. Laura Pickett, a pratt by any other name, began to cheek him. It started simply but she became more and more strident. The rest of us were embarrassed as he couldn’t control her, in fact he couldn’t control himself and suddenly his head sank into his hands and he started sobbing. His grief was raw and terrible and he left the room. There was a horrid stillness followed by a giggle from Laura. I don’t know who started it, but someone began singing in that familiar school singsong voice ‘Laura is a pig, Laura is a pig’. Everyone began to join in, and so did I. The sound became a crescendo of noise as feet and hands banged the incessant, triumphant message. ‘Laura is a pig, Laura is a pig’. She couldn’t stand it for too long, but it seemed satisfyingly long for the rest of us. She burst into tears and ran out. She ran straight to the headmaster’s office. The entire class was hauled before the headmaster and there we were asked, “How could we be so cruel, to the smallest girl in the class, to an orphan”? I didn’t know Laura had no parents and as we all stood shoulder to shoulder in his dark wood stained office, a part of me screamed at the unfairness of Laura’s parents being dead, and the horrendous grief of Mr Smyth. But mostly I screamed inside at the helplessness of any of us to make it all better.