Bees' independence of opinions?
Several weeks ago Peter Borst and others provided considered
commentary about research by Tom Seeley and co-workers about swarm
movement. The same sort of attitude they expressed is evident in a
two-part series of articles by Emily Smith and Gard Otis, as published
in March and April in the American Bee Journal. In that two-part
series Smith and Otis insisted that they had finally “resolved” the bee
language controversy in favor of the bee language hypothesis.
I apologize for my delay in response to those contributions.
My delay has been largely due to my responsibilities as President of
the Western Apicultural Society (activity related to a conference to be
held 24-27 July in Buellton, California). That position has meant that
I have been almost solely responsible for locking in a convention
center, negotiating good rates at an adjacent motel, lining up an
exciting line of speakers, getting out publicity, arranging for a
western-style barbeque, etc.
In addition, I was invited to be one of five Plenary Speakers at the
Eighth European Congress of Entomology, to be held next September in
Izmir, Turkey. That entails getting air travel at a reasonable rate,
arranging hotel accommodations, working up an abstract (due next week),
etc.
Both the Beekman, et al. American Scientist article (“How does an
informed minority of scouts guide a honeybee swarm as it flies to its
new home?” alluded to by Borst) and the Smith and Otis contributions
fail to account for the fact that rational cases can always be made for
any hypothesis or another, particularly if one ignores evidence at
variance with “Ruling Theory.” (That last term was coined by Thomas
Chrowder Chamberlin in an 1890 Science article, reprinted in that same
journal in 1965.) In his opening comments, Chamberlin wrote, “… The
process of thought and its results must be individual and independent,
not the mere following of previous lines of thought ending in
predetermined results.”
Chamberlin added: “There is an unconscious selection and magnifying
of the phenomena that fall into harmony with the theory and support it,
and an unconscious neglect of those that fail of coincidence. The mind
lingers with pleasure upon the facts that fall happily into the embrace
of the theory, and feels a natural coldness toward those that seem
refractory. … There springs up, also, an unconscious pressing of the
theory to make it fit the facts, and a pressing of the facts to make
them fit the theory. … The theory then rapidly rises to the ruling
position, and investigation, observation, and interpretation are
controlled and directed by it. From an unduly favored child, it
readily becomes master and leads its author whithersoever it will.”
For much more on this topic, see:
http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/biossep1993.htm
Seeley and co-workers assumed a singular line of reasoning (bee
language is real), as did Smith and Otis, and worked hard to gather
results in agreement with that ruling theory. Unfortunately, in some
of the Beekman, et al. experiments, they coated the Nasanov glands with
enamel paint, thereby providing a very distinctive odor into their
experimental design — and then concluded odor was not a factor in swarm
movement.
I mostly prefer the excellent account of swarming in the two-part
series by James Tew in the March and April issues of Bee Culture, as
well as another odor-search explanation that I published in the
American Bee Journal back in 1992 (not cited by Seeley and co-workers),
as follows: http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/abjjan1992.htm
Smith and Otis, in their “resolution” of the bee language
controversy could also have benefited from studying the Chamberlin
account. Instead, they “pressed the theory to make it fit the facts
and pressed the facts to make them fit the theory.” In doing so, they
omitted the solid evidence at variance with the language hypothesis
that I had earlier provided them. They thus did not achieve
“resolution.”
Pat Wells and I will have a letter to this effect in the American
Bee Journal in the July issue, and I have covered this topic in more
detail at: http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/abjmar_aprreply.htm
Finally, is it possible that “bees can do math”? (as suggested in
Peter’s later posting). I view that explanation as just another
attempt to shore up the beleaguered dance language hypothesis.
Adrian M. Wenner (805) 963-8508 (home office phone)
967 Garcia Road [log in to unmask]
Santa Barbara, CA 93103 www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/index.htm
“The more persuasive the evidence against a belief, the more virtuous
it is deemed to persist in it.”
Robert Park — 2000 (Voodoo Science)
Adrian M. Wenner (805) 963-8508 (home office phone)
967 Garcia Road [log in to unmask]
Santa Barbara, CA 93103 www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/index.htm
“The more persuasive the evidence against a belief, the more virtuous
it is deemed to persist in it.”
Robert Park — 2000 (Voodoo Science)
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