Pavlov 'baffled'
LENIGRAD, 09-13-2015 - Nobel Prize-winning physiologist Professor Ivan Pavlov, 165, told reporters of his bafflement at a press conference Monday. 'Gentlemen, I thank you for your kind acknowledgement of my work with dogs. As you know, in 1903 I demonstrated in my paper to the 14th International Medical Conference that a conditioned reflex could be established in higher animals.'
[Prof. Pavlov here briefly outlined his key finding that if dogs were conditioned to associate the sound of a bell ringing with food, they would start to drool simply on hearing the bell, 'knowing' the food would appear.]
The atmosphere at the press conference became electric as Prof. Pavlov courageously turned to the phenomenon that threatened to undermine his life's work. 'I have to tell you that I have found a serious experimental challenge to my hypothesis. With the dogs, if I had conditioned one dog but not another, and they both heard the bell, then as you would expect, one drooled but the other did not.
'My problem began when I was working with another higher animal, helicopter pilots. As asked by the Directorate of Aviation, I intended to establish a conditioned reflex in them. The experiment consisted of showing a picture of an aircraft and conditioning a point of view in the pilot. For example, after only a week, I could show a picture of a 206 and the pilot would shout 'LTE!'. Or of an S92 and he would shout 'pardon?' to an imaginary co-pilot. Before the conditioning, there was no such reflex, as my theory would indicate.
'But then I showed them a picture of a Robinson helicopter. Without any conditioning at all, half of them immediately began shouting obscenities at the screen. It made no difference which Robinson aircraft it was. The sample of pilots was statistically large and random, so we may discount previous experience as a factor. The obscenities were not even the reflex I wanted to condition in them; they were supposed to snap their left hand down towards the floor.
'So, gentlemen, I can only assume this is a new physiological phenomenon - the unconditional reflex. At the age of 165 I am too old to undertake such a ground-breaking new study. I apologise to you all that my efforts have left so large and unexplained a gap.
'My only advice is to keep a dog rather than a pilot. They are much easier to housetrain.'
/Robinson bashing