Given the context of all of these frauds and the principle of parsimony, is there any evidence that Clever Hans was not also an outright fraud with an owner that was just better at fooling others into thinking he wasn't aware of what was going on (and who trained his horse to recognize the signals in others as well as himself)?
Rick Dr. Rick Froman, Chair Division of Humanities and Social Sciences Professor of Psychology Box 3055 John Brown University 2000 W. University Siloam Springs, AR 72761 rfro...@jbu.edu (479)524-7295 http://tinyurl.com/DrFroman -----Original Message----- From: sbl...@ubishops.ca [mailto:sbl...@ubishops.ca] Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2009 8:50 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Clever Hans I said, back in early March, when we were discussing the celebrated nag Clever Hans: > Oskar Pfungst's brilliant elucidation of the true nature of Clever Hans' > abilities notwithstanding, I've always been intrigued by a statement in > Nicholas Wade's (1980)_ article on the animal language wars (which makes > "the War of the Roses look like a teddy-bears' picnic"). > > Wade was reporting, facetiously, on a conference organized by the > linguist Thomas Sebeok for the New York Academy of Sciences. According to > Wade: > > "As noted by Sebeok [probably in his book _Speaking of Apes_--sb], Clever > Hans had a French imitator called Clever Bertrand. Clever Bertrand could > do everything that Clever Hans could do. There was only one difference > between the two horses: Clever Bertrand was totally blind." > > This is undoubtedly the first literally true blind study, and seems to > rule out the Clever Hans effect. So how did Clever Bertrand do it? I now answer my own question, belatedly but, like an elephant, I never forget (NOT!). Anyway, I have to give back the library books, so it's now or never. First Sebeok's enigmatic statement was not in _Speaking of Apes_, nor even in the report of the New York Academy Conference (1981), where he was alleged to have said it. He did write it, however, in an earlier book he edited, _How Animals Communicate_ (1977), p. 1068. He there tells us that there were many such clever beasts, including "talking" horses, learned dogs, reading pigs, and a "goat of knowledge". The horse, it turns out, was really called "Berto", and it "was blind yet gave excellent results when the attendant "thought that the questions had been written on its skin or uttered aloud" " [that quote within a quote was attributed to Katz, 1937]. The explanation for blind Berto's clever performance is simple, according to Sebeok. Fraud. He says " All of them were assiduously coached performers intentionally cued by their trainers, who were entertainingly exposed by the prominent American illusionist and historian of conjuration, Christopher (1970)". So I went to Christopher. He describes a number of bizarre cases, including Lady, the Wonder Horse, who could "spell, add, subtract, multiply, divide, tell time, and answer questions", and who was claimed by the _New York World_ to "read minds, predict the future, and converse in Chinese", even predicting Harry Truman winning over Thomas Dewey in the 1932 election. Now that's clever! Christopher recounts how he exposed Lady as a fake, but does not mention examining Berto. Presumably, then, the claim that Berto too was a fraud was by extrapolation from other exposed cases (unless an additional reference to a source in German, Maday, 1914, which I didn't check, is the definitive one). But I have little difficulty in believing that fraud was the answer for blind Berto. Stephen Wade, N (1980). Does man alone have language? Apes reply in riddles, and a horse says neigh. Science, 208, 1349-- Sebeok, T., & Rosenthal, R. (1981). The Clever Hans phenomenon: communication with horses, whales, apes, and people. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 364. Sebeok, T. (1977). Zoosemiotic components of human communication. In: _How animals communicate_, ed. T. Sebeok, Indiana University Press. Katz, D. (1937). Animals and men: Studies in comparative psychology. London: Longmans, Green and Co. Christopher, M. (1970). Ch. 3. ESP in animals.In _ESP, seers & psychics._ New York: Thomas Crowell. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: sbl...@ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Subscribe to discussion list (TIPS) for the teaching of psychology at http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/tips/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
