December 26, 2004

Multimedia, Ferrets, and Sheep

In a Scientific American article entitled Captive Audience, the author expresses incredulity at a recently published study in the journal Nature:

"...at the end of September, Nature published a study in which scientists made ferrets watch the movie The Matrix. I'll wait while you read that last sentence again."

The author goes on to describe the basis of the study and then facetiously ponders on the researchers' rationale for this experiment.

It reminded me of the published results of a not too dissimiliar experiment I read of about twenty or so years ago in the journal Science. I think it was. That particular absurd experiment captured my fancy like this ferret/Matrix experiment seems to have captured this author's.

In the study I read about, the researchers decided to find out whether sheep would have a more pronounced reaction to seeing images of sheep with bigger horns. Yup, that was the big question the researchers were out to prove.

And how did they go about it? They showed their sheep subjects slides of other sheep -- some with big horns, some without horns, as well as some control slide images of non-sheep, including a man and an upside-down slide of a sheep.

In order to ensure that their sheep subjects would pay attention to their little slide show so that their reactions could be recorded (which they did by measuring brain wave activity), the researchers had to immobilize the sheep. This they did this by suspending each sheep in a hammock.

And after showing the sheep, suspended in their hammocks, their little slide show presentation, the researchers found that, yes, sheep do react more when they see sheep with bigger horns. Earth-shattering news, there.

But you know the really insane thing about this? It's not even the hammocks. It's that no doubt the researchers were granted funding for this study.

Sigh.