Ruth Rosin (a.k.a. Prickly Pear)
Appears in science forums – such as this typical post – attempting to convince others of the non-existence of the honeybee “dance language”, and of the inseparability of genes and environment.
Unfortunately her arguments are based on the outdated biological theories of Theodore Christian Schneirla and Morgan’s Canon, whose dogmas include refusal to believe in genetically programmed behaviour, and belief in a fixed hierarchy of “psychic levels” of complexity in behaviour. The latter’s model doesn’t admit to modern developments in emergence: the idea that complex behaviour (such as an ant colony’s mathematically optimal searching for food) may arise from the collective operation of simple low-level behaviours.
It’s hard to tell if this is trolling or simply being stuck in a time warp, but the effect is the same. Discussion is pointless because she refuses even to look at modern theories on computational biology.
Feb 2008: Having failed to make an impression at Bad Science, she has now signed up with the Scientific American Community.
Fave phrase: “staunch DL supporters”
Thanks for this very useful site. I noticed Ruth Rosin’s comments on this page http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080430/full/news.2008.788.html and suspected something of the kind. And now I know what a Troll is!
Thanks again
Ruthie Rosin is now ‘educating’ the members of the James Randi Educational Forums:
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=155565
Ruth has moved on to the Straight Dope now.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=539582
Wow this is super useful! We just got trolled for our honeybee video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFDGPgXtK-U&feature=player_embedded
I am not, and have never been a troll. Labelling me as a troll, only serves for you as a pretext to avoid all attempts to even begon to understand what I’m talking about.
You criticize the general approach to behavior by T. C. Schneirla, and his reliance on Morgan’s Canon, without even knowing what you are talking about.
Morgan certainly did believe in the existence of genetically pre-programmed behavior, i.e. “instincts”. But, fortunately this belief played no part in the ideas that resulted in his formulating his well-known Canon. Schneirla stressed that all individual traits, of all living organisms, develop under inseparable effects of both genes & environment; which leaves no room for genetically pre-determined traits,or otherwise.
Not surprisingly, there is no utile definition of “instinct” that one can use to determine that a specific behavior is “instinctive”. Under the circumstances, and contrary to you, I find it necessary to discard the whole concept of “instincts”!
I join practically any web-site that is appropriate for dealing with the honeybee “dance language’ controversy, that comes to my attention. I do it, to bring this extremely important controversy to the attention of members, in order to provide at least some counter-balance to the endless touting of the honeybee DL, that has been going on for very many years, practically all over the popular and scientific news-media.
In recent e-mail exchanges, Patrick Wells, [of the duo that wrote the anti-DL book "Anatomy of a Controversy" (1980) by Adrian Wenner & P. H. Wells], characterized what we are up against as a flood. Tsunamy is more appropriate! He believes that trying to fight it with one sack of sand at a time, is useless. But, I’ll fight it, in any way I only can!
Staunch DL supporters have been so effective with their relentless “propaganda”, to the point where I occasionally encounter readers, who had no idea a DL controversy ever existed; or that it had never been, long ago, resolved in favor DL supporters, and never could be resolved in their favor.
I’m not trolling! I’m justlooking for scientists and lay persons who have an open mind that they are not afraid to use!
As a scientist, I’m not inclined to chase “phantoms”, and , consequently, I would not bother to examine explanations of behavior that are based on “instincts” (that you tout), because I know that without a utile definition of “instincts”, no one has ever been able to identify any “instincts”.
Contrary to your groundless opinion, I do not use the term “staunch DL supporters”, because it is a favorite of mine, but simply for the purpose of referring to those DL supporters who were actually involved in the DL controversy, through their experimental, or theoretical work, or both. I do that in order to distinguish them from what are probably the vast majority of DL supporters who lack the time, interest, or required expertise, to carefully examine the DL controversy, (that has become incredibly complex and convoluted), and simply “jumped on the band wagon”!
I do not need to add more replies to the nsulting nonesense posted about me here.
I do, however, need to correct the date of the book by Wenner & Wells ‘Anatomy of a Controversy: The Question of a “Language” among Bees’, to 1990, instead of 1980.