Providentia

The Twin Doctor (Part 2 of 2)

Continued from Part One

Josef Mengele had a particular fascination with eyes and collected eye pairs as a way of learning how to change their colour (blue eyes were closer to the Aryan ideal, after all).    On one occasion, he killed an entire Gypsy family to send their eyes to Verschuer's research assistant, Karin Magnussen, at the Kaiser Wilhelm Society.

Whatever his scientific pretenses however, Mengele was in the business of mass murder, first and always.   Even when the crematoria were strained to capacity, Mengele simply ordered a series of trenches to be dug and then filled with gasoline which was  ignited.    He then had prisoners thrown in, living or dead, so that their bodies could be completely consumed by the fire.   Some prisoners, including children, were tossed directly into the firepits from the back of dump trucks.

As for Ottmar von Verschuer, he conducted his own research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in Berlin, often with the research materials provided by his former student.   Since war conditions blocked more conventional avenues for twin research, Mengele's contributions allowed Verschuer to compile an impressive collection of human body parts.  

In one glowing progress report to his Nazi superiors, Verschuer wrote:

My assistant Dr. Dr. Mengele is another contributor who has joined this research project. He was posted to the Auschwitz concentration camp as an SS captain and camp physician. With approval of the Reich leader SS, he has conducted anthropological research on various racial groups in the camp, and has transmitted blood samples to my laboratory for testing.

With the tissue samples taken from Jewish and Gypsy twins, Verschuer continued his research and the impact it had on Nazi eugenics policies was profound.  In his writings, Verschuer highlighted the political justification for eugenics and his support for the Nazi Final Solution.   "Biological heredity," he wrote, "is certainly a destiny, and accordingly, we prove ourselves masters of this destiny insofar as we take biological heredity to be the task that has been assigned to us and which we must fulfill."   His research into the high correlation in diseases such as tuberculosis in fraternal and identical twins (reinforced by research material received from Mengele and other Nazi camp doctors) established him as a leading authority, even after the outbreak of World War II.   

By the end of the war however, things became very different.   The gruesome details surrounding  Nazi experimentation became widely known through the evidence presented at the Nuremberg trials.   While Josef Mengele managed to escape to exile in South America, many of his Nazi SS medical colleagues faced Allied justice.   In the 1946 Doctors' Trial alone, twenty-three defendants (mostly medical doctors) stood trial with seven receiving death penalties while others received lengthy sentences.  

Despite the best efforts of the chief Allied investigator, Dr. Leo Alexander, however,   Ottmar von Verschuer managed to avoid being implicated in the Nazi extermination campaign.    At the time, there were numerous rumours of the gruesome collection of research materials provided to Verschuer by Mengele and other doctors but Alexander and his fellow investigators were unable to find it.    In a letter he wrote to his wife, Alexander wrote:

It sometimes seems as if the Nazis had taken special pains in making practically every nightmare come true. Some new evidence has come in where two doctors in Berlin, one a man and the other a woman, collected eyes of different color. It seems that the concentration camps were combed for people whose one eye had a slightly different color than the other. Who ever [sic] was unlucky enough to possess such a pair of slightly unequal eyes had them cut out and was killed, the eyes being sent to Berlin. This is the carrying out into reality of an old gruesome German fairy tale which is included in the Tales of Hoffmann, where Dr Coppelius posing as a sandman comes at night and cuts out children's eyes when they are tired. The grim part of the story is that Doctors von Verschuer and [Karin] Magnussen in Berlin did prefer children and particularly twins. There is no end to this nightmare, at least 23 are being tried now and, I trust, the others will follow later.

With no sign of the incriminating collection (which Verschuer had likely destroyed), gathering hard evidence  was next to impossible.   All the Allied forces could manage was a relatively benign "denazification" hearing which forced Verschuer to pay a fine of 600 Reichsmark before releasing him from custody.     By moving himself and his files into Western Germany, Verschuer tried to ride out the animosity he often encountered due to his Nazi leanings.   Despite his efforts to reopen the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, his request was denied due to his former role in the Nazi party.  The Institute was eventually reopened and renamed the Max Planck Society in 1948.                        

Undaunted, Verschuer joined the Institute of Genetics at the University of Munster in 1950.   Eventually becoming dean, he went on to become a highly respected geneticist with honorary memberships in numerous scientific societies such as Italian Society of Genetics, the Anthropological Society of Vienna, and the Japanese Society for Human Genetics.  Along with many other of his fellow researchers at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, Verschuer had successfully reinvented himself as a geneticist instead of a eugenicist (which was suddenly a taboo subject given the revelations of the Nuremberg trials).  

Despite this setback, Verschuer managed to maintain contacts with numerous American eugenicists who were facing a similar need to "reinvent" themselves.    This included his former Institute colleague, Franz Kalllmann,  who had founded the American Society of Human Genetics.   Many of his more notorious associations, including his research with Mengele was succesfully hidden during his lifetime.    Even following his death in 1969, his obituary only described his scientific achievements with no mention of his Nazi connections.  

Much of this scientific legacy later unravelled as further revelations surrounding Josef Mengele, who managed to remain hidden in South American until his death in 1979, came to light.   Many of the organizations that had formerly supported his research found their own reputations damaged by the connection to Verschuer and Mengele.   The Max Planck Society, now recognized as one of of the leading scientific organizations in the world has struggled to overcome the Nazi legacy.     Even the Rockefeller Foundation had its otherwise sterling reputation damaged by the early funding of much of Verschuer's pre-war research into eugenics. 

Though decades have passed since the era of Ottmar von Verschuer and Josef Mengele, those few survivors who witnessed their research firsthand still remember what they endured.    Modern medical historians agree that Mengele's research had no real scientific value although rumours of his research activities during his long exile in South America still circulate.    His main legacy today seems to be as a stereotypical "mad scientist" in books and movies such as The Boys From Brazil.    As for his mentor, Verschuer, his later work continues to be cited by modern geneticists (particularly his twin studies) although the Nazi connections he concealed for so long are finally being revealed.    

While eugenics has become a byword for evil, largely due to the actions of people like Verschuer and Mengele, as well as homegrown attempts at "weeding out" inferior genes through widespread sterilization of people deemed t unfit,  the battle is hardly over.   As genetic testing becomes more sophisticated, not to mention commercialized with the spread of genetic testing services such as 23andMe,  will the quest for "perfect" genes lead to Ottmar von Verschuer having the last laugh?

 

 

 

The Twin Doctor (Part 1 of 2)

When John D. Rockefeller and his son founded the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913, they established what would become one of the preeminent private philanthropic organizations in the world. With a charter establishing the goal of promoting “the well-being of mankind throughout the world”, the family-run Rockefeller Foundation has a long history of promoting medical and social research across the United States and around the world.

Almost from the Foundation’s beginning, the Foundation established science grants to research various public health issues and even provided funding for the American Red Cross to establish its headquarters in Washington, D.C.  Unfortunately, along with establishing medical research programs to combat diseases such as hookworm and malaria, the early decades of the Foundation’s existence were also dedicated to funding eugenics research, both in the United States and in Germany. 

During the 1930s, long after the rise of the Nazi regime and the recognized use of eugenics to demonize Jews and other minorities as “undesirables”, the Rockefeller Foundation provided funding that allowed the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics to establish the scientific justification for Hitler’s racial policies.  Under its director, Eugen Fischer, the Institute gained absolute control over all anthropology appointments throughout Germany and even organized "Racial Hygiene" courses that became mandatory for all SS doctors.   If the Rockefeller Foundation had any misgivings about providing research funding to the Institute, they did't make them public (at first anyway).

Not that the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute depended exclusively on the Rockefeller Foundation’s funding, mind you. With generous grants from Germany’s Ministry of the Interior and the Prussian Welfare Ministry, the Institute was able to launch what would be their most ambitious research project under their star researcher, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer.  A rising star in human genetics research, Verschuer would eventually become the director of the Institute in 1942 as well as being the undisputed leader in twin research.   Ironically, one of the other star researchers of the Institute, Franz Kallmann felt obliged by 1936 to interrupt his own research to emigrate to the United States (he was half-Jewish).

Though studies comparing racial differences in IQ and other measures of intelligence were already on the decline in most places, the Rockefeller Foundation shifted its focus towards using research on identical and fraternal twins to resolve the longstanding question of nature versus nurture. With thousands of twin pairs in his sample pool, all found through public school records, Verschuer and his research team examined the role that heredity played in personality, especially “criminal personality” traits.

But Verschuer’s ambitions took him in a far more unethical direction.  Arranging for hundreds of his twin-paired subjects to be admitted to a Berlin hospital facility, Verschuer’s research methods became far more invasive. In a 1935 report to the Rockefeller Foundation, the then-director of the Institute described Verschuer’s research examining how twins responded to medications such as atropine, pilocarpine, adrenaline, and histamine. Meanwhile, Verschuer and his research assistants measured the school-aged test subjects on different physiological measures including heart rate, blood pressure, saliva, etc.   Again, nobody seemed to have any objections to these researchers subjecting school-aged children to high levels of potentially dangerous drugs.   It was all for science, after all.

By showing that identical twins had much more similar reactions that fraternal twins did, Verschuer hoped to demonstrate the importance of heredity in human physiology.  Whether or not he actually got informed consent from the parents of his research subjects is debatable but the Rockefeller Foundation raised no real objection at the time.  While he was pursuing his research, Otmar Verschuer was also building up his influence in the Nazi-controlled scientific community.  He founded a professional journal titled Der Erbartz (The Genetics Doctor) which became required reading for doctors throughout Nazi-controlled Europe, as well as being the primary venue for publishing much of the Institute's research.

The journal did far more than publicize research studies however.   Through its editorials, Verschuer was able to spread his eugenics and racial ideas far and wide.   This included recommendations on sterilization for "unfit" individuals and the need to create a superior race through selective breeding.   As he rose in influence, the Nazi regime conferred more responsibility on Verschuer.    That included participating in the mass sterilizaation campaign that began with the passage of the 1933 Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring.    Under the new law, mandatory sterilization for people suffering from chronic mental illness, alcoholism, physical disabilities, epilepsy, "feeblemindedness", and alcoholism was ordered by special courts.   An estimated 400,000 Germans were sterilized under the program.  

Despite concerns from international observers, eugenicists raised few objections - especially since similar sterilization policies were already in place across many other countries (including the United States and Canada).   It was only when the United States declared war on Germany in 1941 that the Rockefeller Foundation finally stopped funding Verschuer's work. The loss of this Rockefeller funding had little real effect on research however.    With the retirement of  Eugen Fischer in 1942, Otmar von Verschuer took over as the head of the Institute and his efforts intensified.   This research was aided by Verschuer's chief acolyte, Dr. Josef Mengele.   

Earning a doctorate in anthropology with his thesis titled, ""Racial Morphological Research on the Lower Jaw Section of Four Racial Groups", Mengele went on to get a second doctorate in medicine.   Assigned to work with Verschuer in 1937,  Mengele quickly found him to be the perfect mentor.   Along with fostering his research, Verschuer also had the inside track on the various Nazi eugenics programs, including Aktion T4, which helped set the stage for the Final Solution that would follow.    Mengele's association with Verschuer also meant being able to get in on the ground floor of the ambitious plan to establish extermination camps across occupied Europe. 

As one of the elite members of the SS medical corps, Mengele's quickly rose to his new position as Hauptsturmführer.    His diligence and the endorsement of his research provided by Verschuer led to his being appointed camp physician to the concentration camp at Auschwitz in May of 1943.    With countless prisoners at his disposal, Mengele was able to provided  Verschuer with all the research subjects he could possibly want (and with no pesky informed consent concerns, either).  

Even compared to the other death camps, Auschwitz stood out for the sheer brutality of treatment prisoners received and the appalling conditions that often claimed as many lives as the gas chambers.   With funding arranged by Verschuer ,  Mengele was able to launch research that would be almost unparalleled in the annals of savagery.   Building up a reputation for cold-bloodedness that even stood out among SS officers, the good doctor would routinely send prisoners to their deaths in the gas chambers and eventually became the ultimate authority at Auschwitz concerning matters of life and death. Just days after his arrival at Auschwitz, he dealt with a typhus epidemic by ordering a thousand infected Gypsies to be sent to the gas chambers while sparing many of the German prisoners who were also infected.  

The various stories surrounding Mengele's cruelties and how he was despised even by his fellow doctors are legendary.     Smartly dressed in his SS uniform, Mengele would cheerfully decide on who would live or die.   This cheerful demeanor would continue unless anyone dared to question his decision or if prisoners attempted to escape.   As Olga Lengyel would later say of him: 

How we despised his detached, haughty air, his continual whistling, his frigid cruelty. Day after day he was at his post, watching the pitiful crowd of men and women and children go struggling past, all in the last stages of exhaustion from the inhuman journey in the cattle trucks. He would point with his cane at each person and direct them with one word: "right" or "left." He seemed to enjoy his grisly task.

But it was Mengele's research, conducted with the full support of Ottmar von Verschuer, that truly became the stuff of nightmares.  His research program at Auschwitz was twofold:   genetics research and germ warfare.   In the germ experiments, Mengele would inject one twin with infectious strains.  If that twin died (or simply showed interesting pathology), he would then "sacrifice" the other twin to compare their anatomy during autopsy.  Along with blood samples, Mengele also supplied Verschuer with a full range of other tissue samples including eyes and body parts.   Mengele didn't seem to show the slightest hesitation in carrying out any bizarre research that crossed his mind (all with Verschuer's apparent blessing), whether it involved dissecting live infants, castrating "inferior" men and boys - without bothering with an anesthetic, or using electric shock to "test" the endurance of men and women in the prison.    He even used high-intensity x-rays to sterilize a group of Polish nuns, inflicting horrible burns in the process.  

Not that he did all the research himelf alone, of course.   Since many of the inmates were physicians themelves, Mengele was in a good position to force them to conduct much of the research, collect results, conduct autopsies, and even to write the papers he published (it's not as if Mengele was obliged to share credit with them).

Continue to Part 2

Are Other People Really Having More Fun Than You Are?

We spend a lot of time comparing ourselves to other people.

According to social comparison theory, much of our sense of self-worth and even our sense of personal identity comes from how we see ourselves "stacking up" to other people we may know. These can be friends, family members, neighbours, or, in many cases, famous people we might not ever met but who have accomplished things we wish we could do ourselves. 

Unfortunately, this sort of comparison can often lead to a sense of despair if we regard ourselves as falling short of the standard these other people set for us.  Such despair can shape how we view our careers, our accomplishments, our personal appearance, and just about every aspect of our personal lives.

Perhaps not surprisingly, relying on social comparison can also make us feel inadequate in terms of how we view our social life (i.e., how many parties or social gatherings we attend, how many dates we have, how many people we happen to know, etc.) 

In other words, our "social resume," which for a variety or reasons, never seems to be as spectacular as the highly social lives,of other people we happen to know about. It also ties into the dreaded  "fear of missing out" (FOMO for short), that persistent belief that something exciting is happening somewhere else that we are missing out on.

Research studies over the years have consistently shown that evidence for this social comparison effect. In recent years however, much of this research has focused on the influence of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.  Since self-promotion is pretty much the main purpose of these platforms, we are often besieged by pictures and videos of people attending social shindigs or major events that can make our own lives seem drab by comparison,  Not surprisingly, many Facebook users are increasingly reporting becoming depressed as a result.  

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post.

Can Smartphones Help Young People With Mental Health Problems?

As smartphone technology becomes an increasingly important part of youth mental health, there has been little to no examination of how to effectively integrate smartphone-based safety planning with inpatient care. A recent study in the Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry sought to examine whether or not clinicians could effectively integrate smartphone-based safety planning into the discharge process on a child and adolescent inpatient psychiatry unit. Staff members completed a survey to determine the extent of smartphone ownership in a population of admitted child and adolescent inpatients. In addition to quantifying smartphone ownership, the survey also tracked whether youth would integrate their previously-established safety plan with a specific safety planning application on their smartphone (Be Safe) at the time of discharge. Results showed that sixty-six percent (50/76) of discharged youth owned a smartphone, which is consistent with prior reports of high smartphone ownership in adult psychiatric populations. A minority of youth (18%) downloaded the Be Safe app prior to discharge, with most (68%) suggesting they would download the app after discharge. Notably, all patients who downloaded the app prior to discharge were on their first admission to a psychiatric inpatient unit.  In conclusion, child and adolescent psychiatric inpatients have a clear interest in smartphone-based safety planning. These results suggest that integrating smartphone-related interventions earlier in an admission might improve access before discharge. This highlights the tension between restricting and incorporating smartphone access for child and adolescent inpatients and may inform future study in this area. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

What is Kratom?

In its natural state, Mitragyna speciosa is a flowering evergreen tree that can grow to 25 meters (82 feet) with a smooth grey bark, fanlike green leaves, and flowers that grow in clusters at the end of each branch.   Native to much of south-east Asia, including Indonesia, Myanmar, Malaysia, Thailand, and Papua New Guinea, the tree's leaves have been widely used in traditional medicine for the treatment of intestinal infections, muscle pain, and diarrhea.

More importantly, M. speciosa leaves also contain a number of psychoactive ingredients including alkaloids similar to yohimbine and ibogaine.   Acting on the body's m-opioid receptors as well as affecting the serotonergic and adrenergic systems.   Also known as kratom or ketum, compounds made from M. speciosa leaves have a strong stimulant effect at low dosages as well as sedative properties at higher doses.   Because of its role as an opioid agonist, it has also been used as an opium substitute in many places. 

In recent years however, kratom has  been gaining in popularity as a recreational drug as well.   In the form of green powder, kratom can be easily mixed with other substances.   One particular kratom "cocktail" combining  kratom leaves with Coca Cola, ice, and cough syrup has become a major health problem in various south-east Asian countries and its use is spreading worldwide.  In the United States alone, experts estimate that 4 to 5 million Americans have used kratom as of 2016 and it's becoming a common sight in head shops.

Since kratom use can lead to a range of serious side effects, international health agencies are warning that the growing kratom trade may lead to a new medical crisis.   Side effects that have been reported include anxiety, nausea, tachycardia and, in higher doses, seizures and psychosis.  While there is no solid evidence of any deaths solely due to kratom use so far, it has been suspected of contributing to drug deaths in the United States and Sweden though it's still too new a drug to have made the kind of inroads of more popular alternatives.     

But there seems to be another reason for kratom's popularity with users.   Not only is it being used as a do-it-yourself treatment for pain and depression (as well as a diet supplement), but, according to a recent article in Vice, it's become popular with addicts trying to wean themselves off opioids.   Since research has identified two key ingredients  that act on opioid receptors, mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynin, kratom appears to activate these receptors with fewer side effects than other opioids.  As well, it takes longer to build up a tolerance to kratom and, though there are still withdrawal effects, they tend to be milder than with more powerful opioids as well.

Despite suggestions that kratom may become a useful alternative to methadone or buprenorphine, both of which are commonly used in opioid treatment, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has adamantly opposed any attempt at allowing its use for treatment.   When the DEA announced in 2016 that kratom would be placed in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, more than 140,000 people signing a petition in protest.   As well, 51 members of Congress and nine Senators have already gone on record as opposing the move though the DEA remained adamant.  Though they have since extended the review period to allow more public input, six U.S. states have already banned its sale and import.

As for whether or not kratom can be used in treating opioid addiction, consider the DEA skeptical.   A statement by FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb issued in November 2017 outlined his concerns about hype surrounding kratom's supposed health benefits.   "Patients addicted to opioids are using kratom without dependable instructions for use and more importantly, without consultation with a licensed health care provider about the product’s dangers, potential side effects or interactions with other drugs," he said.  "There’s clear data on the increasing harms associated with kratom. Calls to U.S. poison control centers regarding kratom have increased 10-fold from 2010 to 2015, with hundreds of calls made each year. The FDA is aware of reports of 36 deaths associated with the use of kratom-containing products. There have been reports of kratom being laced with other opioids like hydrocodone. The use of kratom is also associated with serious side effects like seizures, liver damage and withdrawal symptoms."

Though the controversy continues, it seems unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.

 

The Four-Dimensional Man

For all that he is remembered for his groundbreaking work in optical illusions, Johann Karl Friedrich Zollner is also ironically remembered for his inabiilty to see the truth behind someone else's deception.

Along with his work in astrophysics (which included the first proof of the Doppler effect in astronomy), Zollner established himself in the fledgeling field of visual perception by demonstrating the effect of perspective.  His now-classic Zollner illusion is still taught to introductory psychology students more than a century after his death.

By 1875 however, his scientific interests had turned in a new direction.   Spiritualism was already in vogue with many prominent scientists such as William Crookes and Alfred Russel Wallace lending scientific credibility to what was happening in seances across Europe and North America.    When Zollner visited Crookes in England,  it was his intention to develop a formal scientific theory to explain spiritualist phenomena.

After witnessing seances in England and Germany, Zollner came to the conclusion that what he was seeing could be explained with a radical reconception of physics including the concept of a four-dimensional space.   One of the things that spurred his interest, unfortunately, was his fascination with the American medium Henry Slade.

Though Slade had recently fled England after he was caught faking his seances, that hardly put an end to his career.   Following a sensational trial that generated publicity across the entire United Kingdom, Slade and his manager had fled to France.   When the publicity from his exposure made France too hot for him, Slade took his spiritualism act to Germany  (this was a pre-Internet age when simply skipping across  the border was often enough to escape bad publicity).    Although Slade's seances were enough to convince Zollner that he was genuine, other German intellectuals were not so convinced.

One of these skeptics was physiologist Wilhelm Wundt, who today is remembered as one of the founders of modern psychology.  Having established one of the first formal laboratories for the study of human psychology at the University of Leipzig in 1875, Wundt's research into perception, abnormal psychology, and belief had already earned him enormous respect.   One of the reasons he had accepted the professorship at the University of Leipzig was to be able to work with Zollner who, along with his own prominent research into perception, was an enthusiastic support of Wundt's research.

But that all changed in 1877 when Wundt, who had attended many of Henry Slade's seances with Zollner, failed to be convinced that the medium was not faking.    The fact that the "messages" Slade was receiving from the spirit world were all in poor German (Slade never mastered the language) was a sticking point for Wundt though Zollner was quick to explain this away.  Wundt expressed his doubts in a formal paper, "Spiritualism as a Scientific Question" which still represents a classic in skeptical thought since it represented a formal critique of the spiritualist movement. 

In his paper, Wundt pointed out that Slade had complete control of the room and was in a good position to cheat since his hands were out of sight of the other people at the seance.    Since Slade's particularl specialty was "spirit writing" using  a special slate on which the spirits supposedly wrote messages, the fact that Slade had total freedom to write the messages himself failed to impress Wundt.   Given that the messages were often in poor German (when they made sense at all) even though they were supposedly coming from the ghosts of people who were fluent in German, Wundt concluded that Slade was a likely fraud. 

Wundt also pointed out that scientists were just as capable of being fooled as anyone else since they had no direct experience with the kind of magic tricks that Slade was likely using.   He even suggested that professional magicians were better qualified to detect fraud and that he personally lacked the ability to spot what Slade was doing (he suggested that the seance effects were being produced by "jugglery").  

Sadly, Wundt's article personally offended Johann Zollner.   Not only had he staked his entire professional reputation on Slade being genuine, but he had carried out a series of experiments with Slade that he would later release in a book titled Transcendental Physics.    Among the different experiments Zollner ran with Slade, he had the medium link two separate, unlinked wooden rings, turn left-handed snail shells into right-handed ones, and untie a knot whose ends were secured to a table.   In his book, Zollner argued that Slade achieved these effects by moving into the fourth dimension.  

Regarding Wundt's article as a personal betrayal, he causticly accused his former friend of being a "suckling child" who deserved to be jailed for five years for lying and for plagiarizing his "materialistic" colleagues.   Since it seemed fairly obvious that Zollner had become mentally unbalanced by this time,  Wilhelm Wundt did not reply to Zollner's rebuttal and the two of them never reconciled.

Zollner's colleagues were not impressed by the experiments described in his book though it was still a best-seller.  The English translation ran to three editions in five years despite scathing criticism from numerous skeptics.   In an 1881 issue of the Atlantic monthly,  one reviewer stated that he "Opens this work of Zöllner with great interest, in the expectation of something substantial and more edifying than the dreary accounts of table-tippings, and the insane conversations of great men who, entering into a Nirvana, have apparently forgotten all they learned in this world, and have nothing better to do than to move chamber furniture. Unfortunately, this hope is not realized."

By the time of Zollner's death in 1882, his reputation was largely in tatters and his dream of proving the four-dimensional nature of the paranormal largely died with him.   Once Germany became too hot for him, Henry Slade  moved on to Russia to try to recapture his fame in the Czar's court.   Even there, he was caught cheating despite making numerous converts.   He eventually returned to the United States and sank into obscurity by the time of his death in 1892.  

As for Wilhelm Wundt,  he reprinted his Spiritualist article a few years later and added an introduction suggesting that belief in the paranormal served a useful function "like beer and tobacco".  He rightly concluded that it was a form of superstition that would recur from time to time in "epidemics" which "like pain and illness, disappear from earth only with humanity."    Though better remembered as an experimental psychologist than as a debunker,  his warning about the nature of gullibility seems as relevant as ever.   Certainly modern skeptics will find his treatment by Zollner all too familiar.

It's hard being a skeptic. 

What Is Fetal Programming?

Fetal programming is the idea that environmental stimuli can alter the development of the fetus, which may have a long-term effect on the child.  Recent research reported that maternal prenatal cortisol predicts infant negative emotionality in a sex-dependent manner: high prenatal cortisol was associated with increased negative emotionality in females, and decreased negative emotionality in males. A new study published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology tests for this sex-specific effect in a different cohort, and investigate whether sex differences in fetal programming may be specific to glucocorticoid mechanisms by also examining a maternal salivary alpha-amylase (sAA) by sex interaction. A sample of 88 pregnant women (mean gestational age = 27.4 weeks, SD = 7.4) collected saliva samples at home over two working days to be assayed for the hormone cortisol (range = 0.13–88.22 nmol/l) and the enzyme alpha-amylase (range = 4.57–554.8 units/ml). Samples were collected at waking, 30-min post-waking and 12h post-waking. Two months after birth participants reported infant negative emotionality using the distress to limits subscale of the Infant Behavior Questionnaire. Results showed that the interaction between maternal prenatal cortisol and infant sex to predict distress to limits approached significance (p = 0.067). In line with previous findings, there was a positive association between prenatal cortisol and negative emotionality in females, and a negative association in males. The interaction between sAA and sex to predict distress was significant (p = 0.025), and the direction of effect was the same as for the cortisol data; high sAA associated with increased negative emotionality in females and reduced negative emotionality in males. Conclusions: In line with our previous findings, this research adds to an emerging body of literature, which suggests that fetal programming mechanisms may be sex-dependent. This is the first study to demonstrate that maternal prenatal sAA may be an important biomarker for infant behavior, and the findings have implications for understanding sex differences in developmental psychopathology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

Police Stymied in Bizarre Disappearance of Australian Family

Aside from a note saying they had moved to Brazil, police, family and friends of an Internet cult leader and his family have no clue to what happened after their disappearance in July, 2007.   Police are not even certain whether they are actually living somewhere else under assumed names or if they killed themselves in a bizarre suicide pact.  

Missing are Simon Kadwell, his partner Chantelle McDougall, their five-year-old daughter Leela, and a friend, Antonio Popic, who had been living with them at their home in Western Australia.   Kadwell, who had gained a strange Internet fame by running an online doomsday cult group, was described as being an extremely dominating figure who had total control over McDougall and Popic.   He was also known to be on anti-psychotic medication and, in a surprise twist, was discovered by police to be usiong a stolen birth certificate to assume the identity of a former associate in his native England.  His true name was Gary Felton and it was the investigation by police following a tipoff that he was living under a false name that apparently led to his family's disappearance in 2007 .

In  a recent inquest into the family disappearance, the "bizarre, alternative lifestyle" of the small cult was described.   This included the family members telling people close to them that they felt they "did not belong in modern society" and were planning a move to a spiritual community in Brazil.  But the inquest also detailed an online conversation Kadwell had with someone on his forum in which he stated that he was planning a "peaceful" family suicide pact.   When told that this would require murdering his daughter, he appeared to backtrack and said that he would move his family to a remote location instead.

During a recent inquest , police described the available evidence relating to the family's disappearance.   Before leaving their home, Kadwell and his wife sold their cars and also arranged to sell their two dogs as well.   The women who bought the dogs reported seeing Chantelle McDougall on July 15, 2007 and that she appeared anxious to close the deal immediately.  Shortly afterward, their house was abandoned but in good condition with a note to their landlord telling them about their move to Brazil.    While Kadwell and Dominic Popic both reserved train tickets to separate cities around the time of their disappearance , it remains unclear whether they were actually used.   Aside from reported sightings since then, no trace of them has even been found.   Chantelle McDougall's parents have also become involved in the search but the fate of their daughter and granddaughter is unknown.

In closing the inquest, coroner Barry King admitted that there isn't enough evidence to make a firm conclusion.  "My inclination at this stage is that there is simply insufficient evidence to find beyond reasonable doubt that everyone is dead," he said."It is difficult to exclude the possibility that somehow all of these people are living somewhere else under assumed names."   He is expected to hand down his findings next year.

The Mary Hart Problem

r Dianne Neale, it all began during the mid-1980s  when she started experiencing recurring episodes of mental confusion and abdominal pain that apparently struck at random.   After two years of these episodes, she also started experiencing frequent blackouts as well. Though she had no idea of what was happening, the ultimate cause of those episodes, and the media reaction that would follow, would soon earn her a rather bizarre claim to fame.

A long-time resident of Albany, New York, the 45-year-old hospital employee's episodes baffled her family doctor and she was eventually referred to Dr. Venkat Ramani, a neurology resident at the Albany Medical Center Hospital and a prominent authority on epilepsy.  Though his client appeared to be suffering from some form of epilepsy, determining what was happening in her case wasn't easy.   Not only did a standard neurological  fail to turn up any sign of pathology, but MRI scans of the head and electroencephalographic  (EEG) recordings of her brain activity show no problems either.

To try getting a better understanding of what was happening, Dr. Ramani arranged for his patient to undergo a series of video EEG monitoring sessions.   Video EEG monitoring involves measurement of brain activity while simultaneously recording patient behaviour on video.  This allows technicians to link EEG activity to specific changes in behaviour that might be triggering seizures.    In Dianne Neale's case, it took four prolonged testing sessions before technicians discovered that seizure activity linked to her temporal lobe was consistently triggered by her listening to a video recording of a specific television show: Entertainment Tonight.

Intrigued by this discovery, Dr. Ramani and his staff carried out systematic testing to determine what it was about the recording that could be triggering the seizures.  After ruling out other possibilities, including the theme music, background noise, and voices of the other members of the cast, they found that the seizures only occurred when the patient heard the voice of the show's female host, Mary Hart.   Even when she listened to the voices of other female hosts on other shows, it was only hearing that one voice that seemed to act as a trigger.  Though Dianne Neale was offered the option of attending behaviour therapy aimed at desensitizing her to that one voice, she declined and simply stopped  watching the program instead.  Since a two-year follow-up showed that the seizures were under control, this solution seemed to work just fine for her.

And that's where things might have ended if Dr. Ramani hadn't published a letter on the case in a 1991 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.  Titled, "Audiogenic Epilepsy Induced by a Specific Television Performer,"  the letter described Dianne Neale's case in detail and presented it as a unique example of audiogenic epilepsy.    Unfortunately, the bizarre elements of the case caused it to gain an unintended media following  after news stories reporting on Dr. Ramani's letter spread rapidly.   Even prominent comedy hosts such as David Letterman and Johnny Carson began including jokes about Dianne Neale in their monologues.  Though the original letter contained no information that could be used to identify Ms. Neale, she still felt personally humiliated to hear all the humour at her expense.  Not only did she feel that the jokes demeaned her, but also epileptics in general.  

Finally deciding to go public about her case, she called a press conference in August, 1991, just one month after Dr. Ramani's letter came out.  Blasting Letterman, Carson, and other comedians for spreading misinformation about epilepsy, she also insisted that there was nothing funny about her condition.  "I want to make sure that people understand that I am not 'crazy' and that people with epilepsy are not dangerous or mentally ill but have  a physical problem,"  she said.  "It is no funnier than someone being in a wheelchair or having a heart condition."   

Unfortunately, despite her attempts at educating the public about epilepsy, revealing her identity made Dianne Neale more vulnerable than ever.  It also led to a bizarre incident that occurred within a few days of the press conference.   According to newspaper reports, another Albany resident named Deanna Neale (no relation), later filed a complaint about two men whom she was forced to chase off her property with a rifle.   The men, apparently wanting to play a prank, had brought a tape player and a video recording of Entertainment Tonight but found the wrong house by mistake.   According to Deanna Neale, "they wouldn't leave so I got my rifle and made sure they left."   No charges were laid.

Despite the negative publicity, there were a still a few positive developments, including a public apology from Mary Hart over the trouble Neale was experiencing due to her condition.  Even the jokes subsided with time.   Not that her problems were over since she was also engaged in a lawsuit over job discrimination relating to her condition.   As she revealed during her press conference, her employer, a community hospital in Cobleskill, New York, had removed her from her former job as a Medicaid biller in 1988 and demoted her to a cashier position due to concerns about her epilepsy (around the time she began seeing Dr. Vermani).

According to Neale, her former job required her to talk frequently to her clients on the phone.   Since this job involved frequent listening to electronic voice transmissions, her employers were apparently concerned that her condition made her especially vulnerable to seizures.   She said that the demotion occurred due to an incident in November, 1988 when she accidentally offended a client, something she said occurred because she felt a seizure coming on.   Though the hospital insisted that she resigned from the position voluntarily and that the incident wasn't involved with her condition,  the case would later be settled for an undisclosed amount.

While Dianne Neale unusual condition would become largely forgotten with time, her name came up again in 1997 during news stories about a bizarre seizure epidemic in Japan.  When an episode from the popular TV show "Pokemon" featured a scene with rapidly flashing light from a character's eyes, hundreds of  children, aged three to twenty, experienced symptoms ranging from nausea to full convulsions requiring hospitalization.  Though mass hysteria was initially suspected, reruns of the show triggered the same response forcing television stations to cancel the segment.   Still, some medical experts in Japan expressed doubt that epilepsy could have been responsible for the epidemic. 

Toshio Yamaushi, an epilepsy expert at Tokyo's Saitama University of Medicine was particularly skeptical given that similar broadcasts had occurred in the past without any problems developing.  Instead, he suggested that the symptoms were due to a one-time attack triggered by optical stimulus rather than classic epilepsy.  Similar problems some Nintendo video games also led to the company posting warning about possible seizures on their videos.    Dr. Yamaushi urged government agencies to develop better guidelines for television program productions in future.   

While audiogenic and visually induced seizures are relatively rare (at least so far), the popularity of mass media and digital devices will likely mean more cases in future.  We aren't likely to see a return of the Mary Hart syndrome but, well, stay tuned.

 

 

 

 

 

The Psychologist and the "Missing Link"

"TRICK CHIMPANZEE FULFILLS MIND TEST" was the headline in a New York Times story published December 18, 1909.  

With subheadings such as "Dr. Witmer Declares Peter Showed Reasoning Powers Before University of Pennsylvania Clinic" and "He Might Learn To Talk",  the story showed little skepticism about the amazing claims being made about Peter, a chimpanzee that had been part of the vaudeville circuit for years.   Billed as "a monkey with a mind",  Peter had been carefully studied at the University of Pennsylvania by  eminent psychologist, Lightner Witmer.   

Long recognized as one of the early pioneers of American psychology, Lightner Witmer had trained under Wilhelm Wundt and James McKeen Cattell and had helped establish one of North America's first experimental psychological laboratories.    Along with his other contributions to experimental psychology, Witmer had been the first to use the term "clinical psychology".   He also dedicated himself to splitting off psychology from philosophy and establishing it as a separate discipline.  After taking over the University of Pennsylvania's experimental psychology laboratory in 1892, he became well known for his wide ranging research into child development and intelligence as well as being a pioneer in special education.    He was also instrumental in founding the first speech clinic and developing new training methods to help children with physical and mental impairments.

Ironically, despite developing many of the tests used on children in his clinic, Witmer was extremely skeptical about intelligence tests and their increasing role in society.   He argued that test results "gives us the measure of the individual's efficiency - nothing else."   Witmer also rejected the tendency of society to label children idiot or feeble-minded based solely on test results rather than trying to understand the whole child.   While he had his own share of prejudices (including an early bias against women in psychology which he later reconsidered),  many of Witmer's ideas would be years ahead of their time.

Though his psychological laboratory had been primarily designed for studying children with learning problems,  Witmer expanded his interest into the still-new field of comparative psychology.   Already rejecting the hereditarian views that seemed to be the dominant trend at the time (and would become even stronger over the next few decades), Witmer became intrigued with the possibility of teaching apes to talk through careful instruction. 

After his early attempts at training an infant orangutan imported from Borneo in 1909 failed, Witmer focused on a new research subject when he first saw the trained chimpanzee, Peter, performing at the Boston Keith Theater that same year.   Arranging for Peter to be brought to his laboratory, Witner subjected the chimpanzee to various cognitive tests and even began trying to teach him to talk.    Aided by William Furness,  curator of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Science and Arts,  Witner carefully trained Peter using methods similar to what he developed for mentally impaired children. 

Based on his findings, which he would publish in a 1910 article, Witmer announced that Peter had many of the same reasoning abilities seen in humans and might even learn to speak, read and write with training.   That same article, "A Monkey With A Mind" would announce that Peter was "the missing link" in human evolution.   To bolster his claims, Witmer trained Peter to vocalize certain sounds, including the letter "P" and the word "mamma".    He also brought in Dr. William Temple Hornaday, director of the Bronx Zoo, who had carried out similar studies using a trained chimpanzee named Consul   (and would also become notorious for displaying a pygmy tribesman named Ota Benga in his zoo along with apes but that is another story),

Both Hornaday and Witmer insisted that chimpanzees such as Peter and Consul were more intelligent than children of the same age.    In his 1910 article, Witmer went even further though.  To settle fears that his testing a chimpanzee using methods designed for human might distort his results, Witmer responded:

"Peter not only has more intelligence than any animal hitherto reported in the annals of science - his intelligence is not in the class of animal intelligence as we scientists understand the term.   The study of this ape's mind is a subject not fit for the animal psychologist, but for the child psychologist."

While the New York Times reported Witmer's claims with little indication of skepticism or ridicule, Witmer's fellow psychologists mostly responded with total silence.  There is nothing in writing to indicate what other academics thought of this new interest but the silence may be editorial enough.    Though he and Furness dedicated themselves to training Peter over the next few months,  Witmer still found time to remain active professionally.  That included his crusade to keep experimental psychology as a pure discipline rather than bringing in spirituality and philosophy as some of his colleagues wanted.    Since that meant fighting the lingering influence of William James, who was still the most popular psychologist of his time, Lightner Witmer gained more than his share of enemies as a result.

Unfortunately for Witmer, his optimism about Peter's intellect proved to be unfounded.   Not only did Peter fail to learn more than some elementary skills,  attempts at teaching him to speak failed as well.    Though studies comparing chimpanzees to humans would become more common many years later, Witmer's efforts to compare human and chimpanzee intelligence likely discredited him in the eyes of many of his colleagues. 

After giving up his chimpanzee research, Witmer turned to the study of criminal behaviour and put forward the radical idea that criminals were influenced more by their environment than their heredity.   In a 1910 book, The Restoration of Children of the Slums, he denied the existence of "criminal instincts".    He also argued that whatever defects could be seen in problem children came from their impoverished background rather than biological causes.

Ironically, Witmer also supported a 1911 bill for the forced sterilization of severely retarded males.  While he rejected a purely hereditary view of intelligence, he still allowed himself to be influenced by the eugenics movement to some extent.  He was never a radical supporter of eugenices though and even took a leave of absence in 1912 to travel to Italy to study Maria Montessori's methods in training disabled children.   Not long after that, he took an extended leave of absence to help the Red Cross during World War I and his career then went into a long decline.  Though he was still an outspoken critic of intelligence testing and how children were being classified as a result of their test scores, Witmer stopped publishing in 1920 and largely became a forgotten figure in American psychology. 

Still, by the time of his death in 1956, he managed to live long enough to see himself partially vindicated for his early primate work.   He was likely unaware of Nadiya Ladygina-Kohts' work comparing chimpanzees and human children but the  research project by Winthrop and Luella Kellogg with Gua the chimpanzee in the 1930s helped support some of his optimistic predictions of chimpanzee intelligence.    Psychologists working with human children were also confirming many of Witmer's conclusions about the importance of environmental stimulation in developing intelligence. 

In many ways, Lightner Witmer was far ahead of his time though his early support of eugenics and mandatory sterilization have darkened his reputation.   Whether it was this or his chimpanzee research that led to his becoming so completely forgotten by modern psychologists is still open to speculation.