Subject: [SciPol 160] Item no. 6 in the ScienceWeek list for Feb. 23, 2007.

From: "Ross Goodyear" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 14:11:43 -0500

6.
Citation: Tsujiuchi S, Sivan-Loukianova E, Eberl DF, Kitagawa Y,
Kadowaki T (2007) Dynamic Range Compression in the Honey Bee
Auditory System toward Waggle Dance Sounds. PLoS ONE 2(2): e234.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000234

The authors were motivated to conduct their study, because, (like very many
others), they still believe that honeybees have a "dance language", that
enables recruits to extract from their foragers' waggle dances information
about the approximate distance & direction of the site of food, (or other
resource), visited by the foragers, and then use that information to help
the recruits find that site (which they had never seen before), on their
own; and that the sound the foragers produce during the waggle-run, plays a
major role in relaying that information to the recruits..

While the authors' findings may be quite interesting, the findings are
totally irrelevant to any "dance language", because the honeybee "dance
language" never existed, and never could exist, because v. Frisch's famous,
revolutionary, honeybee "dance language" hypothesis, (first published in a
scientific journal in 1946), was simply stillborn. The hypothesis was
stillborn thanks to v. Frisch's own first study on honeybee-recruitment,
(published in an extensive summary in 1923, i.e. more than 20 years before
the inception of his "dance language" hypothesis), provided results that
already grossly contradicted his expectations from his later "dance
language" hypothesis, and led him to fully justifiably conclude that
honeybee recruits use odor alone and no information about the location of
any food.

How v. Frisch (with enthusiastic support from many other scientist, who were
all misled into believing that the "dance language" simply had to account
for the adaptive value of honeybee-dances), managed to "revive" that
stillborn hypothesis, and experimentally "confirm" it, to the point where
the "discovery" of the honetbee "dance language" was finally awarded
the Nobel Prize in 1973, is  a fascinating story about how "wishful
thinking" can triumph over "proper science", and a very sad example of "Junk
Science", if there ever was any.

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From: "Anderson, John" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 15:02:12 -0500

Are there papers other than Frisch's 1923 paper that refute the idea of
honeybee dance language?  What is the purpose of the waggle dance?
 
John Anderson

John Anderson, Ph.D.

Department of Chemistry & Physics

University of North Florida

________________________________

From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf
Of Ross Goodyear
Sent: Monday, 26 February, 2007 2:12 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: [SciPol 160] Item no. 6 in the ScienceWeek list for Feb. 23,
2007.

6.
Citation: Tsujiuchi S, Sivan-Loukianova E, Eberl DF, Kitagawa Y,
Kadowaki T (2007) Dynamic Range Compression in the Honey Bee
Auditory System toward Waggle Dance Sounds. PLoS ONE 2(2): e234.
doi:10.1371 /journal.pone.0000234
 
The authors were motivated to conduct their study, because, (like very
many others), they still believe that honeybees have a "dance language",
that enables recruits to extract from their foragers' waggle dances
information about the approximate distance & direction of the site of
food, (or other resource), visited by the foragers, and then use that
information to help the recruits find that site (which they had never
seen before), on their own; and that the sound the foragers produce
during the waggle-run, plays a major role in relaying that information
to the recruits.. 
 
While the authors' findings may be quite interesting, the findings are
totally irrelevant to any "dance language", because the honeybee "dance
language" never existed, and never could exist, because v. Frisch's
famous, revolutionary, honeybee "dance language" hypothesis, (first
published in a scientific journal in 1946), was simply stillborn. The
hypothesis was stillborn thanks to v. Frisch's own first study on
honeybee-recruitment, (published in an extensive summary in 1923,  i.e.
more than 20 years before the inception of his "dance language"
hypothesis), provided results that already grossly contradicted his
expectations from his later "dance language" hypothesis, and led him to
fully justifiably conclude that honeybee recruits use odor alone and no
information about the location of any food. 
 
How v. Frisch (with enthusiastic support from many other scientist, who
were all misled into believing that the "dance language" simply had to
account for the adaptive value of honeybee-dances), managed to "revive"
that stillborn hypothesis, and experimentally "confirm" it, to the point
where the "discovery" of the honetbee "dance language" was finally
awarded the Nobel Prize in 1973, is  a fascinating story about how
"wishful thinking" can triumph over "proper science", and a very sad
example of "Junk Science", if there ever was any.