TIMING

A few minutes ago I read the passage below in a book from 1950: The Animal World of Albert Schweitzer,  Jungle Insights into Reverence for Life 
The message may impress ABAs [1] who could spread it to exemplify "social reinforcement"
with reference to good timing but supplied in an.exaggerated dose.

" I was sitting on a small stool in the yard while my father busied himself with the beehive in the garden.
A pretty little creature settled down on my hand and delightedly I watched it crawl about.  But suddenly
I began to scream.  The little creature which had every right to be angry at the pastor's taking --- combs
out of the beehive, and so he had stung the pastor's son in return.
At my outcry the whole family hurriedly assembled.  Everyone pitied me. The maid took me in her arms and tried to comfort me with kisses. my mother reproached my father for not putting me in a safe place before he began to work at the beehive. I had become so interesting in my misfortune that I continued to cry with great satisfaction, until suddenly I noticed that I was still shedding tears without feeling any more pain. 
My conscience told me that I should now stop. But to remain interesting for a while longer I went on with my mailing  and got more comforting , which I had ceased to need.  I felt so  badly about this, however, that I was miserable all day long.
How often, as a grown man, when have been tempted to exaggerate the significance of what was happening to me, have I been warned by this experience. " (p. 43) 

Two hours previously, I had finished a brief message: Behavior Analysts Should Take Note
where under the pseudonym Galileah, I wrote of myself in the third person; herein I do it again 

This is what Galileah proposes scientists do --> to advance EAB [2] and disseminate ABA further:
analyse locomotion, movement of whole organisms, within an operant conditioning laboratory.
They may take her word for it: this will allow them to bring the two fields closer to one another;
she converted Pavlov's measure of saliva into rate of salivation, per second, for 2 1/2 minutes.
Experimental scientists also have B. F. Skinner's support and authority, as shown in his personal
letter to her in 1985. And in 1953 he wrote this:

" ... in the long run, the issue is not so much one of personal prestige as of effective procedure.  Scientists have simply found that being honest - with oneself as much as with others - is essential to progress.  Experiments do not always come out as one expects but the facts must stand and the expectations fall, The subject matter, not the scientists knows best. "

As always, Galileah appreciates behavior analysts for confronting reality.
So long as they saw nothing amiss - not in EAB, nor in ABA - they worked on, as usual.
Over the years, doubts grew strong:  What's wrong?  they ask in journals and articles.

Now the search for answers is more prevalent in the professional literature; they say:
" Behavior Analysis: heal thyself. "  
" The experimental analysis of behavior (EAB) is in trouble."
" I take it as self-evident that more could be done in the EAB laboratory.".

Like scientists, Galileah knows anti-behaviorist sentiment is still present and should not be ignored.
Another observation in Schweitzer's book, exemplifies normal, healthy, attractive stimulus control
in an operant laboratory

" Every evening at six o'clock, when the bells of the Catholic mission on the island out in the stream begin to toll, he flies up from his fishing down by the river, and takes his place on his perch for the night. And every morning at six o'clock , when the bells awaken the mission, he spreads his great wings and is off again for his fish." (p 21)

This should be compared with the respondent conditioning converted by Galileah from Pavlov's
first listed data which imply pathological effects,
(a) on the dog (b) on the brain and (c) on the nervous system:
the dog salivates on contacting electricity ... and from a distance ... before actual contact. 
Despite implications for painless surgery, such attraction to danger could be fatal in everyday life.

Think about Schweitzer's philosophical outlook:

"I must interpret the life about me as I interpret the life that is my own ..... If I am to expect others to respect my life, then I must respect the other life I see, however strange it may be to mine. And not only human life, but all kinds of life ..... Ethics in our western world has hitherto been largely limited to the relation of man to man. But that is a limited ethics .... we need a boundless ethics which will include the animals also." (p.30)

That sounds like B. F. Skinner's behaviorism:
" In my early experimental days it was a frenzied, selfish desire to dominate.  I remember the rage I used to feel when a prediction went awry. I could have shouted at the subjects of my experiments ' Behave, damn you! Behave as you ought!'   Eventually, I realized that the subjects were always right.   It was I who was wrong. 
I had made a bad prediction."  Walden Two, p.240 

Skinner wrote this admission 63 years ago and it moved me almost to tears.
As much as it does now.  Scientists are criticised and ridiculed for mistakes.
Has social punishment decreased anywhere? If so, I invite readers to tell me about it.

In any event, Galileah expects scientists in animal conditioning experiments to multiply
cumulative records. She sees expansion as the only possibility for discovering how to deal with problems facing humanity today. She agrees with Dr. Allen Neuringer:  

" EAB basic research does not focus sufficiently on problems relevant to the general population.
" Another reason to work toward solving real-world problems is that we may be running out of time. Threats abound, including atomic warfare, global warming, overpopulation, pandemic diseases, natural resource depletion, and corporate abuse. Each of these has the potential to destroy our way of life, if not life itself . " 

Behavior analysts cannot deal with such urgent problems by themselves.
Cooperative research with other environmental experts is necessary and the truth is out there,
somewhere.   After all, this gives hope and provides fresh opportunities.
Rehabilitation and science to study movement and mutual attraction go with personal prestige.

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[1] Applied Behavior Analysts.
[2] Experimental Analysis of Behavior
[3] Behaviorism In Other Words, BIOW, part 1V, 1995