From the “More stuff we know that ain’t so” files: Nobelist Tinbergen
From Nature:
Classic behavioural studies flawed
Nobel prizewinner took short cuts to show that the way gulls feed is instinctive.
John Whitfield
One of the most famous experiments in biology isn’t the solid piece of work it’s usually portrayed as, say Dutch researchers who have replicated the study. Instead, it’s more like an anecdote that became slightly more legendary each time its author retold the story.
The work in question was done in 1947 by the Dutch researcher Niko Tinbergen on the begging behaviour of herring-gull chicks. At the time, the dominant idea in animal behaviour was that learning was all-important. Tinbergen argued that animals come into the world with instincts already adapted to their environments.
Adult gulls have a red spot on their lower bill. Tinbergen, who shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1973, presented wild chicks with model birds bearing spots and measured how much they pecked at the model.
The story that made it into the textbooks is that chicks have a powerful innate tendency to peck at red dots, which has evolved as a way of getting their parents to feed them. The original paper, however, shows that Tinbergen found that chicks actually pecked more at a black dot than a red one.
In a follow-up paper written in 1949, Tinbergen concluded that this strange finding resulted from a mistake in his methods. He had tested red, black, blue, white and yellow spots, but he presented the ‘natural’ red spot much more often than any other. The chicks, he decided, became habituated to the red spot and stopped pecking at it.
Of course, Tinbergen has his defenders: Read More ›