On 7 Apr 2004, Tom Allaway gently chided me:

> But Stephen.
>
> Didn't you see the reference to the 1996 Proceedings of the NAS with
> the clear laboratory demonstration that this does occur, and that it
> may provide fascinating insight into the way the visual system works?

Silly me. By the time I stumbled across that Iranian article which
claimed it doesn't occur, I had forgotten all about Dennis Goff's
citation of the Purves article, or perhaps it never registered.

Still, we have a problem. We have two Iranian physicists claiming in
a respected Western journal, _Perception_ (to show my Eurocentric
bias), that in 2003 they were unable to observe an effect reported by
three American neurobiologists in 1996 in an even more respected
journal. Moreover, the Americans reported the effect to be highly
reproducible: 11 of 12 na�ve observers saw it too. So why not the
Iranians?

The next step must be to check what the Iranians had to say. We don't
get the journal here but they provided an e-mail address. I guess I'd
better write them. How'd they get time off from making atomic bombs,
anyway? (sorry, I never said that!)

(This reminds me of the title of a paper I once saw published, I
think, in _Psychological Reports_, "California women know that the
surface of still water is horizonal".)

Stephen
___________________________________________________
Stephen L. Black, Ph.D.            tel:  (819) 822-9600 ext 2470
Department of Psychology         fax:  (819) 822-9661
Bishop's  University           e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Lennoxville, QC  J1M 1Z7
Canada

Dept web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy
TIPS discussion list for psychology teachers at
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