On Fri, 20 Oct 2000, David Likely wrote:
> A trivia question, the short of which is, was
> Fred Skinner a promoter of some sort of vitamin
> or megavitamin therapy, and if so, does somebody
> have a reference?
>
> The long of it is that I'm reading a book <snip> the
> book also asks rhetorically, "Are B. F. Skinner's
> contributions to modern psychology tainted
> by his zealous proselytizing for vitamin therapy?"
> This is news to me -- I did wonder if he was thinking
> of Linus Pauling who I seem to remember was a
> vitamin C fan.
>
> Ref: James, Jamie. The music of the spheres: music,
> science and the natural order of the unverse.
> Originally Grove Press: New York, 1993. (I have the
> Copernicus [Springer-Verlag] paperback edition, '95)
I'm no Skinner scholar, but certainly if he was into megavitamin
therapy, I'm sure I (and everyone else) would have heard of it.
It's totally out-of-character for him, certainly.
I have no doubt that David is correct and James has confused
Skinner with Pauling, a howler of an error which calls into
question everything else in his book.
Good catch, David! Why don't you write to the author and tweak
him on it. We don't want generations of readers going around
believing such stuff of poor Skinner. And, as we know, once a
rumour like this gets started, there's no stopping it.
-Stephen
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Department of Psychology fax: (819) 822-9661
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