The1973 Nobel Prize winning discovery of the honeybee "dance language"
(DL), i.e the discovery that honeybee-recruits use distance-information
and direction-information, contained in foragers'-dances, about the
location of the source visited by the foragers, to help find the
source), is a "discovery" of something that never existed. The
"discovery" constitutes the worst error in the whole history of
science; not because of any one specific reason, but because of the
awesome combined weight of very destructive effects the "discovery" has
had on the very foundations of the whole field of behavioral science,
and the very foundations of science itself.
I shall not go into further details here, beyond pointing out that v.
Frisch's sensational DL hypothesis, first published in a scientific
journal in 1946, was stillborn, when he fully justifiably concluded, on
the basis of his own first study on honeybee-recruitment, (published in
an extensive summary in 1923), that honeybee-recruits use odor alone
all along, and NO information about the location of any food.
In that first study the foragers were trained to feed on a scented
sugar-solution in a small dish (forager's-station), very close to the
hive. The foragers, therefore, performed only perfect round dances.
Other small dishes with sugar-water, with the same odor as the
foragers' food-odor, or with a different food-odor (stations), were
distributed in other parts of the field. The foragers'-station was
always the one station that was closest to the hive, and in the
distance-tests there were only one, or two, other sites. In those
distance-tests recruits found all the stations with the
foragers'-food-odor, and none of the stations with a different
food-odor placed side by side, i.e. practically at the same site, up to
a distance of 1,000 m. from the hive. According to his later DL
hypothesis, in the Austrian honeybee strain he used for that study (as
well as most other studies), round dancer are expected to result in
recruits finding stations (with the foragers' food-odor) only within
100 m. from the hive; which means that the expectations from his DL
hypothesis had already been grossly contradicted by the results he
obtained in his first study on honeybee-recruitment. So where did the
trouble start/?
In that first study on honeybee-recruitment, the closer a station was
to the hive the earlier it was found by recruits, and the greater the
number of new-arrivals it received.
In order to explain such results by use of odor alone all along, after
he had already erroneously concluded, on the basis of his own research,
(in 1919), that honeybees had a very poor, human-like sensitivity to
odors, v. Frisch had no choice but to assume that recruits conduct a
circular-search that gradually expands around the hive, and extends to
the limits of the foraging area (with different recruits each starting
the search in a different direction chosen at random). This led to the
expectation of basically the same type of results in all future tests,
i.e. that the closer a station is to the hive, the earlier it should be
found by recruits, and the greater the number of new-arrivals it should
receive. Since he knew what to expect from all future tests, there was
no need to carry out any additional tests, and the case was closed.
It remained closed for another 20 years, until 1943 (in the midst of
WWII), when his expectations from use of odor alone all along
were unexpectedly grossly refuted in an inadvertent test carried out by
a colleague of his, where the foragers'-station was 500 m. from the
hive, and another station, with the same type of scented food, was set
very close to the hive. Moreover, the results of that test seemed to
show that recruits knew where to go. V. Frisch tells everything about
it in his 1967 (1965) book. This left him no choice but to conclude
that his initial conclusion that recruits use odor alone all along was
an error, and this, in turn, led to the discovery of the
distance-information, and the direction information, contained in
foragers'-dances; which gradually gradually misled him into the trap of
his sensational DL hypothesis. I shall skip the details about how all
this actually happened.
The "discovery" of the honeybee DL earned v. Frisch the Nobel Prize in
1973, 50 years after he had already discovered that honeybee-recruits
use odor alone all along, and no information about the location of any
food, and 6 years after Adrian M. Wenner discovered that
honeybee-recruits use odor alone all along, and launched his opposition
to the DL hypothesis; which were initially published in Science (1967,
1969), and in Nature (1973). An incredible backlash soon turned Wenner
& his team into pariahs, unwelcome in those two journals, or anywhere
else for that matter. Wenner had, however, unknowingly actually only
rediscovered what v. Frisch had already discovered in 1923.. (The
reason Wenner did not know of v. Frisch's 1923 discovery was that,
after the inception of his DL hypothesis, v. Frisch phased out the
results of his first study on honeybee-recruitment (as presumably
insignificant anomalies, not even worthy of mention). And since he
repeatedly claimed to have experimentally confirmed the DL hypothesis,
DL opponents naturally examined only his evidence for that claim, and
did not bother to examine his earlier work, where we knew that such
evidence could not be found. Little did we know what we would find
there!Eventually, I accidentally stumbled on an unknown U.S.
publication of 1939 by v. Frisch, based on a guest lecture he had
delivered at the University College of London in 1937, summarizing his
whole earlier research on honeybees, including his early research on
honeybee-recruitment, and published the "discovery" in J. theoret.
Biol. (1980). The 1939 publication was a reprint of an earlier British
publication of 1937. The 1937 publication was reprinted in Bee World
(1993) with an introduction by Wenner. By then, however, the conviction
that honeybees have a DL, had become so deeply ingrained in the minds
of staunch DL sup****ters, to the point where they have completely
ignored all that.
V. Frisch's 1973 Nobel Prize was shared by Lorenz & Tinbergen, the two
co-founders of the general approach to behavior known as European
ethology, which is based on the belief in the existence of genetically
pre-determined behavioral traits ("instincts"). If honeybees have a DL,
the only way they can know how to interpret the symbols of such a
language, is "instinctively". The belief that the existence of the
honeybee DL has been satisfactorily experimentally confirmed, thus,
provided European ethology with its most impressive validation; even
though there has never been any satisfactory experimental confirmation
for the existence of the "instinctive" honeybee DL, or any other
genetically-predetermined individual traits (whether behavioral, or
otherwise). Apart from the damaging effect the 1973 decision of the
Nobel Committee has had on the study of behavior in general, the
honeybee DL hypothesis itself, has developed throughout the years into
a huge, and ever-expanding "castle in the air". Other than the 1973
Nobel Committee, it has been mostly very prestigious journals like
Science & Nature, that have repeatedly played a major role in that
development.
However, by now it has become obvious that v. Frisch's his initial
conclusion about WHAT recruits use, i.e. that they use odor alone all
along was never in error. It is well-known that, contrary to v. Frisch,
honeybees are far more sensitive to odors than humans; to the point
where scientists are now experimenting on training honeybees to locate
explosives in mine-fields. What was in error in v. Frisch's early work
on honeybee-recruitment, was not at all his conclusion regarding what
honeybee -recruits use, but his conclusion regarding HOW they use odor
alone all along; which led him to erroneous expectations from such use.
His sensational DL hypothesis was, therefore, STILLBORN, and nothing,
not even a Nobel Prize, or the use of harmonic radar, could ever revive
a hypothesis that was so clearly, and obviously stillborn.
Staunch DL sup****ters, starting with v. Frisch himself, have striven
for the past 60 years, to obtain the required experimental confirmation
for the existence of such a DL. They managed, time and again, to delude
themselves, and practically everyone else , into believing they had
obtained a fully satisfactory confirmation. But, not surprisingly, they
never could, and they never did accomplish that feat. The only ones
never fooled by such claims were staunch DL opponents, who have been
denied access to print in the most prestigious scientific journals. I
shall not go into further details about this, here.
There are very many other devastating arguments against the DL
hypothesis, and each of these arguments alone suffices to completely
discredit that hypothesis. I shall not even begin to go into that here,
either.
--
Sincerely,
Ruth Rosin ("Prickly pear")
P.S. I shall gladly debate the issue with anyone willing to do so.
P.P.S. The next worse goof is the claim that various sub-human animals
s can use a magnetic compass.
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