Inspired in part by @LeslieKay & the #OldNeuroPapers initiative, I read Tolman's 1948 paper "Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men":
https://personal.utdallas.edu/~tres/spatial/tolman.pdf
Not sure how I got this far without reading it, and I recommend it to anyone who also hasn't. We simply do not see this type of paper anymore. I wonder: Are we better worse off for it?
At it's core, it contains the thing we all still aspire to: a clear illustration of competing ideas about how the brain/mind works, compared with the evidence. But it also contains two things we don't do anymore.
First, it's peppered with saucy: "Most of the rat investigations, which I shall report, were carried out in the Berkeley laboratory. But I shall also include, occasionally, accounts of the behavior of non-Berkeley rats who obviously have misspent their lives in out-of- State laboratories."
While this is amusing, it's probably best that we've left this snark behind?
Second, the discussion extends ideas around cognitive maps, tested with rats running through mazes, into thoughts around social justice: "I am not myself a clinician or a social psychologist. What I am going to say must be considered, therefore, simply as in the nature of a rat psychologist's ratiocinations offered free ... the expression of these their displaced hates ranges all the way from discrimination against minorities to world conflagrations ...What in the name of Heaven and Psychology can we do about it? My only answer is to preach again the virtues of reason—of, that is, broad cognitive maps."
This might not belong in scientific papers per se. But I wonder is something has been left behind here in the narrowing of the field?
Parsing the actual paper right now but re: "While this is amusing, it's probably best that we've left this snark behind?"
I don't know, I guess it wouldn't be proper form to see journal articles in that style but I think I would quite enjoy it because I find that it makes it more memorable as a narrative as opposed to what might be considered dry, almost clinical writing.
But that might just be me.
Yeah, snark is risky to operationalise and best left for personal discourse with close peers with whom you can gauge the mood and read the room accordingly, and who, hopefully, find the humour in it.
But yes, I think my idea of memorability would be satisfied with papers written like conversational discourse.
@NicoleCRust Also, I don't suppose you've got a list of links for your countdown threads do you? Looks like I've missed quite a bit and scrolling past your profile to find them might take a while, worth it as it might be.
@aazad Thanks for asking! Just search for this and they'll all come up:
#BrainIdeasCountdown
Ooh, they have their very own hashtag, nifty. Looks like I've got quite a bit to get up to speed on.
Though to be fair, I ought to be working on my thesis but sometimes I just get the urge to read material that has anything to but to do with my thesis content. Plus, I'm in the middle of data collection anyway so.. I think I can allow myself some slack.
Thanks, Nicole!
@aazad Happy data collection and thesis writing!
@NicoleCRust @aazad Is it really snark though? Especially given that Tolman himself studied at both Harvard and MIT, I think this should be understood more in line with the kind of "friendly" rivalries that have always existed between various Ivy leagues, as well as Oxford vs Cambridge, in Dublin it's Trinity vs UCD, etc. Snark seems a harsh descriptor for those kind of institutional rivalry traditions. I know this paper well, and that's how I always read it.
To me it read like witty jousting than snark, or at least, the kind I'd tease friends (caveat being I'm autistic and I have to be careful with interpreting vague social heuristics) with but I suppose the point is if it's appropriate for a journal article as opposed to an op-ed piece of some kind or something along those lines.
@aazad I'm also pro aspiring to memorability in our writing. Fortunately, memorability has many dimensions beyond snark!