Debunking the Frog Myth

So you know that story about how if you put a frog in warm water it will jump out but if you put it in cold water and then slowly bring up the heat it won’t? You’ve definitely heard it. Well, it turns out it’s just not true. James Fallows offers up a replacement, cat litter, to which Rafe Colburn offers a good rebuttal:

I don’t think the cat litter box analogy is a perfect substitute for the boiled frog. The point I take away from the litter box is that people to become accustomed to conditions that make people who are not so conditioned wince. The point of the boiled frog analogy (despite the fact that it is not scientifically accurate) is that if environmental conditions change slowly enough, people will not perceive that change until it’s too late.

Anyone have a good replacement?

May 18, 2009

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Comments

Nathan Gilliatt said:

The brakes in my dad’s car wore out while I was away at college. The decline was gradual, and he hadn’t noticed they were particularly bad. I hadn’t driven it in months, so it was obvious that they needed replacement once I made the first stop.

Not sure that analogy will transfer to anyone who hasn’t driven a car like that, however. :-)

May 18, 2009 at 6:23 pm

Clay Parker Jones said:

When I visited Salvi’s laboratories, Edward Lobarinas, a researcher, was conducting experiments on rats that had been subjected to acoustic trauma. Lobarinas showed me a Plexiglas platform with an embedded pressure sensor attached to a computer. On top of the Plexiglas was a metal mesh canopy. First, a normal rat that served as a control was caged under the canopy and the entire apparatus was placed inside an acoustic chamber, into which Lobarinas delivered a steady noise with a narrow frequency range. “It’s a continual sound in the background, a sort of sh-h-h,” he said. This was interrupted by a loud bang. “The animal startles,” he said, and this sent a measurement of the movement through the pressure sensor to the computer screen, which showed a sharp spike.

In the next step, the sudden bang was preceded by a silent gap in the noise. This time, the rat had a much smaller startle reflex, seen on the computer as a low peak. “When you have a silent gap before the loud noise, you’re less startled,” Lobarinas said. “It’s like when it’s dark and you’re in your room and a bogeyman jumps out at you. You have a maximum startle. But if, before the bogeyman jumps out, the door is slowly creaking open, you sort of know the bogeyman is going to come out, and that decreases your startle.”

When a rat with induced hearing loss underwent the same experiment, it had a robust startle reflex even when the loud noise was preceded by silence. “The rat has tinnitus,” Lobarinas said. “It can’t tell us, of course, but it has constant buzzing in the ear, and we know that although it hears, it doesn’t perceive the silent gap because of tinnitus. So its startle reflex is not attenuated. It doesn’t hear the door slowly creaking open, just the bogeyman.”

That’s from the New Yorker. I don’t know if it’s the same thing, exactly, but if loud noises are less startling if preceded by some sort of “warning silence”, then perhaps there’s a loose connection to be found. And surely a marketing analogy. ;)

That Buzzing Sound – New Yorker, Jerome Groopman, February 9, 2009.

May 18, 2009 at 9:49 pm

doug schumacher said:

weather. altitude, and even alcohol consumption. basically anything you can gradually adjust to won’t hit you as shocking as if you suddenly make a stark change.

(and thanks, i didn’t know the frog story wasn’t true)

May 18, 2009 at 11:05 pm

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January 12, 2011 at 8:12 am

Debunking the Frog Myth

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