Scientific journeys
cannot be captured by the contents of academic journals or chapters…the
writing is too conventional and the sentiments
too constrained to get to know what the investigators are really like or
what they really think.
Research on animals inhibits researchers even further lest they be
accused of “anthropomorphism” even though humans have no other way to
think about another species but by reference to their own experiences.
The BabbleLog is a thoroughly unscientific series of ruminations about
animals, life, and people…inspired in most cases by events around the
Animal Behavior Farm, Indiana University, the domain of science, or some
really important world event such as the time MJW sat next to Michael
Jordan at the Waffle House in downtown Chapel Hill, NC.
These entries caricature the kind of things we talk about at the Farm in
between composing the prose that science demands. APK and MJW hope these
notes shed a more personal light on ABF style. The responsibility for
the telling falls only on APK/MJW. We respect our students too much to
ask them to babble. The accuracy of the memories contained herein is
about p < .10.
