Pavlov's Physiology Factory: Experiment, Interpretation, Laboratory Enterprise

Author - Daniel P. Todes ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Hardcover Book item from The Johns Hopkins University Press was reviewed on 7-Nov-2008.

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1) Hardcover Book Pavlov's Physiology Factory: Experiment, Interpretation, Laboratory Enterprise by The Johns Hopkins University Press. Dr. Todes´s exhaustive study of Ivan Pavlov´s laboratory from 1891 to 1904 illustrates the transformation of a lone-investigator to the manager of a large team of scientists all contributing data, experiments, and methods to a larger body of work. This change in scientific style is characeristic of the professionalization of scientific careers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and has much to say about the origins of current laboratory enterprises with teams of technicians, research assistants, graduate students, and post-doctoral scientists all working under a single senior scientist. Todes´s detailed analysis of letters, laboratory notebooks, and archival collections in Russia makes this the definitive work in English on Ivan Pavlov´s work. It is limited to the work on digestion that earned Pavlov the Nobel Prize, but does not provide a complete account of the work on conditioned reflexes for which Pavlov is now most famous, a subject that the author may have chosen to save for a larger biography of Pavlov. Nonetheless, if we want to understand how a previously obscure physiologist became the leader of a world-class research institute, using the Russian royal family for support, Todes´s work is the place to start. Definitive and well worth reading!¤

2) Hardcover Book Pavlov's Physiology Factory: Experiment, Interpretation, Laboratory Enterprise by The Johns Hopkins University Press. In the beginning of 20th century Pavlov (Russian physiologist) was nominated several times for the Nobel prize. Pavlov was rejected several times because he freely credited his co-workers which was very unusual at that time and the Nobel committee concerned who was mostly responsible for results - Pavlov, or people working in his lab. Daniel Todes, the author of the book, failes to mention that since then crediting of one´s coworkers became very common in the West too. Today it is almost impossible to find a lab where the boss failes to credit his or her multiple co-workers for the experiments conducted by them but conceived by the boss. Nobel Commettee doesn´t have a problem with this any more. But Daniel Todes does. He is painstakingly counting the references for Pavlov´s technicians on the pages of his Lectures, making it almost a crime. I am well in the middle of the book (probably I will never finish it), and I am still left wondering why such undistinguished guy (in the Mr. Todes´ view) finally got his Nobel Prize. According to the book, Pavlov was rather a mediocre scientist, working in mediocre institution in a backward country (that´s Russia, and this is probably the key to understand Mr. Todes position), who never invented anything new (Pavlov´s famous surgical technics were traced to old technics, in which nerves were freely cut on an assumption that they are irrelevant. This is the same as saying that invention of the automobile was nothing exceptional, since long before people used horse-drawn carriages). Mr. Todes comes very close to accusing Pavlov of scientific dishonesty (Pavlov´s claim of his "happy dogs" was not true, in Mr. Todes oppinion, because before he would get "happy dogs" after surgical operations, he would have to kill over 20 dogs to perfect his surgical technics). The fact what rarely anyone could repeat Pavlov´s surgery was again used not as an illustration of Pavlov´s skill, but only to complain that it was almost impossible to anyone to repeat his experiments. Even Pavlov´s attempts to again and again confirm his own results were used against him - logic goes something like this "if he is repeating his own experiments - he is not sure of them, and if he is not sure of them why did he publish them before he was sure".
It looks like an author does not know that nothing in science can be done the first time, all experiments must be repeated and animal sacrifice is a sad, but nesessary part of any physiological experiment, that if someone can not perform a complex operation, it is his problem, not of the one who can, and repeating of experiments after publication is a common thing. It looks like author´s logic goes like this "If everything with these damn Russians appears to be great, we know it can not be true, and nothing can be good in reality". And since he "knows" it for sure, he will try to find all that bad which does not exist in reality but is so obvious in his imagination.

I sincerely hope that author is a journalist fairly ignorant of the process of making science in a physiology lab (I do know as I am working in the lab myself) because the book then can be considered a result of a journalist´s incompetence. If the author is a scientist, I can not find another explanation than malicious intent to knowingly stretch the facts.
I give it 2 stars, to prise the big work author did in Russian archives, and to honor work of his sincere helpers in both Russia and the US. It also has several nice photographs of Pavlov and his lab. I will scroll the rest of the books for photos, but I feel too bad for the author to read the book to the end.¤

3) Hardcover Book Pavlov's Physiology Factory: Experiment, Interpretation, Laboratory Enterprise by The Johns Hopkins University Press. Russian physiologist and Nobel Prize winner Ivan Pavlov is most famous for his development of the concept of the conditional reflex and the classic experiment in which he trained a dog to salivate at the sound of a bell. In Pavlov´s Physiology Factory: Experiment, Interpretation, Laboratory Enterprise, Daniel P. Todes explores Pavlov´s early work in digestive physiology through the structures and practices of his landmark laboratory—the physiology department of the Imperial Institute for Experimental Medicine.

In Lectures on the Work of the Main Digestive Glands, for which Pavlov won the Nobel Prize in 1904, the scientist frequently referred to the experiments of his coworkers and stated that his conclusions reflected "the deed of the entire laboratory." This novel claim caused the prize committee some consternation. Was he alone deserving of the prize? Examining the fascinating content of Pavlov´s scientific notes and correspondence, unpublished memoirs, and laboratory publications, Pavlov´s Physiology Factory explores the importance of Pavlov´s directorship of what the author calls a "physiology factory" and illuminates its relationship to Pavlov´s Nobel Prize-winning work and the research on conditional reflexes that followed it.

Todes looks at Pavlov´s performance in his various roles as laboratory manager, experimentalist, entrepreneur, and scientific visionary. He discusses changes wrought by government and commercial interests in science and sheds light on the pathways of scientific development in Russia—making clear Pavlov´s personal achievements while also examining his style of laboratory management. Pavlov´s Physiology Factory thus addresses issues of importance to historians of science and scientists today: "big" versus "small" science, the dynamics of experiment and interpretation, and the development of research cultures.¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 5-Dec-2008, 08018669019780801866906, 550-600-180-280-750-030-010-970-8

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