Another Diamond Day in Orkney

It’s another diamond day in Orkney.  Having got into bed at 3 a.m. after the Deerness Harvest Home I don’t remember much about the night.  I heard the phrase ‘memory is slippy’ on the radio today, or was it a dream ?  Memory is indeed slippy:  In my fifties I worked hard but can’t remember anything; ironically I can remember quite a few things from the 1950s.  After reading about the ‘duck identification’ experiment of the mid-1950s I’m not sure any of us will recall anything.  Fifty students were gathered together in a lecture room at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); this in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.  The volunteers had no prior knowledge of what would take place; however on gathering they were briefed to indicate that ‘memory’ and ‘recall’ would be tested. 

A woman in a lab technician’s white coat entered and on a table in the middle of the room she placed a cage with a duck inside it. (The duck was a Bufflehead, Bucephala albeola).  After 5 minutes the duck was removed from the room.  The volunteers had not been allowed pencil or paper to make notes.  They then received a paper with a set of 27 questions.  Obvious questions included ‘Colour of duck / size / behaviour / loose feathers etc.  These events took part in mid March 1955.

Volunteers were called back a year later, then two years, 5 years, ten years, twenty years.  Obviously in that time volunteers had moved, died, or simply were untraceable.  The same question set was always handed out.  However Professor Hans Mueller was delighted that on average 82% of all volunteers turned up most times.

After 50 years, amongst replies elicited from the surviving volunteers included:

A denial they had ever been at the MIT
No recognition of anyone else in the room
Two thought an armadillo had been brought into the room
Seven argued vociferously about the species of duck
One man reported he had met and married the woman who had brought the duck in the cage into the room (It was a third marriage for both of them).
Complaints that a duck wasn’t present in the room at consequential meetings
An aversion to ornithology for life.
Four folk realised they were in the wrong room
Some (unspecified number) were unable to eat duck
One suffered from Anatidaephobia (look it up - I had to)
Seven released wild ducks in Cambridge, MA
Eighteen had swimming lessons
Ten became cagey
None realised that, collectively, their recognition efforts were directly connected to the Cold War.
None of them wrote to Percy Edwards


It never gets any easier.