Monkey Business Research Articles

Letter from the Authors

Authors Reply to L Jones-Engel, G Engel, A Fuentes and M Schillaci: We are responding to correspondence received from Jones-Engel and colleagues regarding an article published in the Canadian Journal of Infectious Diseases and Medical Microbiology titled “The infectious disease consequences of monkey business”, which highlighted the public health concerns of cross-species transmission of infectious agents from nonhuman primates to humans (1). Although the article provided several references to the work of Jones-Engel and her colleagues, she has brought to our attention instances of lack of citation of her work regarding specific statements made in the article, poor and/or improper paraphrasing, lack of quotation marks for specific phrases and lack of attributing findings and observations to their work. Dr Jones-Engel correctly points out that her and her co-authors’ published data are the result of decades of international fieldwork, carefully planned research and collaboration, and represent original scholarly work. As the authors of the article in the Journal, we acknowledge that it is incorrect to not properly credit the data sources when those data are not the result of our own original scholarly activity, and we regret that we were not more rigorous in that regard. As a reminder to our readers, the “Adult Infectious Diseases Notes” series in the Journal represents opinions or short summaries/reviews of topical items to our readership and does not represent original work, which is provided in the original article series. The article was written as a ‘public service’ type reminder about the need for awareness of the risks of contact with primate populations in these settings and as noted, an increasingly popular tourist destination for travelers from Canada. As authors of the review article, we did not deliberately or willfully attempt to misattribute any information in our article to original research conducted by ourselves, but we acknowledge and sincerely regret any lack of citations, poor and/or improper paraphrasing, and lack of specific quotation marks that might have led to that appearance. The Journal agreed that a response from the authors in an open and transparent manner was appropriate. We would like to thank Dr Jones-Engel and her colleagues for bringing this to our attention.

Monkey business: Children’s use of character identity to infer shared properties

Children’s toys provide a rich arena for investigating conceptual flexibility, because they often can be understood as possessing an individual identity at multiple levels of abstraction. For example, many dolls (e.g., Winnie-the-Pooh) and action figures (e.g., Batman) can be construed either as characters from a fictional world or as physical objects in the real world. In two experiments, 72 4- and 5-year-olds took part in a property extension task, the results of which provide evidence of an understanding that (1) two representations of a character share certain properties in virtue of their shared character identity, and this sharing does not stem simply from having the same name, and (2) one representation of a character is more likely to share properties with another representation of the character if the properties were acquired by the character than if they were acquired by the representation. Children’s understanding of a representational object’s abstract character identity thus enabled them to transcend using its unique spatio-temporal history as a sole basis for inferring its idiosyncratic properties.

Monkey business

Monkey business

Legal Monkey Business

Legal Monkey Business

Evolution, Just Say Yes: Prothero on Fossils

It has often been remarked that the fight against creationism resembles Heracles’ battle with the mythological Hydra: chop off one of Hydra’s many heads and two more spring forth. The various manifestations of creationism over the last 50 years certainly support such a model. Indeed, in spite of creationists’ opposition to evolution as a biological process, the group’s ideology has shown a marked tendency to adapt and evolve when their goals are thwarted by legislative or other obstacles to proliferation: apparently, this is one of life’s little ironies. To prevent the Hydra’s weird regeneration and fission, Heracles had to burn the remnants of each of the heads he bludgeoned. Do evolutionary biologists have any similar tools at their disposal as they confront creationism? One certainly is vigilance, from the local to the national level in various educational venues. Another tool is producing books and other publications (of which, of course, this journal is a prime example). These focus on providing readers, including teachers, compelling examples to hold in the pocket as it were as ammunition against false creationist claims; further, they elucidate the complexities of the religious arguments which supposedly, but do not really, underlie creationism. Finally, they provide a knowledge base on evolution suitable for a variety of backgrounds and levels. Two excellent and influential examples, from the many fine books on this topic, are The Monkey Business, Niles Eldredge, New York: Washington Square Press, 1982, and The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of Creationism, Niles Eldredge, New York: W. H. Freeman, 2000. Donald Prothero has added another splendid book to the Evolutionist’s arsenal in the battle with the Hydra. One of the real strengths of this book is the explicit focus on the fossil record and its significance for documenting and demonstrating evolution. In this respect, it fills an important and largely unoccupied niche, as books on evolution have typically strayed more towards the biological side. Combine this with the author’s expertise on paleontology and evolution, and you have a highly useful and genuinely lucid and readable account of evolution and the history of life. Not only is Prothero an expert on fossils but he also has a deep understanding of religion and the Bible, as he nicely outlines in the book. This understanding gives his account real credibility from a theological perspective and adds to the utility of the book. The book is divided into two major parts. The first broadly focuses on the nature of science and religion while considering various topics including the nature of science and creationism, the evolution of evolution, and the relevance of systematics to evolution. The second focuses on many concrete examples of evolution in the fossil record including the origins of life, the invasion of land by vertebrates, the evolution of dinosaurs and whales, and hominid and human evolution. The bulk of the examples do come from fossil vertebrates, although other topics are discussed, including the origins of life and the Cambrian explosion. It might, perhaps, have been nice to have a little more detail added to the discussion on the various episodes that we largely understand from the invertebrate side of paleontology, including the Cambrian explosion, especially Evo Edu Outreach (2008) 1:336–337 DOI 10.1007/s12052-008-0054-7

The Infectious Diseases Consequences of Monkey Business

Many microorganisms that affect humans have originated in animal species and have subsequently evolved to afflict humans (1). Many factors may contribute to the ability of infectious agents to cross the species barrier and include those related to the host, the pathogen and the host-pathogen environment. The microorganism must be able to establish itself in the new host within an environment that allows transmission to take place. Transmission may be facilitated by proximity, degree of physical contact between animals and humans, and the ability to be inoculated into the new host. Several examples of such pathogens have been recently encountered and include the agents of avian influenza (H5N1 and H9N2), severe acute respiratory syndrome, hantavirus infection and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. A recent comprehensive literature review (2) identified 1415 species of infectious microorganisms, including 217 viruses and prions, 538 bacteria and rickettsia, 307 fungi, 66 protozoa and 287 helminths, known to infect humans. Of these, almost two of three are zoonotic (ie, capable of being transmitted between humans and animals). Of the 1415 species of infectious microorganisms, 175 are considered to be ‘emerging’ pathogens (2). Of these, 132 (75%) are zoonotic, with protozoa and viruses considered more likely to be ‘emerging’ infectious agents than other taxa. Among infectious agents associated with the ‘emerging’ infectious diseases, RNA viruses are most likely to emerge as the greatest threat. Given the similarity of genetic, physiological and behavioural characteristics of humans and nonhuman primates, the latter are considered high-risk sources of emerging infectious agents with the capacity to infect humans. Primate-to-human cross-species transmission of infectious agents has become a focus of signifi

Burying the Black Sox: How Baseball's Cover-Up of the 1919 World Series Fix Almost Succeeded (review)

Reviewed by: Burying the Black Sox: How Baseball’s Cover-Up of the 1919 World Series Fix Almost Succeeded Bill Swanson Gene Carney. Burying the Black Sox: How Baseball’s Cover-Up of the 1919 World Series Fix Almost Succeeded. Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2006. 303 pp. Cloth, $26.95. Whatever we know about the "Big Fix," author Gene Carney instructs us to leave at the door as we enter his treatment of this tragic baseball event. Having read numerous books and articles on the topic, I found this difficult to do. The instruction, however, has merit. Through his extensive research, Carney has determined that the Black Sox [End Page 143] scandal of 1919 was far more complicated than we have traditionally believed. The title of Eliot Asinof's 1963 book, Eight Men Out, is really a misnomer. True, eight members of the Chicago White Sox were banned from baseball for life by newly appointed commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis for throwing the 1919 World Series, but the fingers of guilt extended far beyond these eight ballplayers. Carney states, If baseball reflects America, then in this story we see corporate America, reflected in the White Sox and Major League Baseball, silencing whistle-blowers, keeping real investigators off the trail, controlling the damage and the spin, and finally, when the lid is blown, keeping the focus on eight employees, as if they alone had "guilty knowledge." (xv) This seems to be supported by the fact that only select parts of the accused players' testimonies were reported in the papers, which, in turn, were controlled by the owners. Carney's perspective is that the lords of baseball knew what was going on during and after the fact, yet tried desperately to cover it up and retain public favor so baseball would not go the way of boxing and horse racing. Even Landis's attribution of equal guilt to all eight players may have served to cover the roles of the owners in this sordid mess. The setting for the "Big Fix" was a different scene from today's. In 1919 baseball and gambling were strongly connected. It was not unusual to see Arnold Rothstein, a big-time New York City gambler, in the luxury box of Charles Stoneham, owner of the New York Giants. For years, baseball owners had closed their eyes to the gambling problems plaguing baseball. Carney states, Baseball was in the stranglehold of gamblers, and had been for some time. Gambling and cheating in baseball were not isolated . . . nor were these activities indulged in only by players. The Black Sox scandal was more like the tip of an iceberg. But Major League Baseball could not let that become widely known, or the sport would collapse. (237) Carney's book raises more questions than it answers. He presents conflicting testimony, confessions and subsequent denials, and the "disappearance" of grand jury testimonies. Carney states, There was too much monkey business—competing syndicates double-crossing each other, stiffing players, players stiffing players, players telling other players who's in and who's not, but lying, perhaps. Then there's the problem of the players who were in on the fix changing their minds—possibly at different times, maybe even during games. (270) Did some of the players who were initially in on the fix want out, but couldn't remove themselves for fear of reprisal from gamblers? And is it that obvious when a player isn't doing his best? Mistakes—errors and strikeouts, for instance—happen even when people are really trying. [End Page 144] Over the years, some have claimed that the idea of fixing the 1919 World Series came from one or more of the players on the White Sox. Others believe the plot was hatched by gamblers. Establishing exactly what happened more than eighty years after the fact is a very difficult, if not impossible, task. Carney quotes Louis Hegeman, an Illinois attorney, in a presentation on the case of Joe Jackson at the 1992 Convention of the Society for American Baseball Research: "No two historians have agreed on what occurred in the World Series of 1919 and its aftermath" (286). Rather than answering questions, Carney presents the evidence...

Monkey Business: Lord Orville and the Limits of Politeness in Frances Burney's Evelina

Monkey Business:Lord Orville and the Limits of Politeness in Frances Burney’s Evelina Patricia L. Hamilton (bio) In a journal entry in the spring of 1774, Frances Burney rendered her judgment of the newly published volume of letters that Philip Dormer Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield, had written over a period of thirty years to his illegitimate son, Philip Stanhope, starting in 1738, when the boy was six years old. Burney observed that the letters are "extremely well written" and contain "some excellent hints for Education," but they tend towards making Chesterfield's son "wholly unprincipled" by "inculcating immorality; countenancing all Gentlemanlike vices; advising deceit, and exhorting to Inconstancy."1 Although Lord Chesterfield's Letters to His Son was reviewed positively in the London Magazine and some of his advice excerpted in conduct manuals such as The Polite Preceptor (1776),2 Burney's verdict echoed the volume's generally negative reception. Complaints about the moral tenor of the work can be found both in private correspondence and in the public forum.3 Particularly [End Page 415] objectionable was Chesterfield's intimation that young Stanhope could acquire polish by engaging in a discreet liaison with an upper-class French woman. In this context, it would be easy to dismiss Burney's response to Letters to His Son as an echo of popular sentiment, epitomized by Samuel Johnson's famous quip that the work "teaches the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master."4 Yet the fact that Burney read Chesterfield's Letters and debated the merits of his advice with her family and friends reveals that in the period preceding the publication of her first novel, Evelina (1778), she was engaged in thinking about what constitutes male virtue (The Early Journals, 2:49, 62–63). Indeed, she had been doing so apparently as far back as November 1768, when her journal records a conversation she had with Alexander Seton, a suitor of her older sister, Hetty. Burney represents herself as surprised and a little put out at Seton's opinion that Samuel Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison is too perfect a character to have ever existed in real life: "It quite hurts me," she replied to him, "to hear anybody declare a really & thoroughly good man never Lived. It is so much to the disgrace of mankind" (The Early Journals, 1:47). Seemingly, her response to mankind's disgrace was to fashion her own paragon of masculine behaviour, Lord Orville. She could barely suppress her delight at her cousin Richard's response to her fictional creation when, not knowing Burney was the author of Evelina , he praised Lord Orville's "extraordinary" politeness and confessed to studying Orville's character "every Day of his life," intending, Burney inferred, "to make him his model, as far as his situation would allow" (The Early Journals, 3:7, 10, 9). Twentieth-century critics, by contrast, have faulted Lord Orville for being "notoriously wooden," "sexually uninteresting," and "too good to be true."5 If measured strictly against the high spirits of Fielding's Tom Jones or the energy of Richardson's Lovelace, Orville might [End Page 416] at first glance seem characterized by a Grandisonian reserve. But, despite Burney's unquestionable debt to Richardson, it would be a mistake to see Orville as little more than an unimaginative knock-off of Sir Charles Grandison.6 I would argue that Burney's treatment of Lord Orville is more subtle and complex than most critics over the past forty years have allowed—with the exception, perhaps, of Kristina Straub in her landmark feminist reading of Burney's early novels. Straub's probing analysis of Lord Orville's passivity during the old women's race highlights his role in a larger ideological nexus concerned with power and powerlessness in the novel.7 While Straub's interrogation of Burney's male paragon displays the virtues of a close analysis of the text, recent work by social historians on the rise of politeness in the early eighteenth century can enrich our understanding of Lord Orville by refocusing our attention on the novel's context. Specifically, issues of gender and power in Evelina come into sharper focus...

Monkey Business by Marvin Olasky and John Perry

Monkey Business by Marvin Olasky and John Perry

SINcerely Yours

Ferguson continuedfrom previous page Daughter mine, listen to the waves, and dance, daughter mine, dance! In contrast is the starkly literal Biagini's: Le stelle danzano la loro luce Il cielo notturno rabbrividisce. Ascoltando le onde, danza, figlia mia! — which hews strictly to Gioseffi's essence. Of particular note is the word rabbrividisce, which indeed means "shivers." Yet rabbrividisce would better be used to enhance the conveyance of a very difficult moment, it rumbles and slides so. So when then does meaning trump beauty? The answer: Whenever the author says. The dovetailing of Gioseffi's work is splendid . She keeps well to her views and conveys them consistently through the book's three sections. She never lets us forget that the real world is looming and that mystic Nature is the original wellspring of life. "Vases of Wombs" and "The Sea Hag and the Cave of Sleep," which takes us on a journey á la James Joyce (but without his spelling), intertwine well to initiate us into her vision. Yet she has already tempered this view in the first stanza of the first poem, "Music Is a Child of the Grass": "We live in the shadows of immense hands / like death that will take our sex away." When we arrive at "Some Slippery Afternoon," we find Gioseffi's communiqués change somewhat. They become directed more to the world at large, to more of her relatives, and more to the reader. The material is harsher, and generally less sensual. It is also where we are most fully shown that what is anathema to Gioseffi is mankind, which makes this section a hard read. Yet, like a skipping stone, she reminds us from time to time of her views of the true context of life. That the ways of Nature, for her, are the balm and surcease for the abundant cruelties of the world we are bom into, and which shape our own natures into something less than we would like for them to be. / sense a lost andprimitive priestess wandering in a walled city ofthe wrong century. In the end, we are allowed to meet the Gioseffi of today. Her self-image is now drawn in "Old Aphrodite Rises from Her Porcelain Tub," where we are shown how she has been completely wrought into the world and now deals with the fact that she is afraid of falling alone in her bathroom where no one would hear her— and yet still must live with man's devastations: and land mines are set to blow off legs of children running after butterflies in meadows. This third section is aptly called "Blood Autumn and the Peach." Aptly, because blood autumn speaks to ends, while a peach is a fruit that holds thé seed to be planted for the next life. And with a fine touch, she closes with "Orta Nova, Provincia di Puglia" ("New Orchard, Province of Puglia"), where her father was born. Where better to leave the seed for the next life? Perhaps since the world is such a mixed bag, we may be able to understand why Blood Autumn is such a mixed bag. From time to time the world comes straight at us. Other times, it makes no sense, and, on occasion, it reaches out to us with delicious subtlety. "This is what I am," the world says, and "This is my nature." Without excuse, artifice, or pretense, Gioseffi unveils her self to us and says the same. John Ferguson is a graduate ofthe American School in Rome and wrote this piece in Reggio, Italy. SINcerely Yours LindaAnn Loschiavo Mae West: It Ain't No Sin Simon Louvish Thomas Dunne Books http://www.thomasdunnebooks.com 512 pages; cloth, $26.95 America's vaudevillians and silent screen stars have found a voice across the Atlantic. Filmmaker Simon Louvish, an Israeli-Scot who lives in England, has penned sci-fi novels as well as four biographies ofclassic funnymen: W. C. Fields (Man on the Flying Trapeze: The Life and Times ofW. C. Fields [1997]), the Marx Brothers (Monkey Business: The Lives and Legends of the Marx Brothers [ 1 999]), Laurel and Hardy (Stan and Ollie: The Roots of Comedy: The Double Life...

Monkey business: Specimen of new species shakes up family tree

Science NewsVolume 169, Issue 19 p. 293-294 This Week Monkey business: Specimen of new species shakes up family tree Susan Milius, Susan MiliusSearch for more papers by this author Susan Milius, Susan MiliusSearch for more papers by this author First published: 30 September 2009 https://doi.org/10.2307/4019307Citations: 1AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article.Citing Literature Volume169, Issue1910 May 2006Pages 293-294 RelatedInformation

News Feature: Monkey business

China is preparing to become the world's supplier of research primates. But are Western scientists ready to buy? Apoorva Mandavilli reports.

The Coastwatcher (review)

Reviewed by: The Coastwatcher Hope Morrison Weston, Elise The Coastwatcher. Peachtree, 2005132p ISBN 1-56145-350-1$14.95 Ad Gr. 5-7 Eleven-year-old Hugh's family has temporarily relocated to their beach home on the South Carolina coast to escape the 1943 polio epidemic ravaging their hometown of Charleston. War-obsessed Hugh spends his days behind a pair of binoculars, watching the coastline for unusual occurrences. His detective work takes a serious turn when he spots what he is convinced is a German submarine periscope, finds a map in a foreign language on the shore, and notices lights in the abandoned Wilcox home. In the end, Hugh's premonitions prove unsurprisingly correct; he and his cousin Tom sneak into the house and discover a band of escaped German POWs with cases full of dynamite and plans to attack the Charleston Naval Base. While Hugh and Tom are recognized as heroes in the papers, the story ends with a firm warning and a "no more monkey business" from Dad, which somewhat lessens the momentum of the capture. The ending is also a bit confusing, since the account of events subsequent to the boys' discovery is told not in the present but in reflections and excerpts of articles in the following days. The greatest strength of this first novel lies in the portrayal of Hugh as a boy simultaneously trying to figure out his place in the war and to solve the mystery that has suddenly entered his world; young readers will likely puzzle through the clues along with Hugh and get caught up in the excitement of the boy detective's case. While the occurrence described in the novel is fictional, there was an instance in 1942 of a German sub sending eight saboteurs with cases of explosives to the Atlantic Coast with plans to hit industrial targets; Weston describes this and other historical links in a lengthy author's note, formatted as a Q&A. Copyright © 2006 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Citizen MD

I'm afraid we live in loopy times. How else to account for the latest entries in America's culture wars: science museum docents donning combat gloves against rival fundamentalist tour groups and evolution on trial in a Pennsylvania federal court. For those keeping score, so far this year it's Monkeys: 0, Monkey Business: 82. That's 82 evolution versus creationism debates in school boards or towns nationwide—this year alone [1].

Science in culture: Monkey business

Charles Darwin changed the way animals were viewed in art.

Monkey business

Can primate studies really tell us anything useful about child abuse in human families? Michael Hopkin thinks not, and says we should spare the monkeys the pain.

Monkey Business: A Neo-Darwinist Approach to Ethics Codes

Contrary to the dictates of homo economicus, to be guided by a code of ethics does not entail sacrificing one's self-interest; rather, it entails correctly defining one's self-interest as a professional. A genuine concern for others, which is the theme of any sound code of ethics, is a natural human drive. An organizational culture that recognizes and nurtures this drive through the active implementation of an ethics code—from top management on down—is a successful one. If the code is grounded in the correct definition of professionalism as commitment to the profession and to the community, those guided by the code will be successful professionals. In the business jungle, as in the primeval jungle, the keys to success are honesty, fair dealing, and cooperation. Man is a social animal.

Mad cows and monkey business: the end of vCJD?

Mad cows and monkey business: the end of vCJD?

Mad cows and monkey business: the end of vCJD?

Mad cows and monkey business: the end of vCJD?

Monkey business: How primates see, hear, and smell the world around them

Monkey business: How primates see, hear, and smell the world around them