Now on ScienceBlogs: Q: How do you sex a Smilodon? (A: Very carefully)
Jonah Lehrer is a contributing editor at Wired. He's also written for The New Yorker, Seed, Nature, the Boston Globe and is a contributor to Radio Lab. He's the author of Proust Was A Neuroscientist. His new book is How We Decide.
« Olafur Eliasson | Main | The Genetics of Stress »
Posted on: April 24, 2008 2:38 PM, by Jonah Lehrer
It sounds like one of those 1950's psychological experiments that scientific ethics boards no longer allow: Nicholas White was trapped in an elevator in New York City's McGraw-Hill building for forty-one hours. Just thinking about such an ordeal gives me shivers of claustrophobic anxiety. Forty-one hours! In a suspended box!
Thankfully, security cameras caught the whole thing on tape:
And then read the article, which is fascinating throughout.
Share on: Facebook Twitter Stumbleupon Reddit Email + More
Trackback URL for this entry: http://scienceblogs.com/mt/pings/70351
Having read the article first, before the Internet video sensation of the security-camera footage, I just can't bring myself, yet, to watch it. It is not a happy ending, where Mr. White is today. I worked briefly for McGraw-Hill in the 1980s, downtown, but occasionally went to the Sixth Avenue HQ. To think, it could've been me.
It'd be interesting to see if he still stuck to his normal sleeping pattern...
(Email is required for authentication purposes only. On some blogs, comments are moderated for spam, so your comment may not appear immediately.)
Comments (3)
Thanks for this post! I clicked on the link and read the whole article--got sucked right in (and consequently did not get my work done) : ). I never knew elevators could be so interesting.
There is a lot of the science of human behavior involved in the design of an elevator. I think it's especially interesting that the designers take peoples' fear into account (for example, by putting in buttons that don't do anything, but make people feel less powerless). It is a little silly, but I can see why being in a buttonless elevator would be extra-frightening. And I'm not even scared of small spaces.
Posted by: Jillian | April 24, 2008 8:05 PM