What does the research on behaviorism reveal?
Many of the articles that defend and advocate behavior-based safety point out the enormous amount of research substantiating it. They do not mention the large amount of scientific research that refutes it. A major problem with behavior-based safety is the fact that when behaviorism was held up to the scrutiny of the scientific method it failed. “As behavior research accumulated it was apparent to even the most ardent followers of the theory that the animals being studied frequently acted in ways the theory couldn’t explain. [2][2]One major problem was different animals failed to conform to supposedly universal principles of conditioning. Skinner said “Pigeon, rat, monkey, which is which? It doesn’t matter,” but it did matter. The researchers found they could easily train a pigeon to peck at a disc for food but it was next to impossible to get it to flap its wings for the same reward. They could also get rats to press a bar for food but to get a cat to do it was quite a different matter
