Fish Story

Here’s what we few, we proud, we beleaguered photo critics don’t need: Competition from other species, especially those of the defunct persuasion.

That’s right. To be specific, dead fish. Neuroscientist Craig Bennett, now a postdoctoral researcher in psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, bought an entire 18-inch-long, 1.7 kg (3.8 pounds) Atlantic salmon at a fish market and put it into a Dartmouth College lab’s fMRI machine, a device used to study the brain. As the fish lay in the scanner, Bennett and his colleagues showed it “a series of photographs depicting human individuals in social situations with a specified emotional valence.” The salmon “was asked to determine what emotion the individual in the photo must have been experiencing.”

Salmon photo critique methodology

Analysis of the voxel (3-D or “volumetric” pixel) data from the area of the salmon’s minute brain showed evidence of activity. In short, it appeared as if the definitely dead salmon was thinking about the pictures shown to it. (See Alexis Madrigal’s September 18, 2009 report, “Scanning Dead Salmon in fMRI Machine Highlights Risk of Red Herrings,” at Wired.com.)

Salmon as photo critic

“By complete, random chance, we found some voxels that were significant that just happened to be in the fish’s brain,” Bennett said, according to Madrigal’s story. “And if I were a ridiculous researcher, I’d say, ‘A dead salmon perceiving humans can tell their emotional state.'” (Click here for the full study from team Bennett, “Neural correlates of interspecies perspective taking in the post-mortem Atlantic Salmon: An argument for multiple comparisons correction.”)

Oncorhynchus keta/Chum salmon

I hasten to point out a fundamental conceptual error that Bennett and his colleagues have made, as exemplified by this last statement. Their subject, said dead salmon, was not “perceiving humans.” It was perceiving photographs of humans. The relationship between a photograph of a thing and the thing itself is indexical at best, and fraught with complexities and qualifications. Clearly Bennett et al need to read more theory of photography.

On a positive note, Bennett and his group also scanned a pumpkin and a Cornish hen (both certifiably deceased) with no resulting critical commentary. What a relief. Nonetheless, something like this can give photo criticism a bad name. Surely none of us who undertake this nettlesome role want to hear someone snarking “A dead salmon could do as well.”

(I must confess that I have colleagues about whom one could justifiably say that. In the interest of full disclosure, I should also acknowledge that in the late winter/early spring of 1977 I was involved in training two Louisville-based canines as photo critics. Both those furry colleagues have long since shuffled off the coil, but video documentation of one of my tutorials endures, and will eventually make its way into this blog.)

Bennett intended the resulting report to emphasize the need for multiple correctives in statistical analysis to reduce the risk of false positives, which are commonplace in neuroimaging research. But clearly this project has repercussions outside the field of statistical analysis, entering as it does the territory of critical analysis of photographs. Among my people (on my father’s side) we commonly say “Better than a slap in the face with a wet fish.” Taking my cue from this, I offer my colleagues a new motto for photo criticism, already sized and suitable for printing out and pasting onto a button for your shirt or sweater:

Better than a critique from a dead salmon.

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