Lords of the Lash

by Frank Kale

  Chapter Two

   

   

  Dorchester, MA: Zachary Dunbar looked curiously at the young woman, Jasmine Jackson, who was soon to informally put his life on trial, on the radio, on the internet, and on her blog.  He had no delusions about that.  Yet what could he do?  Modern society demanded that every failed act be followed by an act of apology.  The media had turned men into apologists.  “I take full responsibility,” had became the main refrain of every failed politician, CEO, and screw-up of the world – and it was a refrain that was, of course, meaningless – just as saying “I’m sorry,” after you do some harm is meaningless – it doesn’t revert the harm – it only makes the offender feel better about the harm they have committed – or is that true? Zachary wondered, and was lost in this thought when Jasmine turned to him with her angelic smile.

  “We will be on air in a few minutes,” she said.

  “I had thought you would be older,” said Zachary.

  “Life is full of failed expectations,” said Jasmine.  “Or should I say altered expectations?”

  “Yes, yes, altered is much better,” said Zachary.  “There is nothing failed here.  Well, of course the subject we will soon be discussing, which is my research.”

  “Zachary I’m not here to grill you.  Relax.  This is only my second interview. My other one was a Celtics player,” said Jasmine.

  “Exactly, you interviewed the point guard for the Celtics after he was arrested on gun charges,” said Zachary.

  “Frequent listener?” Jasmine asked.

  “Every night,” Zachary admitted.  “I love your show.  If I get put through the ringer I want it to be here.”

              Water glasses were placed on small tables beside Jasmine and Zachary.  Various reminders were made and Zachary reviewed the protocol.  The different format of the show was explained, Zachary was introduced, and then Jasmine said, “So Zachary it really is an honor to have you here on Blinded Justice.”

              “Thank you, I’m happy to be here,” said Zachary.

              “So I would like to explain to my listeners who are not used to me doing interviews that it was actually Zachary who contacted me,” said Jasmine, adding, “Because he likes the show.”

              “Yes, I am a big fan.  I think that your stories are amazing, and they always keep me at the edge of my seat, and yet you are fair to all people involved.  So I thought if I have to talk about this tragic situation I would at least like to go somewhere where I like to listen,” said Zachary.

              “So you felt obligated to talk about what happened with your research?” said Jasmine.

              “I couldn’t for many months, due to ongoing legal issues.  The legal issues have ceased.  However, what haven’t disappeared are the human issues, and those are the real issues.  And I believe that I owe it to everyone who was involved in my research and the public at large to explain my thinking on the situation.”

              “You’ve just resigned from Harvard University,” said Jasmine.

              “Correct,” said Zachary.

              “That couldn’t have been easy,” said Jasmine.

              “It was a joy and a privilege every day that I worked there, but I felt that it was the right thing to do,” said Zachary.

              “Because of what happened with one of the subjects in one of your research studies,” said Jasmine.

              “Correct,” said Zachary.

              “And what did happen?” Jasmine asked.

              “That is what I would like to know.  That is what the victim’s family would like to know.  Unfortunately, human decision making is never certain, and there are not always cause and effect explanations,” said Zachary.

              “What do you think happened?” said Jasmine.  “Let me rephrase that: Michael Capobianco killed his girlfriend, Melanie, shortly after participating in your research study.  That study was trying to answer the question: Do parents pass traits on to their children that are acquired by the parents during times of high stress?  Michael Capobianco’s father killed his wife.  Do you think you were playing with fire when you attempted to figure out if Michael Capobianco was capable of killing, just as his father was capable of killing?”

              “No, if anything, such studies could help prevent domestic violence,” said Zachary.

              “How do you draw the line between jealousy and murderous jealousy?” Jasmine asked.

              “That is a very big jump – from jealousy to murder,” said Zachary.

              “So what did you find in Michael’s case?” Jasmine asked.

              “We found, we believe, if we have interpreted the data correctly, though it seemed pretty clear cut, that yes, Michael has the Murderous Jealousy Trait,” said Zachary.

              “How much more jealous than the average male is Michael?” said Jasmine.

              “The research is so new that quantifying jealousy is not possible at this point – but when compared to others, he was much more jealous, yes,” said Zachary.

              “In what way?” asked Jasmine.

              “He could not finish the study because he became very jealous at the thought of another man involved with his girlfriend,” said Zachary.

              “I talked with someone who had been part of the study.  He wanted to stay anonymous.  But he said that Michael actually punched a hole through a wall and became verbally abusive towards staff,” said Jasmine.

              “Yes, that did happen,” said Zachary.

              “And do you feel at all guilty about what happened after?” said Jasmine.

              “Of course I do.  But it isn’t what you think.  It isn’t because I think my test caused him to kill his girlfriend.  Causality is notoriously difficult to prove in the real world.  In the laboratory we set up all sorts of controls and a very limited environment in as attempt to prove causality and still it is the most difficult task that you can imagine – there are all sorts of external variables, internal variables, and biases that can enter the picture.  But in the real world, when one person kills another, a statement of causality is near impossible.  Only God knows why Michael did what he did – even Michael may not know it.  It was a tragedy and I feel responsible in that I did not prevent it,” said Zachary.

              “So then you think that you could have prevented the murder of Melanie, his girlfriend?” Jasmine asked.

              “I think that if Trait Theory was a better developed theory, and if later research confirms earlier research, then it could help to prevent senseless murders,” said Zachary.

              “Please elaborate,” said Jasmine.

              “This may sound ridiculous and I do somewhat feel that I am leaping into a utopian future, so I don’t mean to say that this sort of thing is in any way around the corner, or that it may ever happen.  As scientists we are taught to avoid instincts and gut feelings and always examine the data, and believe me the data here is impressive.  But Trait Theory has given me an instinctual feeling that it can do good for the world – but this a complete leap, the sort of extrapolation from the data that I would not normally make – and yet because of this leap I do feel somewhat responsible.  Let me more fully explain: If we know there is a good chance that a father or mother has passed a trait of jealousy, maybe even murderous jealousy, onto a child, then we can warn that child about the difficulties he or she may face in life.  We can teach them how to prepare for it.  But if it catches them unaware, then the result may more likely be senseless murder.  I
don’t know if what I said a moment ago is that I believe that we can stop senseless murder, but if I did, I did not mean to say that we can stop senseless murder, but only that we can lessen its occurrence,” said Zachary.

              “Okay I think I see what you are getting at here.  Let’s talk more about Trait Theory and get back to the situation with Michael later,” said Jasmine.

              “Okay, what would you like to know?” said Zachary.

              “I feel like we’ve been nibbling around the edges and talking about bits and pieces of Trait Theory.  Why don’t you give us the whole picture?  And start with, just what is a trait – I’m confused,” said Jasmine.

              “The whole picture would be a 300 page research summary.  But I will do my best, and I will start with my definition of a trait as I have used it in my research:  As people we are defined by our traits.  We have thousands and thousands of traits.  Anything we do in a consistent manner, within a certain range, is a trait.  I know this is a much broader definition of the term trait than scientists have previously used, but for our purpose it works.  Look at it this way – you are trying to design a human robot – what will make the robot human?  What will the robot be like?  Will it stand straight?  Will it slouch?  Will it make annoying small talk on Monday mornings at work?  Will it eat its food with a slurp?  Will it betray a friend to gain a small advantage?  Will it betray a friend to gain a large advantage?  The list of traits goes on and on.  You may have observed that some of the traits I listed appeared less important such as a slurping trait, and some appear more consequential, such as a betrayal trait.  This is true.  As researchers, my team, albeit a small one, focused on what we believed to be the more consequential traits.  We attempted to order traits on a scale of magnitude.  The rub, however, is that any trait can be consequential in the right context, and the context of humans and the world is always changing.  We change contexts ourselves as we move from point A to point B, and the context changes itself as time passes,” said Zachary, suddenly realizing that he may have been talking in a monologue longer than advisable for the listening lay person.

              “Yes, my trait of tardiness, usually by five minutes no matter where I am going, may not seem consequential.  Unless, there is a traffic accident five minutes ahead of me,” offered Jasmine.

  “Well that would be a random event, but yes, fitting traits into contexts is what evolution and adaptation is all about.  I studied mice for seven years and performed hundreds of experiments.  From this research I formed the main thrust of Trait Theory -- defined quite correctly by you, Jasmine, at the start of the show – the theory that parents pass traits onto their children that have been acquired in high stress situations.  They pass these traits on, something like 90% of the time – so it is quite a bit.  But you can already see from the math that it wouldn’t have been impossible for Michael to not have the jealousy trait, which is another reason testing is important.  He deserves to know just what traits he is susceptible for and which ones he has acquired.  We do it now for sports players: do you have a heart condition?  If so it may be too risky for you to play this sport.  Prevention is our best form of defense.  Once something has happened it is more difficult to deal with the consequences.  The problem in society is that prevention gets no glory.  No one wants to hear on the news about the murder that was prevented because a murderer was rehabilitated, they would just think, ‘Well, how do I know he would have murdered anyway?’” said Zachary, pausing and hoping that Jasmine would insert a comment, concerned that he was speaking too much again.

  However, she looked at him to continue. 

  Maybe this is interesting to people besides me.

  “But I digress.  We also learned that traits greatly diminish from the second to the third generation, unless the second generation also uses the trait in high stress situations.  We think this may be an evolutionary feature of trait theory.  Evolution, if I can characterize it as a thinking organism for a moment, may have figured out that to increase the chances of survival for a species we need both long term adaptations, such as an opposable thumb that will be for all intents and purposes, permanent, and short term adaptations, such as traits.  If the trait helped the parents then there is a good chance it will help the children.  The world doesn’t change that fast, but it does change.  So evolution has decided that traits will be short term.  Furthermore, evolution doesn’t separate good and bad traits, only traits that are advantageous in an environment and traits that are not.  But the only way evolution can know if these traits are advantageous is if they are again used in high stress situations.  Therefore, only if the children use these traits in high stress situations will they again be passed on.  It is an ingenious way for evolution to hedge its bets.  And one more thing just to add a little uncertainty into all this: in rare occurrences traits which have disappeared will reappear and with a roaring intensity – we call this the Trait Theory Theory of exceptions.”

  “How often does that occur?” Jasmine asked.

  “1/1000 times – very rare and usually at least 5 generations after a trait has not appeared.  The odd thing is that this exception then becomes the rule because every trait can theoretically be traced back to some ancestor say 1000 generations ago…”

              Jasmine replied, “So from what you are saying if Michael were to have a child at this point, assuming that he is guilty, then there is a 90% that his child would have the jealousy trait, and that it will be advantageous for the child to have the jealousy trait.”

              “Not quite I’ve simplified things for the sake of your listeners,” said Zachary, with a nervous laugh.

              “You know we have very smart listeners, you are one yourself, explain,” said Jasmine.

              “Okay, let me explain more comprehensively: for one thing, in our studies we always made sure the parent mice shared the same trait we were looking at in the children.  In that situation the chances of the children inheriting the trait are somewhere between 90% and 97%.  However, when only one parent has the trait the chances of passing it on lower to about 45%.  Secondly, as I said, evolution is not a moralist; it does not differentiate between morally good and morally bad traits.  For us, as humans, jealousy that leads to murder is something we let our legal system handle because we have labeled it as morally bad.  But one can imagine that at certain points during human evolution jealousy could be advantageous – it might even still be – one can imagine situations where it makes the individual more competitive and it causes one to produce more for society.  However, it obviously is not advantageous when it leads to murder, as that breaks up the social fabric.  That is why the trait is diminished from the second to the third generation, unless it has been used in the second.  If it has been used in the second generation then evolution has reasoned that there must have been a good purpose for it to have been used, and it will again be passed onto the third generation.  If the third generation does not use it then it will not be passed onto the fourth generation – and there it dies, unless the Trait Theory Theory of Exceptions kicks in,” Zachary explained.

              “If that is the case, why did you set up a high stress situation for Michael?  It seems that a high-stress situation might draw out a trait that otherwise would have lain dormant,” said Jasmine.

              “A very good question, Jasmine, and one that we struggled with as we were designing the study: we wanted to make sure that we did not design a high-stress situation.  Our test was just a small event…” said Michael, who then explained the set-up of the picture-to-groaning test that they had used, continuing, “As you can see, it merely hinted at infidelity.  We wanted to find out if Michael was susceptible to the trait, but in the case that Trait Theory was correct, we certainly did not want to draw out his jealousy trait.”        


              “That sounds like a difficult distinction to make,” said Jasmine.

              “Yes, but look at it this way.  Have you ever had a jealous boyfriend Jasmine?” Zachary asked.

              “Yes, I think so,” said Jasmine.

              “In what way?” Zachary asked, wondering how old his interviewer could be, maybe 25?

              “Oh, you are really going to take me back there,” said Jasmine with a sigh.

              “I’m sorry if you will indulge you for a moment it will be helpful to our discussion,” Zachary qualified.

              “Well, if it is for science, ok,” said Jasmine, flashing a sensual yet professional smile, “In what way wasn’t he jealous, really?  I think that is the mark of a jealous man.  His over-riding jealousy causes you to change your behavior because you know that he is going to be jealous about everything, and rather than deal with the arguing, you adapt, you change, and basically you fall off the face of the earth for your friends because he makes sure that you are never available to see any of them.”

              “Okay, right.  The point being that a jealous person is always jealous.  We wanted to get in there and sample it – it was already always occurring – even Michael admitted that, but we did not want to create some new high stress situation, and I don’t think we did,” said Zachary.

              “Zachary, Trait Theory seems like an important theory.  Why resign now?  You could have kept doing research?  Did they just give you the chance to resign to save face?  Were they going to let you go anyway?” Jasmine asked.

              “No, they weren’t going to let me go, at least not at this point, though I’m not a tenured professor so it would have been easy for them to do.  But, I just felt like it was the right thing to do.  Melanie was murdered, and maybe I didn’t do enough after I had labeled Michael as having the trait he had.  I think it is time to take a breather, and say, okay, we are on to something really big here, but what is the best way to proceed?  How do we harness this behemoth of a theory so that it can be as beneficial as possible for society – while in no way infringing upon individual rights,” said Zachary.

              “So what is next for you, and what is next for Trait Theory?” asked Jasmine.

              “Well, I’ll be working at my company more hours per week, Dunbar and Associates.  As far as Trait Theory, I think I might just have to step back and let other scientists step in and pick up where I left off,” said Zachary.

              “At this point are other scientists testing your conclusions?” said Jasmine.

              “Not that I know of, but I’m sure there will be.  There has to be.  Refute and prove, prove and refute – that it the way it goes,” said Zachary.  

              “Why not just test what you consider to be the inconsequential traits in humans?  That way it would be difficult to get caught up in a tragedy such as this one?” said Jasmine.

              “Inconsequential traits, such as slouching, were easy to induce in mice, but in humans they probably weren’t brought about by high-stress situations, so they would not fall under the domain of trait theory.  Those would actually just be traits peculiar to the individual,” Zachary explained.

              “We have a caller on the line from Dorchester,” said Jasmine. “Bill you are on the air.”

              “Hello Jasmine, I’m a big fan,” said Bill.

              “Go ahead,” said Jasmine.

              “I just wanted to say that I don’t believe this stuff is true.  My father was a very good golfer.  I stink.  Could you have your guest talk about that?  My handicap is like 17…”

              Zachary explained that, according to the still nascent and not proven Trait Theory, there could be various reasons for a son not playing golf as well as his father, such as the father not developing the skill under high stress, or there not being a sufficiently stressful environment to activate the trait in the son.

              “You spoke a moment ago about Trait Theory not infringing upon individual rights.  What did you mean by that?” Jasmine asked.

              “Well, I can imagine a future where if Trait Theory proves to be very accurate, the State could, to just make one example, desire to test the children of violent offenders, and if they test positive for a certain trait the State may want to lock them up, or keep them under tight surveillance, or something like that.  Now our civil liberties are too strong in the country, I think, for anything like that to ever happen, but it is something that we want to keep on the radar screen from the get-go,” said Zachary.

              “Interesting, and I see how people could argue that point both ways,” said Jasmine.  “Here on Blinded Justice we talk primarily about the criminal justice system – knowing who is most likely to commit a crime seems like it could be a useful way to prevent crime, but given our history of justice abuses in this country, it also seems like it could be a way to unfairly profile a group, such as inner city African American youth.”

              “Yes, this is a debate that could be another hour-long show.  But now you see just how many tentacles Trait Theory could possibly have.  That is why I thought the best thing for me to do was to resign, take a breather, and figure out the best way to precede,” said Zachary.

              After a few more callers Jasmine informed her audience that they only had time for one more question, adding, “And it’s my own: Zachary I have one final question for you.”

              “Okay,” said Zachary.

              “What if someone knowing the risks involved in being a human subject for Trait Theory were to volunteer?” Jasmine asked.

              “Research is always a possibility for me,” said Zachary.

              “Well, I would like to volunteer,” said Jasmine.

              “Oh, do you have a peculiar trait that you would like to admit to your listeners?” Zachary asked.

              “I probably do, but I don’t like observing myself.  No, the reason I ask is that it is family lore in my family that my great-great grandmother was a runaway slave and I’d like to know if I have any of her traits,” said Jasmine.

              “Well, that is a very interesting question, though according to Trait Theory unlikely, because at this point you are many generations removed.  But it’s still an interesting question,” said Zachary.

              “Doctor I am at your disposal,” said Jasmine.

              “Yes, maybe we could set something up sometime,” said Zachary, hoping the blush that he felt on his face did not show in the dim lights.

              “Is that the scientist talking or the man that the Improper Bostonian called, ‘The only sexy scientist?’” asked Jasmine.

              “After the introductions were over I thought I’d gotten away with that not being brought up,” said Zachary, suddenly noticing the complete and utter sexiness of his interviewer.  Was she asking him out on a date by hinting that he was asking her out on a date?  It was a clever technique, he noted, and one that put the onus on him.  And in his experience, it wasn’t often that girls came knocking on his door when he was down and out, so it had caught him by surprise.  However, he knew he had to recover, and recover with some charm, so he added, “Seriously, let’s talk about this important subject soon, maybe over coffee, and as coffee hints at both social relations and increased mental effort it will leave open the ambiguous nature of our meeting.”

              “Wow,” said Jasmine, “So that is what it is like to be asked out by a PHD, which is to sa
y, rather awkwardly…”

              After the show ended, and he had traded cell numbers with Jasmine, he left the studio in a daze.  Had he really just asked her out on air?  Samantha would never let him live this down…