The well-worn image of the “slowly boiling frog” has been on my mind lately. In popular usage, the image of the “slow boiling frog” suggests that if a frog is placed in a pot full of boiling water, it will immediately try to leap out before it dies; however if the frog is placed in a cool pot which is slowly heated — ultimately to its boiling point — then it will calmly remain immersed in the water, blissfully oblivious to the change in its surroundings (since those changes occur so slowly), until it is too late and the poor frog boils to death.
The metaphor, which has been around for at least 150 years (its exact origins are unclear), has often been used to describe the seemingly blithe inattention by much of the human race to climate change. Others have equated the metaphor to sticking with failing relationships or clinging to jobs that drain us emotionally, mentally and physically.
Beyond its usefulness as a metaphor, however, the boiling frog scenario lacks scientific accuracy. As noted by the Consultant Debunking Team at Fast Company, frogs placed in a pot of water that is slowly heated will simply jump out.
According to Dr. George R. Zug, curator of reptiles and amphibians, the National Museum of Natural History, “Well that’s, may I say, bullshit. If a frog had a means of getting out, it certainly would get out. And I cannot imagine that anything dropped in boiling water would not be scalded and die from the injuries.”
Professor Doug Melton, Harvard University Biology Department, says, “If you put a frog in boiling water, it won’t jump out. It will die. If you put it in cold water, it will jump before it gets hot — they don’t sit still for you.”
Not content with such advisory opinions, the team at Fast Company decided to conduct its own test, under the supervision of a professional consultant as well as a research associate at MIT:
We placed Frog A into a pot of cold water and applied moderate heat. At 4.20 seconds, it safely exited the pot with a leap of 24 centimeters. We then placed Frog B into a pot of lukewarm water and applied moderate heat. At 1.57 seconds, it safely exited the pot with a leap of 57 centimeters.
Still, the metaphor, as pointed out in 2009 by Paul Krugman (who, to his credit, acknowledges its scientific inaccuracy) remains useful:
The hypothetical boiled frog is a useful metaphor for a very real problem: the difficulty of responding to disasters that creep up on you a bit at a time.
Krugman was writing about both climate change and the economic crisis at the time, but for many the slowly boiling frog metaphor has taken on new meaning in the last few months as we have watched one of our cherished institutions, the routine fealty and acceptance by Americans to the results of free and fair elections, erode before our eyes, thanks to efforts of the Republican Party.
In this respect, it’s perhaps useful to review some of the original research on boiling frogs. In 1869, a German physiologist named Friedrich Leopold Goltz conducted a series of experiments on frogs to determine whether in fact, they would leap out of a slowly heated pot. He noted that a healthy frog would “manifest uneasiness” as the temperature reached 25 C, and would attempt to escape thereafter. This work in turn prompted a literary critic, actor and part-time scientific researcher named George Henry Lewes to conduct further experiments, but using frogs which had parts of their brains and spines removed.
Lewes actually published his findings in an 1873 column in the scientific journal Nature. As recounted here by James Fallows for the Atlantic (a self-appointed boiling frog specialist, Fallows has more columns about boiling frogs than anyone else of record), the results were fairly conclusive.
Countless slow-boilings of partially dismembered frogs by Goltz, Lewes, and numerous others conclusively show the following truths: first, that even a brainless and spineless frog will recoil from hot water; and second, while healthy frogs will jump out of water when the temperature slowly gets too hot, brainless or spineless ones will not.
The upshot of all of this is straightforward: if you want to correctly use the “boiling frog” metaphor to characterize complacency or acceptance in the face of impending disaster, you have to reconcile the subject of your metaphor for the fact that the frog, to be so quiescent in the face of danger, is either brain-dead or spineless.
Fortunately for us (or not), one of our political parties fulfills both of these requirements.
(Note: This post will self-activate at 830 EST but I may not be present much as some (vaccinated) friends are having us over for our first maskless indoor dinner with anyone other than my immediate family in … centuries).