Opening Skinner’s Box review – 10 psychological experiments explored

Northern Stage, Newcastle
Improbable's dramatisation of Lauren Slater's provocative book about 20th-century science is disappointingly predictable

Lauren Slater's book of popular psychology, Opening Skinner's Box, caused a storm among the scientific community when it appeared in 2004. Its critics deplored Slater's anecdotal, semi-fictional style. Above all, the book was condemned for perpetuating - or at least failing to refute - the myth that the father of behaviourism, BF Skinner, tested his theories by keeping his infant daughter in an environmentally controlled box.

One suspects that some of this ire was raised by Slater's temerity in psychologising the psychologists. But Improbable's attempt to give the book dramatic form hardly clarifies the matter, and adds another layer of obfuscation.