Word: balkin
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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While the company appreciated my efforts, Amurol wants to stick to its research plan, which will take place at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. Tom Balkin, the chief of the department of neurobiology and behavior, has already begun his work on the gum. "It doesn't taste very good," he says. "People around here spit it out." But as a man of science he persevered. "Maybe it's like their first beer. At first you don't like it, but then you acquire a taste...
...Balkin's experiments will figure out whether the gum is a good way to keep soldiers up while they are in battle. Amurol suspects its gum might taste good enough for guys who eat powdered coffee straight from the packet. The Amurol marketers are not overly ambitious people...
...next few months, Balkin's assistants will pay people to stay up until 4 a.m. Then they're going to give them wads of gum and keep them up 14 hours more, testing their alertness by having them push a button as fast as they can when a signal goes off. The subjects will do this until they go mad and beat one another in a way that's uncoordinated enough to entertain the scientists. At least that's how I would run the experiment...