This morning a long-time student, a scientist, told me of a paper her lab had just submitted involving a six-year experiment. According to her people are not going to be too eager to replicate (i.e., to validate) the work: it will take too long.

Isn't this like the great experiment of education: How do we know what works since it takes so long to determine the outcome of any particular approach?

I am reminded of the colleague who told me many years ago that we couldn't teach our students to listen as they play because "it takes too long."

At the same time I recalled that sounds that haunted me at age 12 continued to haunt me until 45 years later I invented Tonal Refraction, a means of showing what it was that I had heard--and still respond to--so vividly.

(It is an important issue: See the posts of May 7 and June 28.)