Guest Author Mickey Keenan
Valued Reader, I’m using this post to pass along a video message from Mickey Keenan of Northern Ireland’s Belfast University. Mickey won’t make it to the upcoming ABAI Convention ’26, so you won’t be able to catch his comments in person, but he preserved them in the video below.
Mickey has made a career of reflecting on the rocky relationship between our science and mainstream society, and he has explored how to convey our much-misunderstood science of behavior visually in ways non-experts can understand.
Long story short, you might say that what Mickey’s been telling us is that building a science that succeeds according to scientific standards is not enough. Our well-honed methods and intricate data are critical to what we do as scientists and practitioners, but they are not tools of public relations. To fully harness the potential of our science to change the world, we’ll need to find ways integrate what we do with the decidedly un-behavioral habits of people in the everyday world. If dissemination is a behavior change plan, we must be better at meeting our “clients” out there where they are.
We’ll know we’re doing a good job when behavioral solutions to all of humanity’s pressing problems are widely available and clearly creating a better world.
Mickey’s message is thought provoking, and goes beyond simply advocating for dissemination. In effect, he says that once start aiming for colorful communication, there have to be guard rails against miscommunication and mischief. Mickey tells it like he sees it and understands that folks like to shoot the messenger (i.e., S- is aversive), but he cares too much about behavior analysis to say nothing. I am not sure if I agree with every detail here, but feedback is part of any effective behavior change program, and the kind Mickey offers, if considered seriously, can help behavior analysis change with its rapidly fluctuating circumstances. I urge you to spend a few minutes thinking about how Mickey’s message might apply to what you do in behavior analysis.
— Tom Critchfield
“It’s Like Dropping a Bucket Down a Dry Well”
Mickey Keenan, Ulster University