Bill Harvey: Under the influence

As we launch the start of our monthly interactive CET exercises, I have been thinking about a recent debate I had regarding the usefulness of such CET. To support my argument that peer pressure and communication is a powerful tool in self-development, I cited the well-established phenomenon of ‘bystander effect.’ This was first demonstrated in the laboratory by John Darley and Bibb Latané in 1968 after they became interested in how fewer people came to the aid of a clearly severely injured person when there were more people present.

The power of the crowd to influence behaviour can only be a good thing if the context or underlying belief or behaviour is acceptable in all environments. I write this still in shock at the senseless murders in the US by someone mind-washed by a group of thugs capable of distorting a widely held and peaceful belief system, and who ironically preceded his act by smartphone use of algorithms first given voice by an exploited homosexual (Turing) and based upon the works of many Muslim scholars who first developed numeracy in the early centuries (such as Al-Khwarizmi). Indeed, our whole profession is part-based around the early work of an Italian (I dispensed one of his telescopes recently) persecuted by a patriarchal corruption of another belief system.