The Watson-Doughnut Experiment

Friends are great. When the spirit of inquiry hits you hard, and there are no rabbits, chimps, or mice to be had, who can you turn to? Your friends. Anyone else might get peeved at you for experimenting on them, but your friends? Just look at Watson in "The Devil's Foot." Holmes poisons him with noxious vapours, and the doctor merely replies, "it is my greatest joy and privilege to help you."

Who needs lab mice?

Sherlock Holmes has long been my role model, so it was only natural that I found myself headed to a recent meeting of The Montague Street Incorrigibles with a spirit of inquiry and a desire to bring great joy to my own friends. I had, of late, been pondering the Nigel Bruce influence on Sherlockians. Bruce revolutionized the role of Dr. Watson in the Holmes adventures, altering mankind's perception of Holmes and Watson more than any other actor, including those who played Holmes. Nigel Bruce's simple-minded, harmlessly hedonistic Watson has touched the minds of even the most strict, text-bound Sherlockians, and I was curious to find out just how pervasive that influence was.

The experiment I set up was fairly simple. I would casually survey my Incorrigible friends and find out if a correlation existed between Sherlockians with Watson as a role model and Sherlockians who ate lots of doughnuts. Doughnuts, in my mind, being the epitomal food of a modern American Nigel Bruce persona.

The results were enlightening. But then, results usually are.

Ironically, there were a dozen Incorrigibles present at the Dangling Prussian the night of my doughnut survey. Someone had opened a bottle of Old Hellhound, which made the questioning much easier, even if the answers were somewhat slurred on occasion.

Of the twelve Sherlockians surveyed, half cited Dr. Watson as a role model. And of that group, only 33% admitted to having eaten any doughnuts at all in the past week. Of the 66% that ate no doughnuts, however, numerous substitutes were present. New Yorker Evelyn Herzog confessed to the consumption of five bagels. Pj Doyle, being forced to limit her sugar intake, preferred to use her allotment for scotch, said allotment disappearing even as I questioned her.

Failing so quickly to draw a Watson/doughnut correlation of any statistical significance, I waded on through the collected data in search of any other trends or conclusions.

Ed Connor's answers brought up possibilities for a future experiment. Ed admitted to visiting two Mr. Donuts, but refused to say if he consumed anything more than a couple of issues of USA Today. He would say, however, that his role model is Mycroft Holmes. Tightening possibilities arise at the thought of Mycroft Holmes in a Mr. Donut.

Even more frightening were the answers of Joe Eckrich. Claiming Gordon Speck and Bob Burr as his number one and two Sherlockian role models, Joe then ignored the subject of doughnuts in his lust for strawberry filled Twinkies. Further psychological study of Mr. Eckrich is a definite must, I think.

Gordon Speck as a role model? Gordon's is the one survey answer that I have to relate in its entirety for full effect:

"I usually eat only the solid center cut from the donut-making process because the donut itself reminds me too much of my post-BSI Dinner bank balance; but in the serious spirit of the question, I felt compelled to consume 49 donuts daily (the odd square of the mystic 7 days of rotundity consumption) for six days. On the seventh day, I retched."

How can a researcher deal with that? Give him a pinch of vegetable alkaloid to see if it helps the matter, I suppose. The spirit of inquiry is a marvelous thing.

Not all of my survey findings have been printed here, and some doughnut quantities have been withheld to protect the innocent. Even though my Nigel Bruce thesis seems to have failed utterly, there is one thing, above all else, that we may learn from this experiment-something Holmes never mentioned: You should be very careful when experimenting with friends. They may be experimenting on you.

(Printed in Plugs & Dottles, February 1990 )