Every morning before dawn neurosci-entist John Hughes biked down to the slaughterhouse with a hacksaw, hatchet, and knife in his basket. He greeted the surly men who chainsawed off the heads of pigs and began his daily plea for them to slip him a few skulls. At first Hughes secured their cooperation by expounding on the wonders of neu-roscience and the nobility of his research. Think of all the people we could help manage chronic pain, he explained, if only we knew how the brain itself dulled pain using neurotransmitters. Hughes soon realized, however, that a good bottle of scotch earned the workers' cooperation much more quickly, and he started adding some to his basket each morning.
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