Page 32 - Way Out to the Old Ballgame

Framing the Pitch

the most accomplished con artists. Could you do that before the
perceptual frame reconditioning?”
“If you mean before I came to you in April, no sir.”
“Then the test might not have shown anything. And all I can do
now is note that as anecdotal evidence. Too bad. I will have to
redesign the experiment, refine my hypothesis, apply for another
grant. And that will require peer review. Ethical questions may arise.
Well, that is for another day. The march of science is inexorable; if I
don’t publish this research, someone else will and steal my thunder.
On the other hand—well, never mind: this doesn’t concern you.”
“The hell it doesn’t!” Luke’s accumulated frustration erupted
loudly. The professor could not help noticing the man’s strength and
vigor, his frequently-exercised potential for explosive confrontation
with authority figures, most notably umpires. “I demand an
explanation! Am I permanently stuck with this problem?”
“Calm down, young man,” said the Professor in soothing tones
while stepping back a pace toward his desk and its telephone.
“Nothing to get excited about.”
“Baloney! I don’t have a PhD but I know you don’t believe that for
a second!”
Fort briefly wished he too possessed the ballplayer’s new intuition:
was the other man a serious threat? “All right. Try to ignore what you
see on my face for a few minutes while I explain this to you.”
“No way. But I’ll listen. Stick to the truth, is my advice.”
The professor, for the first time in his career, had difficulty finding
words. And this, he allowed ruefully to himself, in front of a man
barely able to read and write—not the head of his department or a
gathering of learned colleagues. He steeled himself and began, aware
that he could not completely control the situation.
“Luke, that tiny percentage of the population which you have
apparently joined is able to read microexpressions. Those are
involuntary facial muscle twitches which, taken together in their most
common occurrences, reflect an emotion or attitude which can be
utterly at odds with a person’s spoken meaning and other behavioral
cues. They have been recognized as such and studied for several
years; dozens of microexpressions have been identified and classified.
It requires slow-motion video for them to be seen by a person
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