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Earliest citation

Posted by Chris_Surridge on 16 May 2007 at 12:19 GMT

Under carefully controlled experimental circumstances, an animal will behave as it damned well pleases.
http://plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0000443#article1.body1.sec3.p2

'Benjamin Franz' claims that the earliest known occurrence of this law was "in an anonymous net.jokes posting to Usenet dated Wed Mar 24 10:45:54 1982. It was labeled 'The Harvard Law' but still unattributed even then."

See:

http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/05/and_now_the_scientists_will_do.php#comment-435086