Jordan Peterson on science: what the evidence says · JRE #1769
SUBJECT: SCIENCE
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
5% of them would drink themselves into a coma on first exposure.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
The research Peterson is referencing is a real, decades-long McGill University (Montreal) research program on feral vervet (green) monkeys on St. Kitts, led by Frank Ervin and Roberta Palmour, which gives monkeys free access to alcohol-sweetened solutions. The foundational 1990 study found that 17% of 196 wild-caught vervets spontaneously chose to drink appreciable quantities of alcohol over sucrose alone, not 5%. That study also reports that some alcohol-preferring animals occasionally drank to the point of ataxia and unconsciousness, but this occurred after individual drinking patterns and tolerance developed over repeated access, with consumption and tolerated concentration both increasing over time, not as a fixed percentage becoming comatose on their first-ever exposure. No peer-reviewed source located reports a "5% coma on first exposure" statistic; the commonly cited figure from this research line is closer to 17% of monkeys becoming alcohol-preferring drinkers. The claim as stated misstates both the percentage and the first-exposure framing of the actual findings.