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Listening to Ronnie Detrich lay out the case & conditions for ebps WITH integrity at AZ Disabilities Conf

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Listening to Ronnie Detrich lay out the case & conditions for ebps WITH integrity at AZ Disabilities Conf https://t.co/AIbOcMngDe

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Listening to Ronnie Detrich lay out the case & conditions for ebps WITH integrity at AZ Disabilities Conf pic.twitter.com/AIbOcMngDe
— Karen Blase (@BlaseKaren) October 27, 2015

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Listening to Ronnie Detrich lay out the case & conditions for ebps WITH integrity at AZ Disabilities Conf https://t.co/AIbOcMngDe

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Listening to Ronnie Detrich lay out the case & conditions for ebps WITH integrity at AZ Disabilities Conf https://t.co/AIbOcMngDe

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Listening to Ronnie Detrich lay out the case & conditions for ebps WITH integrity at AZ Disabilities Conf

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I'm not sure of the point of this one, but Ronnie's on my mind this afternoon so I'm going to free associate.

It's sometimes said that, "A man is defined by who is enemies are." Ronnie certainly didn't waste his time on idiots or jackasses, but he didn't really have ENEMIES because that would entail devoting time to idiots and jackasses. I rather think we should invoke the old Japanese proverb and say, "If the character of a man is not clear, look to his friends." Someone who didn't know Ronnie could suss him out by observing YOU [I know most of you, and not a one of you is both an idiot AND a jackass ;) ]. In all seriousness, there couldn't be a better bunch of people, and that says everything about Ronnie. Remember to feel fortunate that you got included in the circle and got to know some of the others in it through Ronnie.

At the risk of sounding impertinent, I must add that there was one exception to the "no enemies" policy: baseball. Consider the woman in the Arizona ballpark in Shawn's story or, as those who discussed baseball with Ronnie know, his feelings about Bryce Harper. Or Pete Rose. It seems that Ronnie bent on "no enemies" only when the stakes were highest, for Ronnie that meant baseball.  World peace and baseball.

I loved his passion for the game -- less because it was about baseball and more just to watch the pure joy he could derive something. We had "work" Zoom meetings that could quickly devolve into a two-hour baseball reverie, full of stories tracing back to his childhood and observations of the game collected across his decades of fandom. The twinkle in his eye during these episodes was worth the price of admission.

He often got that same twinkle when talking about problems in behavior analysis, and I think it was for the same reason: both baseball and behavior analysis have a million moving parts, and they can just as easily yield a kind of well-choreographed opera as a dumpster fire. Both also are data-heavy endeavors, and Ronnie trusted numbers because they don't bullshit you. But let's not kid ourselves: If his arm and talent had held up, we'd have never run across him professionally (unless you mean professional baseball). And that's okay. Interesting people can get interested in all sorts of things.

I could really use a "work" Zoom about now.
- Tom C

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Dearest Ronnie: Would you believe that we don't have a single picture of us? Well, we do somewhere (I know, I've seen it!) but I can't find it, so I hope this photo of Kylee will make you smile. Thank you for the hours (and hours) of wonderful conversations in which we debated, confabbed, and potentially pontificated on the state of the world and on the state of applied behavior analysis today. If everyone was like you, I reckon we'd be much further along in building bridges and filling equity gaps. But, everyone is unfortunately not like you, so we'll start by sharing your wisdom with others. You taught us about systems change, and fought for social justice long before it was a conversation in our field. One of my favorite memories of our time together is learning about your life growing up, and about cases you faced in which families insisted on you teaching their child to be "normal." Your vulnerability allowed me to learn from your experiences, and you so kindly shared your learning history with others-- even taking hours out of your Friday evening to meet with my students. I am forever grateful to you for guiding and shaping the way I interact with environment. Thank you for helping me find the joy again, and for being such a good friend through very hard times. You are a wonderful mentor, colleague, and behavior analyst, but most importantly you have one of the kindest, most generous hearts of anyone I have ever met. Just in case you don't know this yet, you are one heck of an incredible human being. Ronnie, we've talked many a time about legacies and what one leaves behind. Please know, your legacy shines. It's a model for every single one of us, including (and especially) for those who are trying to find their joy and what brought us to the field. Amongst many wonderful lessons, you have shown us how to change tactics rather than giving up (but also knowing when the ship is sinking or otherwise unethical, and it's time to get the hell out of Dodge), how and why to gain social influence and buy-in, and how to impact and change a system. You have shown us how to be humble, kind, gracious, and compassionate, but also how to stand up for what we know is right. My dear friend, your legacy will live on, and we will forever share it with others-- because everyone deserves to know the teachings of Dr. Ronnie Detrich. My promise to you is to finish our work; I will do my best to make you proud every step of the way. Sending all my love to you, Cheryl, and your family. Ronnie, please know that YOU are one of my favorite people (I'll forever cherish this text message, by the way). Thank you, from the very bottom of my heart, for our friendship. It will never go away. Love always, Noor

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Only Ronnie will get this without an explanation... Ronnie - you're the best in a million universes!

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Only Ronnie will get this without an explanation... Ronnie - you're the best in a million universes!

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There is a fan of the Dbacks that Ronnie and I see every single year in Arizona - she is somewhat of a celebrity in Scottsdale, as she is famous for cheering her DBacks on by frequently yelling out "That was the best play in a million universes!" Problem is, she yells it after... every... single... play... So, I often joke with Ronnie that when he runs an idea or a story by me, I tell him it's the "best in a million universes"... which he then knows I really mean, yeah, that kinda sucked.

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Me doing my best Ronnie (hair) impersonation... circa 2015...

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Me doing my best Ronnie (hair) impersonation... circa 2015...

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Best advice I ever got from you, Ronnie (he was on my dissertation committee at Northeastern University)... "Shawn, listen to me... the best dissertation is a done dissertation. Period."

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Ronnie and our daughter Julia in SF, when she was just 2 weeks old...

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Ronnie and our daughter Julia in SF, when she was just 2 weeks old...

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Best baseball t-shirt ever. Ronnie hates prima-donnas that play baseball...

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Best baseball t-shirt ever. Ronnie hates prima-donnas that play baseball...

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ABAI Chicago - Paula, Shawn, Ronnie (can't believe I got you to drink an IPA that day)...

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ABAI Chicago - Paula, Shawn, Ronnie (can't believe I got you to drink an IPA that day)...

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Two famous behavior analysts (and Ronnie) - haha. 

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Two famous behavior analysts (and Ronnie) - haha. 

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To the champ of the 2014(?) CNL fantasy league.

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An amazing event that would not have been possible without you Ronnie.

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I have fun every time I am with you—for 50 years plus--learning from you, laughing hard and easy with you—always. You never waver in your expressed belief that most people are really good at heart (except for the ones that aren’t) and your firm belief that society needs to care for those in need. No Pollyanna, yet you bring to life what BA teaches us about human behavior. A core compassion for this human condition in which we find ourselves. Your reputation of never suffering fools was clear in the many things you did, and yet,  I never hear you being overly sarcastic or harmful to others; but, boy, howdy, you can dissect pretentiousness with a wicked wit.  You emphasize how important bridge building to those outside our line of sight is very important--and as importantly, you make that happen. Your calm, relaxed pace belies your high-octane search to do and know more.  Sharing personal life experiences, disappointments, or mistakes is entered into with high trust and an openness that always makes me feel at ease. The familiar, human kinds of things we all have to deal with. Such discussions make it easy to be ‘real’ in your presence. Optimistic and kind—demonstrated over and over. You always make me feel like I have something to say—and I often don’t.  Didn’t matter. You make so many people feel at ease. You have made it clear you enjoyed your life, living a rich and balanced life with your dear Cheryl. You let me know that it does not matter what other people think you should do. Living life as you see it, not as others wish, is part of what we all know makes you so very special indeed. I know that you always have walked your talk—a man of principle and core values, and if you were bored or did not want to waste your time on things that did not interest you, you walked away without rancor.

You are a unique human being, and I so wish I could see you again. Zoom is nice, but being together is better. Finally, I love your bear hug greetings, and sad departures. Underneath it all, never really living down the street from you and your family, so important to you, we always feel you are a person we can count on. Just plain old fun to be with.  All things that make for good times and a truly important friendship. Miss you. Love you.

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THE MAN, THE MYTH, THE LEGEND WITH THE OLD TIMERS’ GM IN SAN DIEGO (MAY 2018)

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Among my favorite Ronnie stories are (1) anything about his irreverent Mom, (2) His tales of the Wild West days of applied behavior analysis, (3) those about the foibles of behavior-analytic applications gone awry because someone did not understand basic principles, (4) his misadventures as a pet behavior therapist,  and (5) the story he told me about this wrist counter:

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Among my favorite Ronnie stories are (1) anything about his irreverent Mom, (2) His tales of the Wild West days of applied behavior analysis, (3) those about the foibles of behavior-analytic applications gone awry because someone did not understand basic principles, (4) his misadventures as a pet behavior therapist,  and (5) the story he told me about this wrist counter:

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As always, thinking of you and Cheryl. I have missed our zoomers over the last few weeks. They are always brimming over with ideas about things that matter to us both. What a great source of pleasure they are to me, as have been all of our discussions (and especially your stories)  over all these years. Know that we are with you, always.
Andy

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New ABAI blog post mentioning one of my favorite Ronnie articles

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New ABAI blog post mentioning one of my favorite Ronnie articles

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You can download the article here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6701735/

It contains one of the best quotes in the history of our field, btw: "We built a better mousetrap but the world did not beat a path to our door. It is somewhat ironic that what is arguably a science of influence (behavior analysis) has not been more effective at influencing the adoption rate of a science of influence."

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Co-Authored by Matthew Hayes, M.S., BCBA Melmark New EnglandWhat makes a good story? What draws you in and begs you to stay? What makes us feel the way we do when a story concludes in triumph,

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The Complexities of Dissemination (w/ Ronnie Detrich) │ The Daily BA │ S1W11E4

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I have two Ronnie stories that provide a little insight into his character.

Story 1: When Little Ronnie reached the appropriate age, his mom enrolled him in first grade, and when the big first day came she dropped him off at school. She was therefore shocked at mid-day to find him perched on a chair in the kitchen, munching on a sandwich he'd made for himself. "Why aren't you in school?" she asked. "Yeah, I tried it," he replied, "but it wasn't for me." This is, I'm quite certain, the roots of Ronnie's famous No Assholes Rule, which says never waste time around people who make you unhappy (and he never did). I didn't fully embrace the rule till I was about 50, and it took a long chat with Ronnie for me to finally get it. Prior to that, I spent a lot of years trying to hobnob and curry favor with obnoxious people who happened to be famous/accomplished, which never left me feeling happy. Once I embraced the Rule, professional life became a lot more fun.

Story 2: ABAI was in Chicago and Ronnie and I were hanging out by the big statue of -- a lion I think it is? -- at the top of some stairs near the lobby in the Palmer House. I had my daughter, aged about 5 at the time, in tow, and Ronnie, with this huge confab of brilliant people swirling around him, struck up a conversation with her that he continued for a good hour or more. When you had Ronnie's attention, you had ALL of his attention (and you felt like the most important person in the world). The key to this story is how you GOT Ronnie's attention in the first place. I remember realizing: Here's a guy who doesn't care who you are, in the Life Accomplishment sense, as long as there's good conversation to be had. Even with a 5-year old. Since then it's been fun to observe with whom Ronnie surrounded himself. At a conference, for instance, he might spend an entire poster session talking to a graduate student that everyone else had ignored. When Ronnie came into a financial windfall, he used it, not to buy a Ferrari or something like that, but rather to help establish the Wing Institute for Evidence-Based Education, which served in part to get cool people together in the same room to talk about really big problems. The flip side of this is that Ronnie has never wasted a moment in a room with scoundrels and fools (see Story 1, above). His circle is a wildly eclectic cadre of icons and under-the-radar good eggs with all kinds of backgrounds, but sharing one key feature: An approach to the meeting of minds that emphasizes "a rising tide lifts all boats." That circle is something rare, a meritocracy so pure even a 5-year-old could join it. That this is the case makes me feel extra honored to have been part of it.

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The Behavior Analysis Hall of Fame™ - Dr. Ronnie Detrich on Science and Rethinking Dissemination

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Societal change requires implementation and scaling

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Societal change requires implementation and scaling

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A blog post excerpting one of Ronnie's last articles, as a way to show his brilliance and as an excuse to say a few nice things about him.

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by Ronnie Detrich, Utah State University

Section Editor's Note: Ronnie Detrich, behavior analyst extraordinaire, passed away on September 9, 2023, bringing to a close a storied career in applied behavior analysis that spanned some 50 years. See the end of this post for some of the ways in which Ronnie was special. The post itself is adapted from one of Ronnie's last articles (If you build it, will they come? Can you even build it? Why Walden Two fails as a model for societal change), which appeared in Journal of Behaviorology. The second half of the article, from which most of the following is taken, is pure Ronnie, focusing on two of his favorite questions: (1) How may we judge which interventions are likely to be effective? and (2) What is needed to implement interventions on a non-trivial scale? Ronnie wrote and spoke often on these themes; the novel wrinkle here is that the "intervention" of interest is societal redesign.

"It is ironic that what is arguably a science of influence (behavior analysis) has not been more effective at influencing the adoption rate of a science of influence" ( Detrich, 2018)

Seventy-five years ago, B.F. Skinner's (1948) Walden Two appeared as the first example in behavior analysis of exploring how scientific principles might support useful everyday technologies. The book has inspired many fans but also attracted critics, not the least because its vision for societal redesign has never been realized. A fair number of real Walden Two style communities (WTSCs) have been attempted, but most have not thrived, and none have approached the levels of economic prosperity, organizational stability, and self-sufficiency that Skinner imagined. Certainly none has proven to hold the blueprint for the wide-scale redesign of a society much in need of one.

Why not? Some skeptics (mostly from outside of behavior analysis) doubt that such a planful, evidence-driven society is possible or desirable. Others, (mostly from within behavior analysis) endorse the general approach of Walden Two but think modifications may be needed to the systems Skinner described.

There may be truth in both perspectives due to a blind spot in the Walden Two vision of societal re-engineering. To get a community operating in the real world for long enough to benefit from experimental management, three central insights are needed, none of which receives substantial attention in Walden Two and none of which, even three-quarters of a century after the book's publication, has been adequately addressed in behavior analysis. These insights all are anticipated by a favorite quote from 1960s social activist Saul Alinksy:

I start from where the world as it is, not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be - it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be. That means working in the system.

With the real world squarely in focus, specific points to be addressed are: (1) Contingency systems must be designed to address the real world into which they will be inserted; (2) Real people have to be convinced to support and participate in those systems; and (3) Only systems as expansive as the real world can change the real world.

Designing for Implementation

There is a big difference between knowing nature's laws and knowing how to bend them to one's needs. At the core of all beneficial behavior technology is positive reinforcement, but as Don Baer observed, knowing this does not make it easy to

...Find the ways necessary to get the positive reinforcement principle implemented in every real-world situation needful of it. The principle underlying positive reinforcement will be the same in every one of those situations, once they succeed; but the procedures necessary to accomplish that success will be...quite varied.

Skinner imagined an experimental management system for the Walden Two community, but actually said little about the specific contingency systems it incorporated. He took this approach because he didn't know how to structure a working community. As he admitted later in a Psychology Today interview, "I had no idea how the principles could be applied to real live people." Should the specific contingency arrangements described in the book prove to be effective in the real world, he allowed, "I'll have made one of the most remarkable guesses in history." Thus, Skinner did not doubt the principles, but he was unsure of the means of applying them. That is something that tends to get worked out in the trenches of implementation, not in the pages of a novel.

Studies of the process of implementing interventions argue against relying on simple trial and error. Inductive, evidence-driven tinkering, as per Walden Two, can be distinguished from evidence-based practice. In the former case, "experimentation" (gathering evidence of effectiveness) and implementation are intermingled. In the latter case, solutions are developed and tested for effectiveness before rolling them out. In this approach, community design would be no less "experimental" than in Walden Two; however, community residents would be insulated from many false starts that waste people's time or even cause unintentional harm.

Another factor that can minimize false starts is a strong grounding of program design in theory. In this regard, the design of communities confronts a major contemporary shortcoming in the science of behavior. Skinner created a science of individual behavior, and his intellectual descendants have maintained that focus. But communities are not just collections of individuals acting independently in a confined space. They are, collectively, complex dynamical social systems, which Jack Marr explained as having these properties, among others:

(1) A number of interacting components or subsystems... are correlated in some way, (2) nonlinearity, that is combinations of states or inputs are not additive (or subtractive), (3) the behavior of the system is not predictable from separate consideration of its components, but only from understanding the relations among them... (4) ... Spatial and temporal scale-invariant properties such that no characteristic event size or time [controls] the evolution of the system. This means their stochastic properties will follow power laws. (5) Self-organization in which patterns emerge from within the system through mutual interaction of the system's elements.

Not all of that description may be transparent, but it probably doesn't remind you of the applied behavior analysis or experimental analysis of behavior that you learned about in graduate school. For present purposes, suffice it to say that communities (with their "interacting components") may have emergent properties that are not deducible from studying individual behavior. The key question for a community designer, thus becomes: What does the science of behavior teach us about non-linear effects that positive reinforcement can create in social systems?

Almost nothing, as it turns out. Basic behavior science has dived deep into what individuals do under schedules of reinforcement, for instance, and ABA has spawned countless interventions to address behavior challenges of individual clients. Yet, Jack Marr has observed, as a discipline "we have spent almost no time exploring the simplest interactive contingencies between just two organisms." A handful of laboratory studies have examined what two individuals do when their contingencies of reinforcement are intertwined; only a few have explored what happens with larger groups. In ABA, individuals have been taught many skills that are useful in social situations, and some fairly simple group contingencies have been explored. But this falls far short of the complexity found in a complete social system, one that incorporates many behaviors of many individuals embedded in many interlocking contingencies.

Recruiting Buy-In

Even if Walden Two described every operational detail of its experimental community, and even if every detail were spot on with respect to how behavior is understood to work in social systems, there would still be a gaping hole in the implementation plan. This is because in the real world, unlike in isolated fictional locales inhabited by utopian communities, a real community will be carved out of the existing societal landscape. This is true both figuratively (the community has to exist somewhere) and figuratively (it cannot ignore existing societal systems). Selected real human beings will decide whether to join or ignore the community; others (policy makers) will make decisions about resource allocation and jurisdictional values that will affect community operations. Many of the people involved will lack a solid understanding of behavior principles. Therefore, much persuasion will be required to get a new community off the ground, and this effort would be advanced considerably by a reliable technology for recruiting buy-in.

For instance, one key goal for any new community is to persuade the first members to to give up their old lives to try, and hopefully embrace, practices and values that differ considerably from what they are used to. A community as non-normative as that in Walden Two might be a tough sell to people with behavioral histories in the existing word - hence the reaction of one Walden Two reviewer who suggested that:

" Life in Walden Two would be intolerable to a normal human being brought up in contemporary American culture. Few of those living in a democracy will accept or admire Skinner's schema of political science ... or wish to be governed by specialists, particularly by psychologists"

If means exist for bridging the gap between normative histories and non-normative communities, neither Walden Two nor the science of behavior says much about them.

Another key goal is to gain the cooperation of societal mechanisms that are bigger than the community. Resource allocation and other critical practices in the existing world are controlled by governmental and corporate systems, by rich and powerful individuals and groups (in short, not by fans of Walden Two). And power rarely is ceded willingly, which is one factor that leads people to dream of utopias in the first place. The alternative, budging entrenched societal power structures, requires considerable expertise and effort. Unfortunately, little guidance on this originates in behavior science.

There is, however, one aspect of influence-seeking that is relatively well understood. In his classic book Diffusion of Innovations, Everett M. Rogers stressed that innovations are most likely to be widely adopted when they are compatible with a culture's existing values, beliefs, and experiences. Alas, behavioral technology might not be one of those innovations. As Skinner himself often acknowledged, a behavioral perspective, at least as typically explained, often clashes with cultural norms. For instance, the technical jargon of behavior analysis does not tend to win converts, and it is telling that Walden Two employed no technical language. Instead, Protagonist Frazier seemed content to let the benefits of behavior technology speak for themselves. This is standard advice for persuading members of the public, members of other professions, and even policy makers. How often this advice is followed remains unclear, however, because discussions about WTSCs tend to focus on the technical aspects of an imagined community rather than how to talk to stakeholders whose diverse values and goals could affect the community's success.

Scaling Up

A final conundrum about experimental communities regards, not simply how they can exist, but how they can address the macro-level challenge of reforming an entire society. Walden Two is a micro-level solution (not unusual for fictional utopias). Its 1,000 or so residents live in relative isolation in a small village in remote rural Ohio. But for the innovations of an experimental community to address society's problems, they must somehow be scaled up to societal proportions. This means developing systems that can operate expansively, adapting to numerous local conditions while simultaneously preserving their integrity. A science of scaling up that addresses this challenge currently is being developed, but without enough input from behavior analysts.

In the preface to a 1976 reprinting of Walden Two, Skinner himself acknowledged that scaling up might be hard: "What works for a small group," he remarked, "is far short of what is needed for a nation or the world as a whole." But Skinner apparently regarded scaling up as a false ideal:

What is so wonderful about being big? It is often said that the world is suffering from the ills of bigness, and we now have some clinical examples in our large cities. Many cities are probably past the point of good government because too many things are wrong. Should we not ask rather whether we need cities?... It has been suggested that the American of the future may be simply a network of small towns. But should we not say Walden Twos?

The preceding is one of Skinner's rare logical hiccups. It does not follow that because contemporary cities are big, and some of them are flawed, that anything big necessarily is flawed. Nor does it follow that a network of WTSCs would necessarily be superior, especially given that Skinner provided no insight into how the world's 8 billion inhabitants might all be educated sufficiently to establish and manage experimental communities (this is one type of scaling problem). Sketchy logic or not, Skinner likely distracted followers of Walden Two from the need to program for scaling up. It is hardly surprising that, as Stephen LeDoux has noted, real experimental communities often struggle to grow while preserving their original design.

Placing Reasonable Expectations on Walden Two

When it comes to reforming society, the problem faced by behavior analysts is not that Skinner's grand plan in Walden Two is wrong or incomplete. The problem is that Walden Two is not a grand plan in the first place. A fair parallel is the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. As government documents go, it is rather easy to follow and even somewhat stirring in its account of why a new grand plan for government is necessary. But the Preamble does not say how to run a nation. That is the job of the rather dense, dull, and intricate Constitution (not to mention countless national, state, and local laws and regulations which complement that document). The take-home point is that, in the quest to re-engineer society, behavior analysis currently lacks a Constitution to accompany Walden Two 's Preamble.

If those who followed Skinner's fictional lead by trying to establish real WTSCs are guilty of any sin, it is that of granting Walden Two greater significance than it deserves. The book may be a thought-provoking reflection on one approach to rebuilding society from the ground up, but it is not an instruction manual for accomplishing this. And that's partly because what was true in 1948 remains true today: Behavior science has yet to properly define the First Principles that could frame such an instruction manual. On this point Skinner was guilty of sending mixed messages. When commenting on Walden Two he confessed to having merely guessed about how to structure societal systems, but in the book itself community spokesperson Frazier confidently asserts that, "The start has been made. It's a question of what's to be done from now on." Unfortunately, a fictional sketch is neither a start nor a blueprint for one, and there is no sense in wrestling with very real problems of implementation until adequate science exists to properly design what would be implemented. This makes the job of the Walden Two enthusiast, first and foremost, one of solidifying the foundations on which future communities might be built. Among the tasks at hand:

To develop methods and programs of research to study dynamical social systems, both experimentally created and naturally occurring

To develop, and borrow from other disciplines, technologies for influencing individuals, groups, and the public policy process

To learn everything there is to know about implementation science and scaling up

Though less entertaining and motivating than reading a utopian novel, these steps are more likely to pave the way for creating successful experimental communities.

Section Editor's Note: About Ronnie Detrich
Ronnie Detrich was the best all-around behavior analyst I have personally known. Among the things for which Ronnie will be remembered is high intellectual and ethical standards and an attendant stubborn refusal to compromise even under difficult circumstances. In early career, he delivered model interventions in the back wards of neglected state hospitals. At mid-career, as clinical director of the Spectrum Center, he demanded and supervised data-driven, conceptually-rigorous case and staff management practices, even as the center grew from a boutique operation to a multi-site behemoth. In his later career, he invested a financial windfall into the founding of the Wing Institute for Evidence-Based Education which, among other things, took up two of the toughest challenges of all: getting behavior analysts to prioritize regular education and to embrace the emerging science on disseminating and implementing programs at scale. Subsequently, at an age when most people are well into comfortable retirement, he began an academic appointment at Utah State University so he could teach the next generation about critical topics like clinical ethics, behavior theory and philosophy, and single-case design. No matter how busy Ronnie might get, he always found time to keep learning. He read and synthesized, well, just about everything: basic science, theory, and applied science from many disciplines. He sought out the company of anyone with something interesting to say, whether that be a behavior analyst or an "outsider," an established expert or a lonely student at a poster session. He was the most curious, best-informed, most analytical person many people ever met. Ronnie's unwillingness to compromise was evident right up to the end. Even as illness gradually sapped his energy he kept his hand in ambitious Wing Institute projects and side gigs like the planning of the article that is excerpted here. Even after Ronnie no longer had the strength to sit upright he maintained high level video correspondence from his bed. During our last chat, his good friend Tim Slocum had to hold Ronnie's phone for him, and Ronnie had to pause to rest occasionally, but his amazing mind kept churning with ideas about implementation science, practitioner burnout, single-case experimental design, and much more. Let's honor him by keeping the churn going.

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Section Editor's Note: Ronnie Detrich, behavior analyst extraordinaire, passed away on September 9, 2023, bringing to a close a storied career in applied behavior analysis that spanned some 50 years. See the end of this post for some of the ways in which Ronnie was special.

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During our times together you taught me so many things...about implementation science, to read outside the narrow lane of our field, how important it is to not finish someone else's words or sentences, that there was such a thing called Zydeco (yes, I had to look up how to spell it). You've also shown me how to be brave...that no matter the audience, you can speak calmly and rationally about the truth (in our schools, in our politics, in our lives). You have helped shape the me I am still becoming. Your friendship has meant the world to me.