Philosopher David Auerbach (North Carolina State) writes:

This Stone article [http://tinyurl.com/lmqsuf4 ] is remarkably flabby. But it had an interesting consequence (?)—the level of reader commentary was remarkably high (I’m grading on the usual curve here; there were the usual “there’s the trouble with academic philosophy…” comments). Here’s one of the comments:

"As a father of two sons, I actually conducted the experiment described in the article 25+ years ago (this was shortly before strong guidelines for human subjects research had been put into place nationally).

"First, I imposed a delay of several minutes before the moment of my older son’s conception. As the article predicts, the procedure eliminated his birth and later existence. Not only that, instead of a son, my firstborn was a daughter!

"The first outcome could have been a fluke, so, a few years later when the time came to conceive my second son, I decided to replicate the initial trial, this time by slightly anticipating the moment of conception. Confirming the earlier study, the second experiment also produced a positive result: my younger son never came into existence either! And, conformant to the initial outcome, my second child was also a daughter. In other words, by slightly delaying or anticipating the moment of conception, not only I was able to block completely the existence of both of my sons, I was also able to substitute two daughters for them!

"Philosophy is truly a powerful tool. 'Ah ! la belle chose, que de savoir quelque chose!'"