Flack, J. C., Girvan, M., de Waal, F. B. M. & Krakauer, D. C. (2006). Policing stabilizes construction of social niches in primates. Nature 439, 426–429. doi:10.1038/nature04326.
Not read. No lawful copy was reached on 2026-10-29 (status note).
Why this is here
CLAIM-327 says a slow collective variable is part of a collective’s dynamics when members read it, act on it and so regenerate it. Its tests include “causal uptake under intervention”, and its defeated_if names interventions on members’ access to the variable that leave their behaviour unchanged. Flack 2012 (LIT-1122, NOTE-1351) rests part of its argument on this paper’s knockout of policing. It is the one intervention in the literature the claim draws on. What a reading must settle is what was intervened on: removing the policers removes an input to the power structure, not members’ access to a slow variable, so even a clean result would bear on the third stage, regeneration, more directly than on the second.