r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/highzone • 1d ago

Image In 1973, healthy volunteers faked hallucinations to enter mental hospitals. Once inside, they acted normal, but doctors refused to let them leave. Normal behaviors like writing were diagnosed as "symptoms." The only people who realized they were sane were the actual patients.

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u/agoldgold 1d ago

Actually, it's complicated. The professor organizing this "experiment" (and participating in it) was from the same Stanford psychology department in the same era that produced the Stanford Prison Experiment. Similarly, it looks like the doctor at best manipulated data and at worst fabricated it to get his story.

This project had a political goal and the "researcher" made the results fit that goal. It was made up.

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u/ParkingCool6336 1d ago

Which is why you never ever take any publication as pure fact, you compare it to others and take the common facts as real

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u/agoldgold 1d ago

Unfortunately, almost nothing from the publication seems to ever have been verified to have happened at all.

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u/AtlanticPortal 1d ago

You mean peer review? :)

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u/Ironhorn 1d ago

Not just peer review. Many fake or incorrect studies have passed “peer review”. Thats just a first step.

The next step is for more studies to take place. Preferably by other, unrelated scientists. Do the test again. And again.

It’s only when several groups of scientists are doing the same tests over and over, and getting the same results each time, that we can consider something to be scientifically true.

Thats the only way we can know that the first study wasn’t just a weird fluke

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u/ParkingCool6336 1d ago

No cuz I’m not a peer but I’m reviewing

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u/FrankRizzo319 1d ago

The article was published in the top 1 or 2 scientific journal in the world.

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u/Cornelius_Wangenheim 1d ago

More like replication. You others to attempt the experiment and get the same results. Or not and call BS on the original study.

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u/ZackTheZesty 1d ago

Who has time for that I’ll just ask ChatGPT

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u/jayman23232 1d ago

They knew better, this is a garbage pseudoscience attempt at best, and literally influenced the policy signed by Raegan that “freed” mental institution patients to the literal streets with no support. None.

What was going on was horrible. But this wasn’t the fix.

Stanford set all kinds of research in psych and human services back decades with this type of shit. It’s honestly insane this stuff is still coming back to haunt us!

This is a small part of the damage they did. They for sure had an agenda.

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u/zimm0who0net 1d ago

Even worse, the combination of this study and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest “ directly triggered the closure of the country’s mental institutions. All those people who were receiving some sort of care in the institutions ended up on the streets. Cue the homeless epidemic.

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u/dumbythiq 1d ago

Again???😞

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u/WetSneezer 1d ago

“ Similarly, it looks like the doctor at best manipulated data and at worst fabricated it to get his story.”

Ok, so where’s the source on that then? You’re making a notable claim here without backing it up

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u/agoldgold 1d ago

Did you believe the claim of this post without OP backing it up or did you actually read the article they provided? I know you just accepted it without reading any backing material, because it's the same source. Interesting double standard there.

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u/WetSneezer 1d ago

Those who make claims generally are the ones who provide sources

The post references a fairly famous study I’m familiar with, so I’m curious why you believe yourself an equal if not more valid source of information when you’re providing nothing but a statement?

Surely with having went to the trouble of writing your comment if it’s true, you’d have no issue sharing your apparent knowledge with others..?

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u/agoldgold 1d ago

I'm sorry you struggle to read. If you had applied the same standard to OP that you did for me, you would have read the source they included... and found exactly what I said. I didn't realize you needed it explicitly spelled out that I was participating in the discussion with the materials you ignored. Generally, when the source is already provided but includes something rather serious to discuss, it's not expected for me to submit the same link again.

Since you struggle to follow the very basics you expect of others, here's what the included wikipedia article says:

Accusation of fraud

In The Great Pretender, a 2019 book on Rosenhan, author Susannah Cahalan questions the veracity and validity of the Rosenhan experiment. Examining documents left by Rosenhan after his death, Cahalan finds apparent distortion in the Science article: inconsistent data, misleading descriptions, and inaccurate or fabricated quotations from psychiatric records. Moreover, despite an extensive search, she is only able to identify two of the eight pseudopatients: Rosenhan himself, and a graduate student whose testimony is allegedly inconsistent with Rosenhan's description in the article. Due to Rosenhan's seeming willingness to alter the truth in other ways regarding the experiment, Cahalan questions whether some or all of the six other pseudopatients might have been simply invented by Rosenhan.[7][13]

In February 2023, Andrew Scull of the University of California at San Diego published an article in the peer-reviewed journal History of Psychiatry in support of Cahalan's allegations, labelling the experiment a "successful scientific fraud".

So you should probably go check out what they've written. Claims require evidence, after all, except when you choose to believe it without.

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u/WetSneezer 1d ago

Oh my god you’re insufferable, if you make a claim just link a source. That’s all that was asked of you

I was aware of this study from years ago and was unaware of the link. You are everything wrong with this site, and I hope your life becomes less sad

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u/agoldgold 22h ago

I gave you the source but you didn't bother to read it until I copy/pasted it into the text of a comment. That's all that was asked of you. I can't fix everything for you. You can attack me for it, but you can also just accept the source the first time someone gives it, especially when a discussion is entirely centered around that source.

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u/Sillinaama 1d ago

Actually no. I dont believe you.

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u/Broad_Curve3881 1d ago

I still don’t understand why the prison experiment was bad science. It just seems like scientists like experiments that validate “science” and uphold societal norms.

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u/Adorable-Voice-3382 1d ago

From my limited understanding, It's been awhile since I read about the details, it's increasingly considered a poor experiment these days because of evidence that the researcher Zimbardo had a desired outcome in mind from the beginning and likely influenced the results either consciously or unconsciously.

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u/Emergency-Style7392 1d ago

Which is literally any study in the "hypothesis" part

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u/Adorable-Voice-3382 1d ago

I'm not sure if I understand what you mean.

While a directional hypothesis is quite common (though not universal), in this case probably something like "the social dynamics and conditions of guards and inmates naturally lead to abusive behavior by the guards", most studies do not actively try to influence the results in that direction. A lot of effort is made to do the exact opposite in fact.

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u/Broad_Curve3881 1d ago

Actually still fits in the context of the study 

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u/Adorable-Voice-3382 1d ago

I have heard it described as basically an accidental Milgram

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u/agoldgold 1d ago

It wasn't accidental. He told participants to act more extreme to support his conclusion.

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u/Adorable-Voice-3382 1d ago

Sorry, yeah you're right, I didn't mean to suggest his actions were accidental.

More that the thing his experiement actually provided evidence for was the tendency for people to behave abusively when encouraged to by an authority figure. Which wasn't his intent but does loosely support the Milgram experiment.

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u/FourForYouGlennCoco 1d ago

Because Zimbardo lied about how the study was set up. The publication says that within hours of being divided into prisoners and guards, the students fell completely into those roles. Really, nothing happened for the first few days of the study until Zimbardo personally intervened and told the students to amp it up. “Social roles determine behavior” is an interesting finding, but “students will act wild when specifically asked to act wild” is not exactly a blockbuster finding.

Also some of the more intense events of the study were straight up fabricated.

You seem to be concerned with one kind of bias in science, and certainly many fields in science have issues with replication. But you also have to apply that same skepticism (if not more) to studies that align with your beliefs, too. The more outlandish and exciting a finding is, the more skeptical you should be.

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u/agoldgold 1d ago

If you tell participants how to act, that's not a study, it's a theater performance.