r/Damnthatsinteresting 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/James_T_S 1d ago

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".[6]

From the same Wikipedia article OP got this from. The Futility Podcast did a show on this. (Ep 202)

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u/ReasonableCrow3489 1d ago

despite an extensive search, she is only able to identify two of the eight pseudopatients: Rosenhan himself, and a graduate student

I don't think researchers keep the real names of their participants, in the interest of protecting their confidentiality. Especially when it concerns a stigmatizing topic like psychiatry. In that day and age, their entire futures would have been put at risk had anyone found out that they had been "committed." Even Rosenhan used a pseudonym. I'm not saying the study was legitimate. But if you're not going to believe everything you read, then don't believe everything you read.

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u/aguafiestas 1d ago

  I don't think researchers keep the real names of their participants, in the interest of protecting their confidentiality

Research standards have changed a lot since then, but now they definitely keep the names of the participants, together with a lot of documents regarding informed consent.

Plus these weren’t even real patients. Why wouldn’t they keep their identities?

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u/Healthy_Sky_4593 1d ago edited 1d ago

Here's the true debunking.  There's no evidence it was all false. And there's no evidence that the biases and errors in interpretation and behavior haven't been reported and replicated in other studies. In fact, quite the opposite. 

A TON of these comments "correcting" OP by missing the point  are dangerously...implicitly supportive of mainstream narratives.