Talk:David Rosenhan

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I was looking him up to check what university he worked at, and it seems that someone has edited the page to the effect that he died yesterday. I did a news search and cannot find ANY source other than Wikipedia that he has died. Vandalism? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.81.99.28 (talk) 04:15, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

I have added a source. --Racklever (talk) 09:09, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Illness?

Reading Lauren Slater's book, she mentions him having a disease without a diagnosis

7 years later, did anyone figure out what it was? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.169.0.7 (talk) 06:36, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Controversy

No time to write this morning, but there is evidence that the patients never existed: Influential Stanford study of psychiatric hospitals may have been fabricated & Susannah Cahalan "The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness". --WiseWoman (talk) 07:09, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Cahalan successfully tracked down two of the pseudopatients who were graduate students, "Bill Dixon" (the pseudonym actually used was "Bill Dickson") who was graduate student Wilburn "Bill" Crockett Underwood, and the ninth pseudopatient who was removed from the study, Harry Lando (pseudonym "Walter Abrams" in Rosenhan's notes), another graduate student, who wrote up his own account of his experience in a published paper: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1976-21263-001 Rosenhan was a third (though he sometimes told people that his account wasn't part of the study but was an earlier training exercise, which is untrue, as the published study includes quotations (some accurate) from his medical record and matches his notes of his experience).

Cahalan also, contrary to what is stated in the current version of this article, demonstrated that Rosenhan was dishonest in at least the following ways: (1) An earlier draft of the paper which supposedly included a ninth pseudopatient (Lando) had exactly the same data as the published paper without the ninth pseudopatient (i.e., the averages unaccountably do not change); (2) one pseudopatient, Bill Underwood, says he didn't collect the quantitative data that Rosenhan reported in his study; (3) Rosenhan fabricated quotations from his medical record (which she verified from his paper and book draft, as well as the medical record); (4) Rosenhan falsely claimed that he wore a wig when he was admitted as a pseudopatient, while a photograph at his admission shows he was bald and not wearing a wig; (5) although Lando was allegedly removed from the study, the published study includes statements from Rosenhan's notes about "Walter Abrams" -- i.e., some of his qualitative data was still included. The quote that Cahalan cannot be certain that Rosenhan "cheated," as presented in the current article, "suggesting that her work is highly speculative", doesn't account for the definitive evidence of deception that Cahalan uncovered (and seems not to have been written by someone who actually read her book, but only read and misinterpreted comments from a review of her book). Lippard (talk) 21:50, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Regarding your points: (1) and (2) The Science paper makes references to various subgroups of the pseudopatients: "[About detection by other patients] During the first three hospitalizations, when accurate counts were kept...", "[About initiating conversation] In four hospitals, the pseudopatients approached the staff member with a request...", "Average daily contact with psychiatrists, psychologists, residents, and physicians combined ranged form 3.9 to 25.1 minutes, with an overall mean of 6.8 (six pseudopatients over a total of 129 days of hospitalization)" and "[About being able to leave] I was not sensitive to these difficulties at the outset of the project, nor to the personal and situational emergencies that can arise..." All of this suggests to me that Underwood and Lando, the two graduate students of Rosenhan, were the last pseudopatients to participate in the experiment, the least committed to it and thus each being admitted only once. Being last, the most quantitative data would have already been gathered, and being younger and less invested, they would have lacked the same rigor as the other seven "older and "established"" pseudopatients had towards statistics. (3) Being the first pseudopatient before the experiment had been designed, the two people missing from the 6 pseudopatients above could be Rosenhan and Underwood. (4) There's no mention of Rosenhan wearing a wig in the Science paper.

This (5) is tricky. First, Rosenhan defines "data": "Eight sane people gained secret admission to 12 different hospitals [6]. Their diagnostic experiences constitute the data of the first part of this article; the remainder is devoted to a description of their experiences in psychiatric institutions." Rosenhan says in [6] of Lando: "Data from a ninth pseudopatient are not incorporated in this report because, although his sanity went undetected, he falsified aspects of his personal history, including his marital status and parental relationships. His experimental behaviors therefore were not identical to those of the other pseudopatients." (Emphasis mine) That is, everything relating to how Lando was diagnosed is omitted, but his personal experiences were not! Indeed, the Science paper very likely refers to Lando in: "all but one of the pseudopatients desired to be discharged almost immediately after being admitted." In the section on powerlessness and depersonalization there are two descriptions; one very clearly of Underwood and another of a person whose age and profile don't fit those of any of the 8 pseudopatients described thus far: "Although they had come to the hospital as participant observers and were fully aware that they did not "belong," they nevertheless found themselves caught up in and fighting the process of depersonalization. Some examples: a graduate student in psychology asked his wife to bring his textbooks to the hospital so he could "catch up on his homework" -- this despite the elaborate precautions taken to conceal his professional association. The same student, who had trained for quite some time to get into the hospital, and who had looked forward to the experience, "remembered" some drag races that he had wanted to see on the weekend and insisted that he be discharged by that time. Another pseudopatient attempted a romance with a nurse. Subsequently, he informed the staff that he was applying for admission to graduate school in psychology and was very likely to be admitted, since a graduate professor was one of his regular hospital visitors. The same person began to engage in psychotherapy with other patients -- all of this as a way of becoming a person in an impersonal environment."

Finally, my guesses about the pseudopatients: three psychologists (Rosenhan, psychiatrist's wife, pediatrician's wife), a pediatrician (colleague and coauthor), a psychiatrist (met at a convention, recently retired), a painter (psychologist colleague, obfuscated), a housewife (psychiatrist's sister), psychology graduate student in his 20's (Underwood), omitted young person (Lando). All in all, the retired psychiatrist, his wife and sister would today be in their 110s, and Rosenhan and his 3 peers, in their 90s. The two graduate students are likely the only pseudopatients who are still alive; Cahalan is way too late to finding them. 62.151.109.1 (talk) 17:04, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Just adding another source here that may be used to expand the section:

• Scull, Andrew (25 January 2020). "How David Rosenhan's fraudulent Thud experiment set back psychiatry for decades". The Spectator.

—PaleoNeonate – 01:38, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

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