Rosenhan’s Experiment
Umm… I think the puppy was cute.. *shrugs*… Okay, so yeah this post is about something that I studied in my Sociology class last semester and found funny, quirky and surprising…
In 1972, David Rosenhan conducted a famous experiment about the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. It was published in the journal ‘Science’ under the title “On being sane in insane places”. There were 2 stages to this experiment which I’ll describe as you read further…
Stage one of the experiment:
Rosenhan being a doctor, gathered 7 more of his colleagues and all the 8 doctors went to different hospitals around the area. They all complained of “hearing voices” and all 8 were admitted in the psych wards and diagnosed with schizophrenia. They each made a stay ranging from 7 to 52 days and were released with a status of “schizophrenia in remission”.
Finally, Rosenhan told the hospitals that they were wrong and that diagnosis is NOT objective or certain – but subjective and no doctor could say with 100% certainty what was wrong with someone.
Stage two of experiment:
One of the very prestigious hospitals refused to accept that this happened and claimed that they were competent enough to avoid such misdiagnosis. At this point, Rosenhan told them he would send them more fakes over the next 3 months and they should spot the fakes and call him up everytime they find one. After 3 months, 41 out of 193 patients were labeled as fakes.
The twist here being that Rosenhan never sent any fakes in the first place.
This should be an interesting experiment for all of you out there to read lol. I know I don’t understand the personal implications of such happenings as I have never dealt with anything similar, but I think it proves a very important point here… it proves our minds are too complex for anyone to really be in complete knowledge of what is normal and what is not.
I think my posting this was a subconscious attempt to trash doctors hahaha… nahh, Just kidding… wanted to share it since I found it rather interesting and funny lol
Yeah i thought this was a very cleaver. like something you would do. lol. hahaha ya know i love ya.