David Rosenhan’s fraudulent Thud experiment set back psychiatry for decades • Hacker News Board

Re: David Rosenhan’s fraudulent Thud experiment set back psychiatry for decades

#111

Post by warbaker » Mon, Jan 27, 2020, 6:24 PM UTC

77pt77 wrote: post #83

ttctciyf wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, the article makes no mention of the followup experiment where it seems a hospital invited a repetition and then claimed to have found 40 or so fake patients during the agreed period. Only to be told that the experimenters had sent none. Or at least that's the version told in Adam Curtis' documentary The Trap (part 1)[1] which engages in Curtis's usual enthusiasm for fashioning a sweeping historical nar…

> Interestingly, the article makes no mention of the followup experiment where it seems a hospital invited a repetition and then claimed to have found 40 or so fake patients during the agreed period. The reason is simple. This article is pure propaganda along the lines of the book "The great pretender" by Susannah Cahalan. The experiment might have flaws, but this second part is conclusive and no critics ever address…

My default position on the follow-up is likewise skepticism. It seems like the filters at the time were so low that it is likely the follow-up is just a better constructed lie.

Re: David Rosenhan’s fraudulent Thud experiment set back psychiatry for decades

#112

Post by warbaker » Mon, Jan 27, 2020, 6:34 PM UTC

droithomme wrote: post #91

Hm, the experiment took place before 1973 and involved 8 pseudo-patients, all anonymous. This person was able to deanonymize and locate 3 of the pseudo-patients. Because they didn't find all 8 they then claim the study was fraudulent and never involved 8 people. That seems an absurd conclusion. It's not reasonable to think one could find all the anonymous/identity cloaked participants in a nearly 50 year old study.

Given that the researcher was a participant directly, and that he lied about his actions (he in fact presented suicidal thoughts, etc), I believe the balance of evidence says we should reject the study.

Re: David Rosenhan’s fraudulent Thud experiment set back psychiatry for decades

#113

Post by DanBC » Mon, Jan 27, 2020, 10:54 PM UTC

imperio59 wrote: post #26

The fact is psychiatry today still lacks tests or any proof of its claims of "chemical imbalance", which remains unproven. No one had established a profile for what a "balanced brain chemistry"looks like, nor do they test for any brain chemistry imbalance. Diagnosis is still left to the subjective assessment of the practitioner before prescribing powerful psychotropics that DO change brain chemistry in unpredictable…

> any proof of its claims of "chemical imbalance",

Can you find me any psychiatrist that's pushing the chemical imbalance theory? Every single doctor I know thinks chemical imbalance is bunk.

Re: David Rosenhan’s fraudulent Thud experiment set back psychiatry for decades

#114

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 27, 2020, 11:18 PM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #37

unishark wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally these diagnoses require the symptoms to persist for 6 months plus be so severe they disrupt your life. And they are basically defined by clustering of symptoms. This is driven by welfare/insurance reasons. You need a diagnosis to get benefits. And while they often can't treat the underlying problem for schizophrenia and other diseases, they can definitely treat the symptoms. So if you have some of the same…

And while they often can't treat the underlying problem for schizophrenia and other diseases, they can definitely treat the symptoms. Yes. Let's not throw the baby out along with the bath water! Psychiatry is far, far from perfect. It is a discipline that is still taking its tiniest of baby steps into the realm of actual usefulness. I think any psychiatrist would be willing to openly admit this; that the mind is stil…

[deleted]

Re: David Rosenhan’s fraudulent Thud experiment set back psychiatry for decades

#115

Post by achillesheels » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 2:41 AM UTC

Yet annotating a necessarily positive correlation with female participation and poor scientific development over the last five decades is considered misogynist. The intuition that is controversial is in the consideration of sexual dimorphism and novel sexual selective pressures that now influence research, ie glamour and agreeableness (“trendiness”) versus truth which is always in antagonism with the status quo. It is risible to think a woman could be as audacious as a Galileo or Heaviside (please do not deceive yourselves or feign ignorance on the effects of testosterone in the biological kingdom), and I think the poor scientific marksmanship astutely reflects this, albeit insufficiently (as academic dogmatism has other metabolic components besides sexuality which make it pale to its aristocratic genealogy.)

Re: David Rosenhan’s fraudulent Thud experiment set back psychiatry for decades

#116

Post by catalogia » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 3:11 AM UTC

achillesheels wrote: post #115

Yet annotating a necessarily positive correlation with female participation and poor scientific development over the last five decades is considered misogynist. The intuition that is controversial is in the consideration of sexual dimorphism and novel sexual selective pressures that now influence research, ie glamour and agreeableness (“trendiness”) versus truth which is always in antagonism with the status quo. It i…

Does the data actually show that women working in research produce less accurate results than male researchers? Without seeing any solid evidence I feel obliged to be skeptical of this. Furthermore not every field diversified at the same rate or during the same time period. If what you're suggesting is true, I would expect to see a correlation between when a field diversified and when the quality of that research fell. Even if there are other factors in play, if the signal is there you should be able to measure it. And if the signal is immeasurable then I think it may as well not be there.

Re: David Rosenhan’s fraudulent Thud experiment set back psychiatry for decades

#117

Post by Gatsky » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 3:32 AM UTC

achillesheels wrote: post #115

Yet annotating a necessarily positive correlation with female participation and poor scientific development over the last five decades is considered misogynist. The intuition that is controversial is in the consideration of sexual dimorphism and novel sexual selective pressures that now influence research, ie glamour and agreeableness (“trendiness”) versus truth which is always in antagonism with the status quo. It i…

Of all the risible things one could say about gender and science, chief among them would surely be that testosterone leads to better scientific discoveries. Also you ignore the fact that the status quo which Galileo and Heaviside had to contend with was established and maintained by men.

Re: David Rosenhan’s fraudulent Thud experiment set back psychiatry for decades

#118

Post by Gatsky » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 4:24 AM UTC

0239kffkk wrote: post #110

Gatsky wrote: post #46

Note that Rosenhan was a social psychologist. The list of faulty or outright fraudulent experiments done by psychologists grows ever longer. The entire field seems bankrupt to me. Part of the problem are perverse incentives. Get one positive and interesting result (which you can tailor to the zeitgeist for maximum impact) and you can live off books, TED talks and lectures for your whole life. Recent examples include…

The list of faulty of outright fraudulent experiments done in any number of fields, especially the biomedical sciences, also grows ever longer, but it it seems this argument is hardly ever leveled here. It's well-established now that these problems exist in other fields, such as immunology, oncology, and other fields. Even closely related fields, such as the neurosciences, have been shown to be full of improbable and…

The issue is that other sciences are not held back by these problems. We still have bridges, semiconductors, space flight and new cancer treatments. This is partly because it is much easier to measure and verify experimental phenomena (you call this a bias, but it is merely a fact?), but also because being correct matters. However many crappy experiments are done or results fabricated, at the end of the day you still have to put your rocket on the launch pad and fire the engines. The reproducibility issues in these sciences is a matter of efficiency.

Psychology is different in the sense that it doesn't seem to matter to the field very much whether they are correct. I say this because they keep doing experiments which lack a robust design, and then proceed to use complex statistical models to infer many unsupported claims which never seem to replicate. Then they meta-analyse these results to conclude that if there is an effect it is small or only applies to certain people. The 'power pose' study I linked is a case in point. All this is done in a very rigorous way by rigorous people using advanced equipment and statistics, who spend much time spinning careful narratives about their work in long Discussion sections. But you don't get a medal for trying in science.

It is hardly a compliment to psychology that they gave birth to the meta-analysis [1]. Note that getting some result in an experiment, then having the result overturned in a meta-analysis is the functional equivalent of not having done the experiment at all. In fact, it is inferior to doing nothing, because you have just wasted everyone's time.

[1] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/meta-analyses-were-s...

Re: David Rosenhan’s fraudulent Thud experiment set back psychiatry for decades

#119

Post by achillesheels » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 5:23 AM UTC

Gatsky wrote: post #117

achillesheels wrote: post #115

Yet annotating a necessarily positive correlation with female participation and poor scientific development over the last five decades is considered misogynist. The intuition that is controversial is in the consideration of sexual dimorphism and novel sexual selective pressures that now influence research, ie glamour and agreeableness (“trendiness”) versus truth which is always in antagonism with the status quo. It i…

Of all the risible things one could say about gender and science, chief among them would surely be that testosterone leads to better scientific discoveries. Also you ignore the fact that the status quo which Galileo and Heaviside had to contend with was established and maintained by men.

Testosterone leads to greater disagreement ergo original thought, please don’t be so credulous.

Re: David Rosenhan’s fraudulent Thud experiment set back psychiatry for decades

#120

Post by achillesheels » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 5:29 AM UTC

catalogia wrote: post #116

achillesheels wrote: post #115

Yet annotating a necessarily positive correlation with female participation and poor scientific development over the last five decades is considered misogynist. The intuition that is controversial is in the consideration of sexual dimorphism and novel sexual selective pressures that now influence research, ie glamour and agreeableness (“trendiness”) versus truth which is always in antagonism with the status quo. It i…

Does the data actually show that women working in research produce less accurate results than male researchers? Without seeing any solid evidence I feel obliged to be skeptical of this. Furthermore not every field diversified at the same rate or during the same time period. If what you're suggesting is true, I would expect to see a correlation between when a field diversified and when the quality of that research fel…

My claim is not women cause inaccuracy, rather women’s research participation causes unprecedented human biological effects in the pursuit of knowledge which is positively correlated with falsehood. Has not the replication crisis been found in female saturated disciplines, ie the social sciences?