zlacker

>>lcaff+(OP)
While this is fascinating and I'm glad to have read it, it doesn't substantiate that this experiment set back psychiatry. The fact that the DSM-IV was prompted or encouraged by the experiment is suggested, but there's no argument for it. Even beyond that, the article doesn't even hint at an argument that the DSM-IV set back psychiatry (except offering the bare assertion that reductionism is false).

Of course, the DSM is very controversial, and many people could fill in the argument, but this article doesn't do it.

>>hyperp+I3
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 narrative out of somewhat sparse materials - in this case presenting the "Thud" experiment and its followup as a pivot point in the tale of how R. D. Laing's anti-psychiatry ironically led to the advent of the DSM IV era.

However that may be, if Curtis' account of the followup is correct it seems harder to argue the diagnostic prowess of the psychiatrists was not open to question, regardless of the status of the original experiment.

1: In the section beginning here: https://youtu.be/y97Ywl7RtUw?t=2204