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[return to "David Rosenhan’s fraudulent Thud experiment set back psychiatry for decades"]
1. Gatsky+Ea[view] [source] 2020-01-27 01:34:05
>>lcaff+(OP)
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 power posing and confidence [1] (poor experiment) or changing political bias regarding gay rights [2] (outright fraud).

If psychology wants the status and rewards of being considered a legitimate science, it needs to make dramatic changes. In the meantime any initial result psychological research produces must be considered not just preliminary, but suspect.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_posing [2] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6239/1100.2

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2. mnemon+Xg[view] [source] 2020-01-27 03:03:39
>>Gatsky+Ea
> The list of faulty or outright fraudulent experiments done by psychologists grows ever longer.

So what social-psychological experiments are bogus?

The most famous problem experiment I can think of is Zimbardo's fake prison, and IIRC the primary objection was that the effect was too strong. He let it go on too long and everyone was disgusted.

Rosenhan's experiment is bogus, yes, but I have to wonder... psychiatrists were condoning lobotomies just 15 years earlier. Is it likely that an entire discipline could turn itself around in that time? (Which doesn't excuse Rosenhan, of course)

I am 100% open to your thesis but would like more data.

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3. jakewi+uh[view] [source] 2020-01-27 03:12:16
>>mnemon+Xg
The problem with the Stanford Prison Experiment was that the guards were secretly coached by the researchers to get the effect their hypothesis predicted, not that "the effect was too strong": https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-exper...
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