- It's unclear if this experiment actually happened the way Rosenhan claimed. A journalist went through Rosenhan's archives and tried to verify his story. She managed to track down one of the pseudopatients, who disputed some of Rosenhan's claims such as the amount of preparation, and whether Rosenhan had worked out a legal backup plan in case the institution refused to release the patient.[1] She also noted large discrepancies in various numbers. Apparently she wrote a book about the whole thing, but I haven't had the chance to read it.[2][3]
1. https://sci-hub.red/10.1038/d41586-019-03268-y
2. https://www.npr.org/2019/11/13/777172316/the-great-pretender...
3. https://www.susannahcahalan.com/the-great-pretender
- Related. Others?
The Rosenhan Experiment: On Being Sane in Insane Places - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45785783 - Nov 2025 (1 comment)
On Being Sane in Insane Places (1973) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32686098 - Sept 2022 (2 comments)
David Rosenhan’s fraudulent Thud experiment set back psychiatry for decades - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22155529 - Jan 2020 (119 comments)
Troubling discrepancies in Rosenhan's “On Being Sane in Insane Places”? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21437852 - Nov 2019 (16 comments)
On being sane in insane places - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10885181 - Jan 2016 (1 comment)
On being sane in insane places - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4371212 - Aug 2012 (2 comments)
Rosenhan experiment (1973) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1469370 - June 2010 (2 comments)
by ossicones
3 subcomments
- If you've ever taken a depression screener at a wellness visit, that's a consequence of this work. This paper describes how unreliable psychiatric diagnosis used to be. There were standards, but they ultimately came down to physician judgment. This created demand for more objective standards, which resulted in the "checklist" approach that we have now.
by ameliaquining
1 subcomments
- This study was a fraud: https://doi.org/10.1177/0957154x221150878
- An experiment where they sent normal people to mental institutes to see if professionals would be able to identify them.
by 12_throw_away
1 subcomments
- This is one of those "important research with unbelievably flawed methods" sort of situations. Psych research before IRBs was crazy.
- Reminds me of: Man’s Search for Meaning (1946) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning
- This experiment is now widely debated, the author may have made up or exaggerated details.
by nibles_and_bits
1 subcomments
- Hello from a wildcat alumnus class 2006, never thought I would see a weber state link in HN top 20.
- This is from the seventies. I wonder if things would be different fifty years later.
- We are trained to be scared of lone individuals and rural environments, when in fact most abuses occur within a hierarchy and urban settings. I feel the fatal flaw in human nature is so many are obedient to power without question, especially when power has some kind of uniform, but also within gangs etc.
In the hospital environment, power is partly conveyed by the clothes people where and if you do not conform or obey, then you are punished. It is a pattern we are conditioned into from nursery/kindergarten onwards.
by TacticalCoder
0 subcomment
- "The normal are not detectably sane"
I remember reading an essay explaining that patients not sharing the political beliefs of the physician running the asylum are more likely to be classified as mentally ill. A mental asylum paid by state money is usually going to be in the hand of physicians who never see anything wrong with the state (not biting the hand that feeds you and all that): so when for example a libertarian arrives, he's much more likely to be classified as mentally ill than if a socialist arrives.
So it's all arbitrary and, moreover, you better put the odds on your side by trying to determine what are the physicians' political beliefs and pretend you have the same ; )
by sddfgvdsvsdfas
3 subcomments
- [flagged]
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