The Fraud That Transformed Psychiatry Series, Transcript P14

Shidonna Raven
2 days ago
3 min read

July 23, 2024

Source: The Scince History Institute

Photo / Image Source: Unsplash,

Host: Alexis Pedrick

Senior Producer: Mariel Carr

Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez

Associate Producer: Sarah Kaplan

Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

“Color Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions

Psychology professor David Rosenhan made waves with his “On Being Sane in Insane Places” study, but decades later its legitimacy was questioned.

WFGD Studio

Transcript

Alexis Pedrick: Finding the real medical report gave Susannah a whole new level of skepticism about the study, and she realized something else was off.

Susannah Cahalan: Almost every detail in the article was about David Rosenhan’s time in the hospital from his Haverford State Hospital visit in ‘69. And I know that because I had his notes from Haverford. And, oh, there are almost no other details about the other seven. However, there were still some details about Harry’s hospitalization that were used in the study, one involving flirting with a nurse.

Harry Lando: He kind of had it both ways because I was a footnote, I wasn’t included, but there were several references in the article to what was very clearly my experience.

Alexis Pedrick: Remember, Harry’s data was dropped from the study because it didn’t fit Rosenhan’s thesis.

Susannah Cahalan: But Harry made it in? Wouldn’t you think he’d have enough detail from the other six to not have to use the one he claims to have discarded? That really kind of pinged something in me, and I really started to look at the archive and the information that it had in a different light.

Alexis Pedrick: Throughout the years she worked on her book, Susannah tried over and over again to identify the other six pseudopatients. She wrote to medical journals looking for people who knew anything. She made a speech at an American Psychiatric Association meeting. She even hired a private detective and the only two pseudopatients any of these efforts ever pointed to were Bill Underwood and Harry Lando. Still, Susannah held out hope that someone would read the book and come forward. But the book came out in 2019.

Susannah Cahalan: No one’s come forward. Like, someone would’ve, and now I’ve completely given it up because the book’s come out.

Alexis Pedrick: We may never know definitively if there were any other pseudo patients besides David Rosenhan, Bill Underwood, and Harry Lando and his footnote. But here’s what we do know. David Rosenhan attended a conference in 1970 where an editor from Science was also present.

Susannah Cahalan: And I believe, this is conjecture, but I believe that’s where science got their knowledge about this and said to him, make this into a study, add some other people into this, and we’ll publish this. That’s my theory. And I think he had a harder time convincing people to get to do that than he thought he would. And I think kind of it was down to the wire, and he was putting a lot of pressure. Harry remembers that he was putting a lot of pressure on the students to take part in the study, and people really didn’t want a lot to do with it. And I think he was kind of back against the wall and either he delivered or he didn’t.

Alexis Pedrick: After the Science article came out, Rosenhan got offered a book deal.

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