Futility Closet

In the 1970s psychologist David Rosenhan sent healthy volunteers to 12 psychiatric hospitals, where they claimed to be hearing voices. Once they were admitted, they behaved normally, but the hospitals diagnosed all of them as seriously mentally ill. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe the Rosenhan experiment, which challenged the validity of psychiatric diagnosis and set off a furor in the field. We'll also spot hawks at Wimbledon and puzzle over a finicky payment processor. Intro: In 2002, Burkard Polster investigated the mathematics of shoelaces. A raindrop that lands on Montana's Triple Divide Peak might arrive at any of three oceans. Sources for our feature on the Rosenhan experiment: Roger R. Hock, Forty Studies That Changed Psychology, 2009. Dusan Kecmanovic, Controversies and Dilemmas in Contemporary Psychiatry, 2017. Donald O. Granberg and John F. Galliher, A Most Human Enterprise, 2010. David Rosenhan, "On Being Sane in Insane Places," Science 179:4070 (Jan. 19, 197