Doctor investigated for posting inkblots to Wikipedia A doctor is under investigation for misconduct after publishing 10 inkblots used by psychologists to get insights about a subject's frame of mind. James Heilman told told The New York Times he posted the Rorschach test images in an attempt to demystify the psychological profession. At least two psychologists didn't appreciate …
I was talking to a psych friend of mine the other day about how much of a farce these tests are. They are the equivalent of a lie detector - very dubious scientifically, but if people believe in the supposed power of these tests then they will answer honestly.
So now they will just have to invent some new mumbo jumbo to take advantage of the placebo effect. There is no rocket science involved at all
They're not psychiatrists, they're psychOLOGISTS. You know, like scientOLOGISTS. Given the parallels in their pretending to be something they're not (e.g. science / religion), and their resitance to openness and transparency, one might say that the similiarity in the name is hardly surprising.
AC, because I don't want all the nutjobs coming after me.
Thanks ;-)
I spilt some tea and it now has taken on the resemblance of Christ screwing my mother.
Can the nut-doctors advise?
Anything that blows thier cabal apart by removing the 'witch doctor' effect is fine by me.
Is there really any difference between this and the entrails of chickens or goats?
(apart from the blood, guts and goat curry afterwards) or chucking twigs in the air or tarot cards?
'Pirate' as they are only after your money - "You need a course of sessions etc. etc.)
These tests have been provent to be biased culturally but let's ignore that for now.
Consider this situation: two mentally healthy people both see the same thing in the same inkblots. Then a madman comes along and STILL sees the same thing... Does that mean they're all mad? Does it mean the madman has read Wiki? No!
The only use for the entire thing may be cold-reading. I couldn't possibly comment. I certainly can't see any science at work here...!
Its a bloody inkblot. It doesn't MEAN anything except what you see in it, therefore there cannot be any right or wrong answers. If psychologists are worried about revealing the 'inner workings' its because they'll be exposed as charlatans. Its friggin' unbelievable that such quacks have the power to lock someone up just on their say-so
I briefly shared an office with a psychologist who announced her belief in the importance of the Rorschach. I almost burst into laughter thinking she was being ironic.
That aside, I don't know any psychologists who think the Rorschach test has empirical value. (And their history is politically suspect if you consider the way they were used to 'diagnose' homosexuality.) I suppose you might conceivably use one to stimulate discussion with a client, but I'm pretty dubious.
There are some psychological inventories which are closely guarded for reasons ranging from the commercial to the clinical. In those instances disclosure would damage their usefulness. But I'm talking about tests standardised on thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of people that actually have a high degree of reliability.
Bind testing eliminates the possibility that a subjective response to a test has not been influenced by outside factors, some test subjects do not know why they're being tested or what for and sometimes not even those administering the tests know their purpose either.
This guy explaining in graphic detail what the inkblots mean will result in patients coming in and giving an answer they think the docotr wants to hear, thus making the test completely useless. Sounds like he's in need of his own medicine if he perceives some head-shirnks secret society closely guarding the eternal secret of the inkblots.
I did a test once as part of a leadership course ( big joke - we did a graphology test as well ) and amused myself by filling pages with the stuff I could 'see'. I could explain all the objects to the psycho as well, which worried her a little.
Rorschach tests belong on a fecking fairground...
If this was a science it would progress beyond the few blobs he made in the 1930s, but it seems to be quackery, trading on the mythology of a dead guru and not a science.
Are you seriously telling me that they can't make an infinite set of ambiguous blobs representing things, and that set of things never changes since the 1930s???
If I said that ink blot on the Wikipedia page, looks like the 'Y' in Yahoo, how would you interpret that using a 1930s book that was written before Yahoo, before TVs, before computers, before Jetplanes?
The second from last looks like Emu from Rod Hull and Emu, does that have a cultural reference in his book from the 1930s? No?
The 'bat' one, you understand that bats are very rare now, and animal skins have been replaced by synthetics???? Almost nobody will ever see an animal skin in their life now, yet they are still using the normal response to one of the blobs as an animal skin?????
What about countries where bats don't exist? Is there one set of blobs for all cultural references? Eskimos are expected to see 'bats'? Athiests are expected to see angels?
I call quackery on this. This is a cult of people who believe in guru Rorschach, and the blobs should be exposed, because there appears to be pseudo science behind them.
I've just had a look at the 10 prints on wiki, and although I did match up with a few of the obvious bat, bird, people answers, some of my other interpretations weren't even on the charts!
Some of their guideline interpretations seriously depend on particular social backgrounds. One of them has a suggested interpretation of "animal skin", now I can't remember the last time I saw an animal skin, so it's hardly likely to be the first thing that comes to mind. It does however look like my table cloth after I spilt my coffee on it yesterday!
To me number 10 looks like a carnival by the Eiffel tower!
I thought the whole thing about the ink blots was not to come up with some definite description of something but to use it as a guide to see the patient's thinking processes. So it doesn't matter if the inkblots have been published (and I'm sure I've seen them published before) as everyone will come up with different results.
Sorry, but in what way is a placebo effect involved? A Rorschach inkblot test is not a cure nor in fact is it intended to have any effect whatsoever on the patient. It is an assessment tool (of dubious worth in my opinion but that's by the by) like a stethoscope or a thermometer.
If you're going to critique something on scientific grounds, it's a good idea to understand the scientific terminology you use.
They have been in the public domain in Hermann Rorschach's native Switzerland, since at least 1992 (70 years after his death), according to Swiss copyright law.
Alright, it wouldn't be the first time wiki has been wrong, but if they ARE public domain then WTF are they complaining about?
... between an inkblot test and a CoS e-meter test?
Nothing.. as both are pseudo science.. (though I prefer the common term "bullshit" better as a far more apt description).
In fact, many years ago, had to do these inkblot tests in order to get the "appropriate security clearance" on a government project. At the time, I thought it the safest to call each blot a butterfly, bird or flower..
I had the inkblot test when I was a kid (6th grade - US). At the time, as a 12 yr old, I thought it was utter rubbish and stupid. I still do, in my middle age. As a kid, I knew how to game the images. It is rather simple. You can see multiple images in the inkblot, just like looking at clouds. Depending upon what you want to project, choose the interpretation appropriately.
It was a way for the psychologist to come up with 'results' without doing much real work. Listening and working through a patients views, phobias etc.. takes time. The inkblots give an 'instant' result.. however erroneous it is. There is no science to it.. just a whole bunch of preconceptions on the part of psychologists.
They have been a joke for years with real scientists.
The trouble is that the 'expert' gets to interprete your answers.
If you see a 'naked women' - does that mean you are a violent potential rapist or are a caring family man?
If you see an 'angel' are you a schizophrenic who thinks god talks to them, or a peaceful religious person, or just a fan of medieval art ?
Egads, Brain, this means head shrinkers will have to TALK to their patients to gain insight into their minds. Oh, the horror!
Seriiously, these "professionals" are just upset because people might actually realize that you DON'T need to pay a psychologist or psychiatrist (tens of) thousands of dollars to help you solve your problems or deal with things. You just need someone willing to listen and help when they can. Back in my day, we referred to them as "friends", but that word doesn't carry much weight nowadays, especially since the arrival of MySpace and FaceBook.
Psychiatrists and psychologists think (and want you to think) that they're the only ones who can help people mentally just because they've paid fees for education and licenses. They're as protective of that illusion as the Church is of the illusion that you need to go to church in order to be a good Christian (if God is always listening, and always watching, then why do you need to visit a specific building at a specific time?).
I really think these are just placeholders for any random opinion the subject being tested may have. The fact that these images are so vague and only have certain resemblance to one specific object makes me think its just a bogus way of isolating those individuals who contradict popular response. Soooo, mass says rabbit and I say ermm vagina, well there you go, subject is found to have abnormal sexual tendencies and so on and so forth.
"This guy explaining in graphic detail what the inkblots mean will result in patients coming in and giving an answer they think the docotr wants to hear."
It looks like a pile of bullshit to me. A simple variation of looking at clouds and seeing what images you can see. I always thought there must be some cleverness in the ink blots, but now that I actually see them, there is not.
It's just a crude visual perception test onto which you projected your interpretation of a 1930s man personal biases.
You are naked, you have no clothes Mr Emperor, and we can all see your little tinkle in ink blot 4.
"They're not psychiatrists, they're psychOLOGISTS. You know, like scientOLOGISTS."?
Well, with economists/ecologists it works the other way around, economy being a religion (see many LSE lecturers still being Marxists) while ecologists study say the foraging behaviour of parasitoid wasps.
With astronomy/astrology it works though.
They all look like ink spilt on paper which has then been folded in half. Does that make me:
A. Autistic?
B. Realistic?
C. Pedantic?
D. Argumentive?
E. All of the above?
I think if a psycholigst presented me with these, I'd be inclined to tell them to get a proper job.
@ Adam Salisbury
>> Bind testing eliminates the possibility that a subjective response to a test has not been influenced by outside factors, some test subjects do not know why they're being tested.
All well and good, except that everyone over the age of five, who didn't grow up in deepest darkest Amazonia, knows that inkblot tests are designed to test your responses to them. Likewise every knows that if you say they look like people having sex or some such, it's going to set of alarm bells.
I'm sure I read a very similar explanation of these tests as a child of around 12 or 13. I've also been subject to this test but, if I recall correctly, both were either broken off early or ended up in a discussion of how the test was supposed to work (which is probably when I got to read about it).
Anyhow, either way these tests are not "secret" in any way and never were.
Mike from spaced....
[Mike is undertaking a Rorschach ink test; the first card is very obviously a couple having sex]
Mike: War.
TA Officer: [Holding the next card] This one?
Mike: Bomb.
TA Officer: [Next card] This one?
Mike: Guts.
[Next card]
Mike: Guns.
[Next card]
Mike: Guts and guns.
[Next card]
Mike: [Happily] Butterfly.
[The TA Officer frowns]
Mike: [Realizes] Butterfly with a bomb.
mines the one with the jaffa cakes in
It may appear to "work", but then so does doing a Tarot reading or casting an I Ching or cold-reading or any of those other forms of divination and mediumship which basically amount to spending a lot of time talking to someone and trying to get an intuitive idea of what they're about. The form and even content of the conversation aren't terribly important, it's just an opportunity for the reader to spend some time paying attention to the subject and letting their own subconscious work out what it thinks about them, and the conclusions it reaches are basically intuitive rather than scientific.
That can still be of use, but disclosing the cards makes no difference to the degree of therapeutic value obtained from the procedure; the only thing that actually matters is having a caring attentive and diligent doctor attending to you rather than an off-hand uncaring and dismissive one. (And that's where the connection with placebo effect arises.)
There's a very detailed discussion of what one might see in google books (and it's rather easy to get hold of psychiatry journals since they're in the public domain where one can study the effects of gender bias, preexisting conditions, etc on the results). The plates are missing but I'm sure a visit to the local bookshop might throw something up. I'm off to mess with my psychiatrists mind...
Basically they haven't got a leg to stand on.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=9_DTP0QtjAMC&oi=fnd&pg=PA5&dq=Rorschach&ots=8g1ExqwWID&sig=rd0wxn2rCdxKle2Z4wqhbEGnwTs#v=twopage&q=&f=false
Alright you smart arses! If psychology is so broken, how did those commie bastards brainwash Laurence Harvey into shooting The President, and Frank Sinatra into covering for him? Eh? Eh? If it hadn't been for a piece of blind luck the entire western world would have been under some commie dictator who looked like one of the guys from Ocean's Eleven (the original, not the remake).
The Inkblots are a strategic asset in the never-ending hunt for the innocent victims of red plots and the pinko idiot who wikified then should be in Guantanamo for doing so.
Senator Stevie, Mrs (ret'd).
They aren't psychiatrists, and they don't have medical degrees. Yes, there are undoubtedly some good people among the ranks of the psychologists, but a lot of them are a few fries short of a Happy Meal™ and their degrees not worth much more than if they'd been bought from a diploma mill.
"Rat runners" we used to call them when I was in graduate school. Their view of the human psyche is a combination of the mind of the common lab rat and that of the common 18-21 y.o. undergraduate.
Generally harmless as long as you don't pay any attention to them.
Big Brother icon, but with the tagline "the doctor will see you now".
They work because they are used like an IQ test. Give lots of people the test and analyze results to determine trends and probabilities.
Unbelievably, they only used 10 images (for how many years now). How many questions are there on the SAT tests or the IQ tests?
As for cheating on the test, the people that want to cheat will always cheat. And have been cheating all along. They know to tell the court ordered psych exactly what they want/need to hear.
The notion that it will help people cheat is delusional head-in-the-sand denial that cheaters havent been doing this for years.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
