Episode description
Episode description
The history of science is peppered with some pretty dubious research… grafting second heads onto dogs, growing bits of human brains inside mouse embryos, experiments with syphilis, and the list goes on. We have delivered many episodes on some pretty horrific things done in the name of science back in the day which is why we’re suitably discomforted by a study on orphan kids called “The Monster Study”.
Born in 1906, Wendell Johnson stuttered grotesquely. He and his family went to great lengths to treat his stutter: sugar pills, a frightening (and disappointing) faith healer, and chiropractic work. At 16 he even attended a stuttering “school” where he chanted and swung dumbbells. None of it helped. Can’t think of why!
Eventually, Johnson made his way to the University of Iowa to study English (he was more of a writing guy). Well, that university just so happened to be home to the most famous centre for stuttering research in the world. The coincidence! Diving into psychology for his master's study, Johnson became a speech pathologist because he needed one himself.
The thing with speech is that you can’t test on animals so the students themselves became test subjects. They drew blood, hooked themselves to electrodes, and even shot guns off near each other's ears to see if it affected their stuttering. But it wasn’t all rogue science. Johnson made some significant observations through his early studies that convinced him that stuttering was conditioned; it was learned.
Lead theories at the time were that the stuttering disorder originated in misdirected brain signals. But Johnson called bullshit. He was certain that stuttering was a learned behaviour. Damn those overreacting helicopter parents!
So if stuttering was learned, that meant it could be unlearned but it also meant that it could be… taught. Enter the Monster Study, led by one of Johnson’s students, Mary Tudor. Luckily the university had an ongoing relationship with an orphanage where they could recruit unknowing research subjects. Well, that all seems above board.
Within the orphanage, there were 10 kids who had an existing stutter. In weekly sessions, half of them were told to pay no attention to what others said about their speech and that they would grow out of it. The other half were told that their speech was terrible. Sigh.
Another group of children who had normal speech were told they had symptoms suggestive of an impending stutter. They were told to never speak unless they could do it absolutely right!
And then the last lucky group (again comprised of children with normal speech) were given compliments on their lovely enunciation.
Sounds science-ish, right?
Well, remember the kids who spoke normally and were scared into believing something was seriously wrong with their speech? Yeah, they stopped talking, performed worse in class, and became withdrawn and fractious. And although when they did speak, their speech was normal, they began to act like stutterers with inhibitive, sensitive and embarrassed demeanours.
Feeling bad about her methods with these kids, Tudor went back to the orphanage to do some follow-up therapy. But it didn’t do much good. Her thesis sank immediately into obscurity but for a ghost life among Iowa speech pathology students; the university library its academic mausoleum.
And then came the lawsuits. In 2003, three surviving orphans sued the State and University of Iowa for millions of dollars, citing among other things the infliction of emotional distress and fraudulent misrepresentation.
Did the kids ever recover? And did Johnson end up finding a cause? Or is the road to stuttering paved with eagle-eared parents?
PREVIOUS EPISODES MENTIONED:
- What The Hell Happened To The Left-Handers?
SOURCES:
- The Stuttering Doctor's 'Monster Study', Gretchen Reynolds March 16, 2003 https://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/16/magazine/the-stuttering-doctor-s-monster-study.html
- The “Monster” Study, Franklin H. Silverman, .I. Fluency disord. 13 (19881, 225-231) https://www.uh.edu/ethicsinscience/Media/Monster%20Study.pdf
- The Monster Study - Practical Psychology July 8, 2022 https://practicalpie.com/the-monster-study/
- Why The Monster Study On Stuttering Was Unethical, Jeremy Dean https://www.spring.org.uk/2022/12/monster-study-stuttering.php
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