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Wikipedia Debates Rorschach Censorship

Posted by kdawson on from the guy-drawing-the-dirty-pictures dept.

GigsVT writes "Editors on Wikipedia are engaged in an epic battle over a few piece of paper smeared with ink. The 10 inkblot images that form the classic Rorschach test have fallen into the public domain, and so including them on Wikipedia would seem to be a simple choice. However, some editors have cited the American Psychological Association's statement that exposure of the images to the public is an unethical act, since prior exposure to the images could render them ineffective as a psychological test. Is the censorship of material appropriate, when the public exposure to that material may render it useless?"

14 of 635 comments (clear)

  1. I thought they.. by tmosley · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I thought they made those randomly. If there are only ten of them, that seems to indicate that there are a few certain "correct" answers, which kind of throws the whole test into doubt now, doesn't it?

    1. Re:I thought they.. by omfglearntoplay · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think the doubt thrown on the validity of the tests is all over the place anyway. Why not just let the tests out and end the debate there?

    2. Re:I thought they.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The test is, and always has been, pop-psychology nonsense. It's a cold reading in a phony clinical setting. The diagnoses is always "more costly therapy sessions".

      This is like the association of soothsayers trying to supress the "secret" of tarot or tea leave reading, because if everybody knows it wont be magic anymore.

    3. Re:I thought they.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think you're missing the point. It's not "scientific" in the sense of a physical experiment that gives concrete, objective results. You can't have a comprehensive objective quantification of someone's mental state, so you're not going to find a test like that anyways.

      The purpose of this test is to collect data using a standardized set of inputs, so that the data can be meaningfully compared with other results of the same test. It's simply a tool used in the overall process, not a definitive standalone diagnosis.

    4. Re:I thought they.. by hardburn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Thread should end right here. While the Rorschach test does have some limited scientific validity, it doesn't deserve to be as widespread as it is. The test's "effectiveness" relies on exactly the same psychological blindspot that fortune telling does. Wikipedia isn't hampering the effectiveness of anything that isn't already broken.

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    5. Re:I thought they.. by david_thornley · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They also score things like whether you pick the card up

      Okay, so what are the psychological differences caused by the fact that I can't see things lying on a desk as clearly as I could thirty years ago? Optometrists want to know!

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    6. Re:I thought they.. by InsertCleverUsername · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > > in order to interpret the results scientifically

      > You have to be smoking dope.
      > There is nothing scientific at all about this claptrap, and there never was.

      Actually, speaking as someone who administered the Rorschach many times in a previous life (before turning to coding), I'd say you're wrong. It certainly doesn't have the psychometric characteristics of a good personality test, but it does have considerable empirical data to aid in its interpretation. It's nowhere near the validity and reliability of instruments like the MMPI or NEO PI-R, but it does have its uses --especially when assessing those who might try to fool a psychologist using these more face-valid psychological measures.

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    7. Re:I thought they.. by MaskedSlacker · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The Rorschach test is a holdover from the bad old days of psychology when it was little more scientific than alchemy was in its day.

      There's this fascinating science called psychology that tells us why double-blind studies are valuable. I think you'd like it.

      What the hell was this supposed to mean? His whole point was that there are no double-blind studies supporting your point. Turning around and saying double-blinds are important is not a retort.

      Modern psychology is rather different from psychology in the first part of the 20th century. The Rorscach belongs firmly in the latter.

    8. Re:I thought they.. by MaskedSlacker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Your post more or less sums up my point: the Rorschach test is unscientific, as much so as alchemy or astrology.

      It is not a test that has epistemological or methodological roots in science. Its roots come from the Freud school of 'making things up and calling them true.'

      Contrast this with the modern study of psychology which relies on statistically rigorous experiments with proper methodology.

      Abstract observation, including Freudian or Jungian introspection, has been discredited because it is of questionable validity, reliability, and (most importantly) falsifiability.

  2. Public Domain Man by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If they're in the public domain, then they're in the public domain, and that ends it. I'm sure the APA can come up with some new, copyrighted ink blot tests. Perhaps they could involve images of Tom Cruise and L. Ron Hubbard in various disturbing poses.

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    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  3. Suggested reading by greg1104 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It seems that the APA is the latest group that needs to do some reading on why security through obscurity just doesn't work.

  4. Clearly they should be omitted from wikipedia... by damn_registrars · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... because if they aren't on wikipedia, then nobody will ever find them on the internet and the images will be safe forever!

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    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
  5. Re:Are the images important? by camperdave · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I'm surprised that there's only ten images (and that they haven't changed over the years). I don't know the history of the test, and I am by no means a psychologist or psychiatrist, however I suspect it would work something like this:
    1. Get a series of inkblots together
    2. Gather and correlate data on how healthy people describe blots
    3. Gather and correlate data on how people with known problems describe blots
    4. Show inkblots to patients
    5. See how their results line up with previous correlations
    6. ???
    7. profit
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    When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  6. Re:Scoring by mysidia · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, you'd be showing contempt for the test due to a deep-seated fixation with test-avoidance, probably arising from a bad childhood experience with a psychoanalyst, causing you to try to make a fool out of people who want to help you, clearly an anti-social tendency.