Under 70-talet genomfördes experimentet lyckat av åtta personer under ledning av David Rosenhan och resulterade i en stormartad respons. Slater beskriver Rosenhans experiment, samt sitt eget försök att upprepa det. Utdraget väcker väldigt intressanta frågor om psykiatrins grunder. Favoritutdrag:
Labels do determine how we view what we view. Psychiatry is a fledgling science, if it is a science at all, because to this day it lacks firm knowledge of practically any physiological basis for mental illness, and science is based on the body, on measurable matter.
Since Rosenhan, psychiatry has tried admirably to locate the physiological origins of mental disease - mostly in vain. Much of the current research is a knowing or unknowing response to Rosenhan's challenge and to the inherent anxieties it raises in "soft" scientists.
