Talk:Spring Grove Experiment

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Note: This article was created by Eillen Martinez (emarti84) and Amanda Chow (achow3) as an assignment for a course at Johns Hopkins University on the History of Modern Medicine. Emarti84 (talk) 21:26, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Emarti84. Peer reviewers: Hnguye68, KaylaMa, Zsmith7, Jpunnoo1.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 03:47, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Feedback

Overall, I thought that the page is a well written article that gives a clear picture of what happened at Spring Grove and the underlying motivation behind performing the experiments. The use of those committed to mental health institutions in experiments serves as a good example relating to the class on ethics of human subject research and consent of minority or fringe social groups (mentally ill in this case) in experiments along with legitimacy of experiments. The article can benefit from a few edits in each section and some section merging with a couple points explained as well.

• Intro gives a good overview of what happened and who was involved.
  • Break up first sentence into two separate ones to avoid run-ons.
  • Second sentence is a fragment - experiments shifted focus from observing LSD's effects to what? I'd recommend scrapping it since the following sentence talks about studying LSD's effects on various mental illnesses
  • In the last sentences, clarify whether advanced psychiatric research was still done with LSD or other psychedelics
• History of LSD - good, brief overview of context and motivation for study on LSD's potential applications as a psychotherapy tool. Some earlier events could benefit from some detailed explanations of events since some are too vague to be concise. I thought that the 1953 study of physiological effects to be a decent example of what I mean though other explanations of events don't need to be the same length to get the point across.
• Psychedlic research - intro is good for setting up how experiments at Spring Grove began to grow but consider ending intro with events surrounding end of study to summarize entire section.
  • preliminary - good setup on researcher's conception of lsd and subjects.
    • incomplete sentence on "double blind experiment with link this" - obviously complete it explaning the double blind method devised by researchers.
  • alcohol and lsd - solid example of what researchers sought to figure out with lsd in terms of use as a treatment for mental illness such as alcohol addiction, with explanation on thought process behind using lsd and judgment on alcoholics
    • how much influence did preliminary study have on this main study and subsequent studies? If there's a strong one like one of the first references they look back at for experimental design, make this more clear.
    • were mental breakdowns a necessary criterion for subjects involved with study? what then were the researchers looking for to qualify as needing LSD beyond having a substance dependence?
    • anymore details on what subjects did for 14 hour period? Were they continuously talking with therapists or allowed to do different activities? Constrained to a room in Cottage 13 or allowed to roam free?
    • awkward phrasing for results on harm to patient vs. abstinence. Also include any significant results from psychiatric tests/evaluations such as IQ after LSD dosing
  • expansion - interesting and convincing case study of Gloria on acceptance with death.
    • explain experiments and results of neurotics and heroin addicts - how did they compare to alcoholism in methodology and abstinence rates? Also, a sentence towards the end seems to say the same thing.
    • explain explicitly how having 33% of alcoholics become abstinence is considered a success - is 12% recovery the standard at the time?
    • the paragraphs on terminal illness can be merged/linked together better. Some parts conflict with each other such as 1966 vs. 1972 as start date of lsd as a therapeutic from terminal cancer patients
    • ending is weak and feels out of place - consider merging with how studies did end/were terminated.
• psychedelic psychotherapy - good detail better explaining how LSD is administered
  • feels more appropriate as a part of spring grove experiments rather than its own section
  • first sentence of the second paragraph seemingly conflicts with the content of the actual paragraph - clearly state how using the drug alone is not thought to be effective but coupled with therapy is effective.
• patient experiences - interesting detail about experiments from patient's perspective and is consistent with the positive interpretation of results by researchers. Seems like it belongs to preliminary experiments or alcoholism. Consider merging sections to relevant parts of spring grove experiments together.
• shortcomings - good perspective on some of the darker side effects of LSD experienced by patients during experiments. Feels like, in a similar manner to patient experiences, the section belongs to other parts of the experiments section and having them there would improve the depth of the experiments impact.
• Controversy and Resistance - good overview of counterarguments against psychedelic therapy. like previous two sections, could potentially be moved to consequences of each study or make it clear that this is ongoing criticism at the time of the experiments.
  • Make it clear in first paragraph that pharmaceuticals are preferred - awkwardly worded as is would like more information on war of drugs and if at all related perception of psychedelics in counter culture from the 1960s.
• termination of experiment - good overview of events leading to end
  • What was Panhke's role in design of studies? Was he involved with all the studies?
  • citation for state funding cut?
  • to clarify, did arsenal call of end of experiments nationwide or just in Maryland? Also, there's a edgewood arsenal human experiments article that should be linked to.
  • vague wording in last sentence - what is being medicalized that is deleterious
• legacy - good tie to present efforts with LSD. May be interesting to discuss its current cultural perception and also elaborate on brain activity studies done recently with LSD.
  • Was LSD unable to be acquired to due being illegal to obtain or? According to its history section on wikipedia, it was outlawed in 1968.

Overall good job on the article. Certainly an interesting read like anything regarding psychedelics. Let me know if you need clarification on any feedback I left. Hnguye68 (talk) 01:02, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Peer Review

I really liked how comprehensive your article is and the specific vignettes and examples you give! Very well researched!

An area to improve on would be the organization. I think the section "Psychedelic psychotherapy: Method and objective" can be moved before the history section, or merged with it, so that more scientific background can be given right at the start instead of suddenly being explained in the middle.

Much more wikilinks can be given so that readers can easily find out more about the specific terms used in the article.

It is great that you talked about the legacy and continuity and change in psychedelic research till today, but it would be interesting to also include a section on how the ethical implications of this study influenced the design of psychological/ psychiatric studies that followed, and examples of whether the ethical transgressions made at Spring Grove were repeated in future studies (my gut feeling is yes).

This is a really good job!

KaylaMa (talk) 16:06, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Overall this was a great article and something that I found really informative. In the preliminary experiments seciton, I think there is a citation that is missing that needs to be added back in. Also I didn't understand why it was not possible to introduce LSD in a double blind experiment.

In the Alcholoism and LSD section, how did the experimenters figure out if someone was eligible for the LSD study? jpunnoo1 (talk) 16:06, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

This was a really thorough article! The formatting when listing the previous experiments feels a bit awkward. Separate lines all starting with "In ..." seem to want to be bullet points. Maybe this would make it more aesthetically pleasing? I also wonder if there is any information about the public's opinion prior to 1970. You mention that the experiments weren't seen favorably while the war on drugs was going on but was the public aware of these experiments the prior 15 years and how did they feel about them? Zsmith7 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:46, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Hi! Great job on this article! I really enjoyed reading it! This is such an interesting topic. I like the way you divided up your sections, and I especially think it's great that you have a section that talks about controversy and resistance. The only thing is that I feel like it could have been elaborated more since the ethical issues surrounding it is so crucial. I also think you should talk about the legacy that it left or the impact that it made, and maybe even make a new section just for that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yennyyang (talk • contribs) 06:46, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

I really enjoyed reading this article. It was very well planned and researched and generally flowed very well too. I think the fact that you picked an already narrow topic and broke it into even smaller categories made for a very interesting and detailed article. I especially liked that you covered both the methodology of the experiment and the social/political effects it had. The only thing I would suggest is to work on the wording a bit in the Methods section to make it sound and flow like the rest of the article. Additionally, I think a follow up on how some of the patients did years after the study would be very interesting. Overall, fantastic job!! Hhowar12 (talk) 23:26, 8 May 2017 (UTC)