Big brouhaha over the posting of Rorschach plates plus common responses to them on Wikipedia, the ethics of doing this, whether it ruins the scientific usefulness of the test, makes them meaningless, etc. You can read all about it in the New York Times at http://tinyurl.com/lblelt ("Has Wikipedia Created a Rorschach Cheat Sheet?"--Noam Cohen)
But in all the anguish over this issue, no one seems to have asked "What scientific usefulness?" Or "How can something that is already meaningless be made more so by public disclosure? The fact is that the Rorschach is not science but pseudoscience and please, don't tell me about the Exner system. Our clever former fellow TIPSter, Scott Lilienfeld and his colleagues settled this back in 2000. Their language was cautious, but the message was clear: this is not science but junk. But unfortunately, pseudoscience never dies, and so the Rorschach is with us still. And still causing more damage (e.g. in child custody cases) than I'd care to contemplate. But no one who thinks psychology is a science should care a fig whether its plates and responses are public or not. Stephen The Scientific Status of Projective Techniques Psychological Science in the Public Interest Volume 1, Issue 2, Date: November 2000, Pages: 27-66 Scott O. Lilienfeld, James M. Wood, Howard N. Garb Free at http://tinyurl.com/l4cud5 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: sbl...@ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Subscribe to discussion list (TIPS) for the teaching of psychology at http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/tips/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
