From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npoiv!alice!research!dmr Newsgroups: net.misc Title: Pretending to be Insane Article-I.D.: research.268 Posted: Thu Jul 15 23:11:53 1982 Received: Mon Jul 19 04:17:55 1982 Glushko is probably right about the citation for the mental-hospital study. It was certainly in Science, and it was indeed intended as a serious study. (Though, understandably, subsequent letters from the establishment attacked it as frivolous.) Otto misremembers what was for me the most memorable part of the article, the note-taking episode. What actually happened was that one of the participants was observed making notes. Later discovered in the symptomatology section of the nurse's own notes on the "patient" was the immortal phrase "Patient engages in writing behavior." Dennis Ritchie