Emphasis Preaching Journal

In the early 1970s, a psychology professor at Stanford University named David L. Rosenhan gathered a painter, a graduate student, a pediatrician, a psychiatrist, a housewife, and three psychologists, and told them to check into different psychiatric hospitals under aliases, with the complaint that they had been hearing voices. Apart from their initial story, they were to tell the truth at all times and tell the staff at every opportunity that the voices were gone. They were hospitalized, on average, for 19 days, one for almost two months. No hospital ever saw through the ruse.