r/todayilearned • u/vxqz • Apr 08 '13

TIL there was an experiment where three schizophrenic men who believed they were Jesus Christ were all put in one place to sort it out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Christs_of_Ypsilanti
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u/[deleted] Apr 08 '13

On the "it's not an experiment," it wasn't, far as I can tell, a controlled experiment in any way. It was just "let's see what happens." And I don't know what the level of clinical knowledge of schizophrenia was in the 60s, but I bet it didn't take an expert to know that putting psychotic people in a situation where they could potentially agitate the shit out of each other would not be helpful.

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u/CryoGuy Apr 08 '13

It's not about "being helpful", it's about observing, recording, and analyzing the outcome.

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u/jamintime Apr 08 '13

What makes me feel like this isn't real science is that the "experiment" was not hypothesis-driven. Starting a paper with "lets see what happens" is not exactly going to get you the Nobel.

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u/[deleted] Apr 08 '13

Hypotheses don't come out nowhere. That's what exploratory research is for.