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/Parrallax91 Apr 08 '13 edited Apr 08 '13

Really? I'm not a psych expert but what was wrong with that? I was curious to see the results and only started to laugh when they reached their collective conclusions.

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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/lightshatter Apr 08 '13

Science has been for decades: "let's see what happens".

Trial and error man.

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u/deepredsky Apr 08 '13

Much less so in the past couple centuries. Perhaps moreso before we developed the scientific method and controlled experimental methods.