As we noted here nearly a year ago, the Rorschach Inkblot Test images have been made available on Wikipedia. This is not a big deal, since it’s what’s called a projective test, meaning that the images themselves are not important — it’s what you see in the images that can be interesting to a psychologist.
Yesterday, The New York Times noted the controversy, which has a new twist. A psychologist has posted the most common responses to each of the 10 cards in Wikipedia entry about the Rorschach Inkblot Test. This includes such astonishing revelations that most people see 2 humans in cards 2 and 3. Astonishing, I tell you.
Here’s why there’s a controversy, according to the article:
“The more test materials are promulgated widely, the more possibility there is to game it,” said Bruce L. Smith, a psychologist and president of the International Society of the Rorschach and Projective Methods, who has posted under the user name SPAdoc. He quickly added that he did not mean that a coached subject could fool the person giving the test into making the wrong diagnosis, but rather “render the results meaningless.”
To psychologists, to render the Rorschach test meaningless would be a particularly painful development because there has been so much research conducted — tens of thousands of papers, by Dr. Smith’s estimate — to try to link a patient’s responses to certain psychological conditions. Yes, new inkblots could be used, these advocates concede, but those blots would not have had the research — “the normative data,” in the language of researchers — that allows the answers to be put into a larger context.
And, more fundamentally, the psychologists object whenever diagnostic tools fall into the hands of amateurs who haven’t been trained to administer them. “Our ethics code that governs the behavior of psychologists talks about maintaining test security,” Steve J. Breckler, the executive director for science at the American Psychological Association, said in an interview. “We wouldn’t be in favor of putting the plates out where anyone can get hold of them.”
Smith’s point is potentially true, for an objective test, but has never been shown to be true for a projective psychological instrument. Indeed, the reason projective tests are of themselves a bit controversial is because there is no “right” answer. There are horribly wrong answers, of course, but telling someone the most common answers certainly isn’t going to help anyone take this particular psychological test.
Smith overestimates the empirical literature supporting the use of the Rorschach. Alone, it is rarely used as a standalone psychological instrument. Only in a robust psychological battery of tests is it still commonly used nowadays. Even with the use of the Exner scoring system, its psychological validity is still sometimes questioned (although Weiner’s 2001 review article suggests the Rorschach has similar validity scores to the MMPI). And PsycINFO, the database of all research literature in psychology, shows only 9,301 references to Rorschach (and that’s just references, it doesn’t mean there’s 9,301 actual studies about the Rorschach Inkblot Test).
Of course, nowadays, test publishers can rely on the more modern copyright laws to limit information about a test and its scoring mechanisms. But still, anyone interested in learning more about the Rorschach is free and welcomed to purchase Exner’s The Rorschach, Basic Foundations and Principles of Interpretation Volume 1, the volume that describes precisely how the Rorschach is scored in modern psychological testing. (You can also pick up Graham’s excellent book about how the MMPI-2 is scored and interpreted.) If the scoring books are freely available, I’m not sure how the profession can suggest they can “protect” the psychological instruments they rely upon. What good is such protection when a person can learn all they need to learn about the test from a book they find in a bookstore (or check out of their local university library)?
Which brings me back to the article — this controversy is largely much ado about nothing. People who want to find a way to “game” psychological tests have always had ways to do so. There have always been, for as long as I’ve been online, websites that discuss — in some depth and detail — various psychological instruments, how and what they measure, and ways to try to make a person “look good” on them. Wikipedia simply makes it a bit simpler to do so, but it certainly doesn’t mean the end of psychological testing. Nor does it mean the end of the validity of most people’s results who take this test, even if they’ve seen the Rorschach cards online.
Read the full article: Has Wikipedia Created a Rorschach Cheat Sheet? Analyze That
31 comments
Please, please, please provide the “answer books” to the MMPI and various SCID’s. Just for background study, of course.
“Just for background study, of course”: If you are in graduate school, of course you will have access to whatever you need to “study” these tests. However, only psychologists (and those psychiatrists who go through assessment training) are trained to use these tests–masters’ level therapists and social workers are not, and would be committing malpractice if they did so.
They are very complicated instruments, and literally they take years of study to learn how to evaluate (e.g., my MMPI class at Berkeley was a one-year course). They both have a multitude of scales and subscales, each of which was normed on very different populations, so some scales are appropriate for use with some people and not others. The tests themselves are only useful/valid for some populations, and for others, it would be unethical to administer them. The Rorschach was not developed as a personality test–it was developed to measure cognition (the way in which people process information), and it therefore is quite good at measuring organic brain disturbance and thought disorder. It became used as a personality projective by the early psychoanalysts.
There’s a lot of misinformation about these tests out there and even amongst mental health professionals. They are extremely useful in certain situations, but there are so many dimensions to each of them, and those dimensions interact in complex ways, so it’s not just a matter of finding out which sentences to say true or false to, or what story to tell on the Rorschach. They don’t work that way.
Unfortunately, because the Rorschach DOES have an empirically-based, objective system for scoring and interpretation, the test CAN become meaningless the instant it is given in a way that differs from the procedures that were used to gather the normative data.
Normative data were not gathered using research subjects who had previous exposure to the cards, never mind explanations of how the test works, lists of popular responses and their locations, and so forth. So while the Wikipedia article may not contain enough information to enable someone to game it, protocols certainly have been violated for any examinee who’s been to that site.
If you read the Wiki entry, you will see that there’s more information than we include in texts or lectures even for undergraduate psych majors. There’s a reason for that.
Posting that information was childish and irresponsible, and the entry should be removed. Just because there are other sites with similar information–the “everybody does it” defense–does not make it ok.
Although no fan of the Rorshach, the NYT stated:
“James Heilman, an emergency-room doctor from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, posted images of all 10 plates to the bottom of the article about the test, along with what research had found to be the most popular responses for each.”
The psychologist mentioned above (from my understanding) had recently registered on Wiki to counteract the actions of this physician. Whether or not one thinks the Rorschach is a valid or reliable psychological measure, uploading this information was unethical but was not the conduct of a psychologist.
Well, I saw a man falling out a window splattered on the ground, covered in blood and probably dead. I’d be interested to find out what others saw.
Virginia,
Citing your comment: “the “everybody does it” defense–does not make it ok.”…….
Were you referring to the administration of the Rorschach Test itself?
Maybe even a little subconsciously?
You sure?
How do you feel about that?
Sonia, this is what you see from the above displayed picture? I see Santa Claus, lifting his left leg and arm, his face not visible but the red hat on the top.
Katrin – It’s my dark side, the one that read too many James Herbert and Stephen King books as a teenager 🙂
My 14 year old son saw an upside down koala bear – we live in Australia. Yes, I do see Santa as well, but I saw the dead man first.
I do not agree with the “reveling of the test” thing because of a few reasons:
1st. I believe that the experienced professional should be able to identify when s.o. is lying or giving social desirable answers.
2nd. I doubt that there’s someone who’s willing to take the chance to be qualified, actually diagnosed, with phobia or other disorder just because of giving random (not own)answers.
3rd. I can laugh out loud to everyone who’s reling his oppinion about someone’s personality only over the Rorschach test results
4th. If you have worked with the blot method you should probably know that there’s much more to say about the “what you see” thing than just a “butterfly” for examle. Actually you should know that there’re more important and reliable things to notice when administrating Rorschach than just the “what you see” part.
Last. Lets take the Ayzenk’s EPQ for exaple – Everyone with IQ level average or above can determine the desirable answers or the nature of the questions but about that I can say just one thing: SO WHAT? :))))). Is there anyone who can argue about the reliability of the EPQ?
Virginia Wood has a point in comparing the normative data that the test was measured against, versus the population you’re testing. But then again, normative data isn’t very normative to begin with — it is a snapshot of data at a very specific place in time and society. Unless the data is updated regularly (which it isn’t for the Exner system), nobody can tell you whether that data is still “normative” one or two or three decades later. Society changes; people change; what they see in inkblots is also likely to change.
Nonetheless, I haven’t been able to find a single published study showing that by viewing a projective test’s stimuli, you “invalidate” the test’s findings or make them “worthless” (as someone in the article claimed). Perhaps the test results are altered, perhaps not.
But if psychologists were really concerned about a test’s “security” or integrity, they wouldn’t allow or publish freely-available books that has all of the same information in it (well, actually, a whole lot more). Anyone can read. And while not everybody may understand everything these kinds of books contain, I suspect most people would get the gist of how the Rorschach works after reading Exner’s book.
It does little good to restrict the sales of the tests themselves if everything you need to know about the test is available elsewhere (whether it be Wikipedia or the book publisher).
This controversy has been ongoing for quite a long period of time, with emotions on both sides rising steadily. I’d like to offer my professional thoughts on the subject matter, without raising a hissy-fit.
For one, if everyone wants to look at the cards and try and “cheat” the test or the evaluation, then go for it. Be aware that you won’t succeed. There are ways for psychologists to assess the degree of motivation, determination, and honesty during the course of the evaluation without relying on the assessment instruments themselves to provide that information. As Dr. Grohol pointed out, the Rorschach is not normally administered by itself (nor should it ever be), but rather is part of an in-depth assessment battery. If you are going to try to “cheat” the system, then you are going to have to beat all the assessment instruments that are being given to you. Without knowing what instruments one person is going to receive, and with all the instruments that are available to psychologists, it’s nearly impossible for any one person to “study and prepare” for an evaluation. Additionally, if I feel someone is giving me “studied” responses, I’m just going to give them another instrument to double check. Psychologists don’t interpret, draw conclusions, and/or make recommendations based on one instrument, rather a collaboration of data from all administered instruments. Likewise, if 6 instruments say you are depressed and the Rorschach says you are not (because, for example, you provided “studied” responses in an attempt to “cheat”), do you think the psychologist is going to say, “Well, the Rorschach says you are fine, so you must be fine”? No, that psychologist will attempt to explain the inconsistency, which may, for example, along with other data, suggest that the person may have answered in a “not so honest manner”. So, how does knowing the ordinary responses help you? [Hint: it doesn’t, and may actually hurt you].
A second note, minor as it may be, but appears in multiple writings online, is the issue of copyright. A lot of people, and I mean a lot, argue that since Hermann Rorschach is dead, there is no longer a copyright on the cards. The Rorschach IS copyrighted. According to my cards, Verlag Hans Huber AG, Bern Switzerland maintains copyright and trademark of the Rorschach, with the copyright last being renewed in 1994 (and not likely up for renewal for another few years). The cards are also distributed by Western Psychological Services, which I would imagine, has some opinion in the release of the cards. So posting the cards online for anyone to view is setting oneself up for a massive lawsuit.
Lastly, and more importantly, particularly as it applies to the psychology community and the general public, is the issue of violating the American Psychological Association’s Ethics Code. A psychologist who intentionally posts the cards and makes them readily available for anyone to see, is basically making a statement about their views of ethics and concern for the general well-being of the public. You are not likely to be viewed favorably by your colleagues and your ability to practice in an ethical manner is forever questioned. That cannot be good for business.
If there was any doubt about the original plates not being within copyright any more, they would not be allowed to remain on Wikipedia, as Wikipedia does not host copyrighted images. Period.
Multiple references make note of the copyright issue:
Dr. Rorschach’s original inkblots are in the public domain. He first printed them in 1921 as a monograph, Psychodiagnostik. Since he died in 1922, and the copyright law at that time (The Copyright Act of 1909) provided for copyrights lasting for a maximum term (assuming all renewals were properly taken) of 56 years, Dr. Rorschach’s materials are well in the public domain.
Copyright is *not* forever, even if you “renew” it.
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Got it, Veronica Mac.
Patients are idiots. Got it. 🙂
I think a lot of the ‘professionals’ here, minus Sonia, (LOL) have paranoid disorder when they
focus on the cheating thing.
I doubt that most patients have cheating on their mind. It never even
to me.
I also know that the more intelligent a person is, the higher the likelihood he will score higher on the psychopathic scale on the MMPI.
Like, a ‘normal’ person has never felt ‘suicidal’!
PS: maybe I should also add that I hate Christmas, so Santa is not a welcome figure.
Katrin,
You are correct in that most patients/clients do not have “cheating on their mind”. For most people, they would never know if or when they would ever be given the Rorschach, if any psychological instrument at all.
Those individuals who are apt at trying to “cheat the system” are individuals who, for example, are involved in child custody cases in which a psychological evaluation is not uncommon. There are a number of websites that exist solely for the purpose of helping individuals in different types of evaluations for any number of purposes in the hope that sharing this “secret information” (and Dr. Grohol is absolutely correct – you can buy any number of books with ease that contain prints of the cards along with interpretation data) will help them look “normal”, “sane”, or whatever optimistic word you want to use.
However, people fail to recognize that the Rorschach (or any other psychological instrument) by itself is pretty useless. It needs to be given in the context of a battery of tests, with the results integrated with a variety of other sources.
Yes, the Rorschach is a projective test, and as was stated by Dr. Wood, it is a fairly well normed test as far as projective tests go (and even to some degree, objective tests). There are no “right” or “wrong” responses on the Rorschach, nor are there any “horribly wrong answers”, thus I do not understand why people would bother trying to memorize “common” responses. If you truly understand the scoring of the Rorschach, “common” responses will only take you so far.
While sharing of projective test data may not hurt the field, I fail to see how it can actually help any individual who wanted to cheat or game the system. In fact, I see it likely backfiring on them more than helping them. I also do not think people are going to be running around with print outs of the cards asking their friends what they see (the “amateur” argument).
However, per the APA Ethics Code, “[P]sychologists make reasonable efforts to maintain the integrity and security of test materials and other assessment techniques consistent with law and contractual obligations, and in a manner that permits adherence to this Ethics Code.” Posting of the cards online (and possibly even part of the cards) is a direct violation of this code.
LOL at Katrin.
There is nothing more fascinating than seeing, not what psychologists and psychiatrists disagree upon, but HOW they disagree upon it.
Thank you, Dr. Wayne, for your nice and informative comment. (and I don’t think you are ‘cheating’, I think you are quite sane.)
Kidding not!
I missed your response yesterday.
Katrin
As a psychologist who regularly uses the Rorschach as part of my battery of tests for the very many psychological assessments I conduct for court, I have been engaged in extensive discussion on the topic at
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/saskatchewan/story/2009/07/31/rorschach-test.html
Others have already posted a number of valid points so I will not repeat them. But I will stress one critical issue that I did not see when perusing this site:
Namely, the Exner system relies heavily on RATIOS/PROPORTIONS of certain types of responses. With more and more information added to wiki, anybody can easily “fake” a number of responses which, while not enough to make someone’s profile look entirely different from what it should be, it can significantly affect his/her profile.
Since one cannot say for sure whether that person had been exposed to the wiki page, one should not infer that the respondent’s answers necessarily reflect such exposure, even if they likely do. So what should a psychologist do if the person’s history, presentation and results from other parts of the test battery were highly inconsistent with their Rorschach profile?
Again, wiki contains enough information for someone to say things that would create too many inconsistencies WITHIN their profile. Proper testing and report writing should not contain such inconsistencies. And it is important to note that the courts give far more credence to standardized Rorschach results as opposed to a psychologist’s idiosyncratic interpretation (which I doubt any court would respect in this day and age). So what should a psychologist do in this case?
He/she could either throw out the Rorschach results or try very hard to somehow interpret them in a way that makes them consistent with the rest of the data. The former option is why many of us are concerned about Heilman’s actions. The latter option is why many people criticize projective techniques as being highly subjective and susceptible to the psychologist’s own conscious or unconscious decisions, rather than a standardized scoring system such as the Exner Comprehensive System.
With all due respect Mr. Grohol, have you ever conducted a proper psychological assessment? In Canada we do not have the PsyD designation (yet), so I am not certain what it allows one to do. Are you permitted by your sanctioning College to conduct tests such as the Rorschach? Some of your comments suggest that you do not understand the nature of the test.
PS
If the PsyD in the US affords you the title of “Dr.” then my apologies. I should address you properly, Dr. Grohol. As mentioned previously, we do not have the PsyD system in Canada and, although I am aware of it, I really do not know the intricacies of the designation. But I should err on the side of caution and respect and address you as Dr. Grohol.
These tests are a total matter of opinion and not fact at all!!Every individual and situation is so incredibly different that nobody can just label a person.I think we should get rid of these pathetic pieces of paper and get a psychologists good listening skills and intelligence to help a person.
For goodness sake when will psychiatry and psychology learn that we don’t have to label people just because they go though bad phases. You are so not helping anybody.All you are doing is increasing their misery!!If you can physically prove that there is permanently something wrong with someones brain then I will support these tests. However for hundreds of years no scan,or chemical imbalance test can proof ANYTHING . Please think for yourselves and stop making peoples lives worse!!
I’m not overly concerned about individuals who wish to “cheat” on a Rorschach test. As has been said before, if someone wants to cheat on a test, they will find a way to access the plates and common responses. Wikipedia simply makes this process easier, since it is literally the first result given in a Google search of “Rorschach test.”
I’m more concerned about those individuals who -don’t- wish to cheat on the Rorschach test, but who are simply inquisitive people who will read about the test, not realizing they are robbing themselves of the opportunity to have a pure assessment done, one that is free of contamination from priming. By priming, I mean that once you are told what to see in these ambiguous stimuli, you can’t help but see that particular shape. (And they really are ambiguous. They are just formless ink blots. People simply have a tendency to “find” shapes of animals, people, and objects in these ink blots, even though these things aren’t really there.)
To give an example of this priming, look at inkblot #6 (which is now readily available on Wikipedia). The common responses for this are “animal hide, skin, rug.” Looking at the plate, you can easily see the animal hide/skin/rug, right? What if I told you that I see a vagina (which is another “common” response that isn’t overtly listed on the Wikipedia entry)? Can you see it? I’m betting most people can see it now that I’ve pointed it out. And I’m sure some people already saw it before I mentioned it. But my concern is for those people who didn’t? Now that I’ve mentioned it, every time they look at this card, they’ll likely see a vagina instead of or in addition to the animal hide/skin/rug. And now that the common answers have been provided for all the ink blots, people who have visited the Wikipedia entry will now likely see the common responses in the ink blots, since they’ve been told (primed) what to see, even though they may have seen something entirely different! “Common” responses does not mean that everyone sees the same thing. But now people who may have given different answers may have their potentially unique or unusual responses squelched because of this priming. And if people, aware now of the priming effect, try to compensate for it by forcing themselves to find something else within the ink blots, that is simply screwing up the test in the opposite direction.
Thus, I think it’s a shame that the inkblots and their common responses have been posted. It isn’t a matter of cheating or money or prestige. It’s simply the fact that the test itself is predicated on people never having seen these ambiguous stimuli before and being able to share their in-the-moment responses to seeing these ink blots for the first time, so that their counselors and therapists can get a better sense of their clients and provide better counseling for them. But now these ink blots are no longer ambiguous to the people who have been primed, and the test is worthless as an instrument for these people.
Good post, John, and some excellent comments by the other psychologists. I’ve taught Rorschach and have administered and interpreted a few hundred Rorschachs within the context of more comprehensive batteries.
This is the only decent article I’ve read on this subject and the only comment section that wasn’t a boatload of pure stupid (you can see why I blog anonymously). Anyway, good work and thanks.
Great comment, Andrew Seguel ! Katrin
Three issues. First, the easy availability of the test and the suggested answers would seem to introduce error into the results, i.e., what someone says they see is now a product of what they actually see and what they believe they are supposed to see. Second, a doctor/physician made comments about the practice of psychology to the media after he posted the test information. Doesn’t sound like the behaviour of a professional does it? Third, just because it is possible to do something, does not mean that someone should. It is possible in many cases to determine which group of patients is getting the real drug versus placebo. This doctor would object to patients in his next drug study knowing if they are getting the real drug or placebo, wouldn’t he?
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Dr. James Heilman of Moose Jaw, Canada contributes as an “expert” providing medical expertise and overight on various medical articles on Wikipedia under the pseudonym “Doc James”. Whether or not the Rorschach inkblots had clinical validity is irrelevant it wasn’t for this vainglorious retard to decide, he did for attention nothing more. The dickhead got his 15 minutes of fame. N.Y. Times, Discover Magazine, Psychology Today etc. It’s amazing an ignorant ****ole who can’t spell, or write and has a less than stellar reputation as a doctor can generate so much press for himself. I personally think he is a misathropic d*ckhead. (Could be duckhead, based upon ones subjective experience)
One of this articles is the Wikipedia article on anorexia nervosa, a severe a chronic psychiatric disorder with the highest mortality rate.
This is the link to the Wikipedia anorexia nervosa article for which Dr. James Heilman gave his tacit approval as he did nothing to correct it. Included is this passage in the “Treatment” section which refers to cognitive behavioral therapy, then references a study on cognitive remediation therapy;
“A pilot study into the effectiveness on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy reduced perfectionism and rigidity in 17 out of 19 participants[54] although further evaluation is needed.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anorexia_nervosa&oldid=353572548
This is the subsequent version written by a New Yorker with a ninth grade education;
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anorexia_nervosa&oldid=356106546
This is the link to the Wikipedia anorexia nervosa Talk page, where he displays his implicit desire to include the image of an anorexia nervosa victim, “not nude, but at least with arms and rib cage visible” (sic);
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Anorexia_nervosa
This is the link to the Wikipedia page on the thyroid gland in which the thyroid was listed as being part of the “endocinal jubachina system”, which was on the page for two years;
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thyroid&oldid=356053528
If people didn’t actually read these articles it would be pretty funny, but they do, and the rank disinformation they contain can be harmful;
J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2009 Jul-Aug;16(4):471-9. Epub 2009 Apr 23.
Seeking health information online: does Wikipedia matter?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19390105
A few points to ponder:
The current publisher of the inkblots controls the sale to qualified individuals. This is new sets only. They have no control or rights to prohibit secondary sales (auctions, yard sales, or even smurfing (for really really bad psychologists). There is no protective copyright, however their leg al team may argue the point against duplication of the blots…
They are on display in my office as art. I bought them in a flea market. Theybare not properly oriented and are grouped together. I do not comment on my patients’ interpretations.
Psychiatrists don’t seem to mind my art, psychologists(particularly newbies) freak out when they see them. I have even gotten an angry letter asking me to take them down and destroy them…