Nerdcore

Weil die zehn Original Rorschach-Testbilder nicht mehr dem Copyright unterliegen, hat ein Psychologe alle zehn Bilder bei Wikipedia hochgelade – komplett mit den prominentesten Antworten darauf. Was den klassischen Rorschach-Test praktisch wertlos macht für die Psychologie. 90 Jahre Wissenschaft, alles für’n Arsch und alles nur wegen dieses verdammten Internets.

Das da oben sollen übrigens zwei tanzende Menschen sein, ich sehe aber vor allem Rorschachs Maske. War klar, ne? Und was sieht wohl ein Hardcore-Watchmen-Fan beim Psychologen? Watchmen ruined the Rorschach-Test?

What had been a simmering dispute over the reproduction of a single plate reached new heights in June when 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.

“I just wanted to raise the bar — whether one should keep a single image on Wikipedia seemed absurd to me, so I put all 10 up,” Dr. Heilman said in an interview. “The debate has exploded from there.”

Psychologists have registered with Wikipedia to argue that the site is jeopardizing one of the oldest continuously used psychological assessment tests.

While the plates have appeared on other Web sites, it was not until they showed up on the popular Wikipedia site that psychologists became concerned.

“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.

Has Wikipedia Created a Rorschach Cheat Sheet? (via meFi)