Thoughts on the infamous 'Monster Study'

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Bill McMillan reacts to a piece of stammering research from the 1930s involving children that caused outrage, with many branding it unethical.

'The Monster Study' is an infamous experiment that happened in America in 1939, conducted by Dr. Wendell Johnson from the University of Iowa, who stammered. Johnson dedicated his life to finding a cure for it and came up with the theory that stammering "begins not in the child's mouth but in the parent's ear".

For his research, he approached an orphanage and selected 22 children to take part — ten of them stammered, and 12 didn't. He led the orphanage to believe that all of them were to receive therapy for stammering, which should have raised alarm bells, as some of those selected did not stammer. Apparently, it did not. None of the children were told what they would be doing or why.

Johnson's belief that stammering was simply a habit caused by parental concern didn't ring any alarms either — the orphans may never have known any parents. It is said he created the thesis to justify putting the study into practice. 

It rather beggars belief that intelligent, well-educated people could go along with this.

The experiment involved separating the children into two groups: one 'stuttering' and the other 'normal', ie non-stuttering. His intentions were to induce stammering in the non-stammering children. For this, over a four-month period, children in the 'normal' group were told that they stammered and must stop it, while the 'stuttering' group were told their speech was fine. The idea was that, once the label around their neck was removed, they would stop stammering. 

It rather beggars belief that intelligent, well-educated people could go along with this.

It is noticeable that Johnson himself did not seem to be heavily involved, leaving the study to be run by a graduate student, Mary Tudor, who was reportedly very strict with the children. One has to wonder — and this is pure speculation from me — was this because Johnson himself had a severe stammer, and feared the children might question why he wasn't 'cured'?

Johnson never published the results and it remained largely obscure until 2001, when the horror of what had been done was exposed to the wider public following an investigation by San Jose Mercury News reporter Jim Dyer.

I wish that were the end of it — but I cannot forget the children who were subjected to this. 

Some participants reported lasting negative effects including increased anxiety and reluctance to speak. I have only touched on this — there are many articles examining both the study and the ethics of the whole sorry mess. It certainly wasn't helpful to the children, though the University did eventually have to make substantial payouts.

The more you read, the more astonishing — and heartbreaking — it becomes.

There are countless posts from respectable bodies discussing this. The irony is that the University of Iowa was once considered the leading centre for stammering research. 

Remember: the children did not know they were part of an experiment. That, above all, is chilling.

The more you read, the more astonishing — and heartbreaking — it becomes. In my opinion, Wikipedia actually gives one of the clearest overall accounts, and there is a very good read on Achology.com titled Voices of Vulnerability: Dubious Insights from the Monster Study. 

Legacy

The methods used in 1939 would never be allowed today — one hopes — and there is much, much more written about this terrible study. If anything good came from it, it is that ethical standards in psychology were eventually redrafted — sadly, too late for some of those children.

According to Wikipedia, Mary Tudor "lamented in her letters to Johnson that she was unable to provide enough positive therapy to reverse the deleterious effects". I'm astonished that some people have attempted to defend them, and that Johnson's broader theory (that social reactions can influence stammering) has had some influence in speech pathology today.

Ultimately, what came to be known as 'The Monster Study' is an example of research that was ethically unacceptable and methodologically flawed. I came across one piece titled 'The Monster Study of 1939: Unravelling the Dark Legacy in Speech Pathology' — and it truly is a dark legacy. But it did contribute to discussions about how environment affects speech, so its main legacy today is in research ethics, not scientific insight.

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