Futility Closet - 202-The Rosenhan Experiment

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from optimized shoelaces to a triple watershed. This is episode 202. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In the 1970s, psychologist David Rosenhan sent healthy volunteers to 12 psychiatric hospitals where they claimed to be hearing voices. Once they were admitted, they behaved normally, but the hospitals diagnosed all of them as seriously mentally ill.

Starting point is 00:00:40 In today's show, we'll describe the Rosenhan experiment, which challenged the validity of psychiatric diagnosis and set off a furor in the field. We'll also spot hawks at Wimbledon and puzzle over a finicky payment processor. In the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, some critics began to feel that psychiatric hospitals had become prisons for eccentric people and that the labels that were applied to them there might not be reliable. One of those critics was David Rosenhan, a professor of psychology and law at Stanford University. He worried that normality was rather shakily defined and that psychiatrists weren't judging it consistently. He wrote, it is commonplace, for example, to read about murder trials wherein eminent

Starting point is 00:01:24 psychiatrists for the defense are contradicted by equally eminent psychiatrists for the prosecution He wrote, To study that question, he set up an unusual experiment. He put together a group of eight healthy people, whom he called pseudopatients. They included a psychology grad student, three psychologists, including himself, a pediatrician, a psychiatrist, a painter, and a housewife. Three were women and five were men. Then, over the course of several years, these eight pseudopatients presented themselves to a total of 12 psychiatric hospitals in five states on the east and west coasts. They said that they'd been hearing voices saying the words empty, hollow, and thud. Rosenhan said he chose those words because they seemed to reflect existential concerns about the

Starting point is 00:02:19 meaninglessness of life, as if the hallucinating person were saying, my life is empty and hollow. But in fact, they don't actually correspond to any specific diagnosis. All the pseudo-patients gave false names and professions, but otherwise they told the truth. And on the basis of that one symptom, all of them were admitted to their hospitals. One hospital assigned a diagnosis of manic depressive psychosis and the other 11, schizophrenia. Once they were inside, they stopped reporting the hallucinations. They spoke to the other patients and to staff members as they normally would to anyone. When the staff asked

Starting point is 00:02:49 them how they were feeling, they said they were fine and were no longer experiencing symptoms. Each of them kept a written record of their interactions on the ward. At first, they did that in secret, but it became clear that the staff had no objection and saw it as evidence of compulsive note-taking. And the other patients, interestingly, often guessed that they were journalists or researchers. The nursing reports from this time say that the pseudopatients were friendly, cooperative, and exhibited no abnormal indications. But Rosenhan says the staff consistently viewed them through the lens of their diagnoses. When one pseudopatient who was a professional painter sat down one day and began to paint,

Starting point is 00:03:22 the staff called this painting behavior. When a group of patients assembled outside the cafeteria waiting for a meal to be served, one psychiatrist said they were exhibiting an oral acquisitive syndrome. Generally, the suit of patients said they felt powerless and depersonalized. On average, they spent 6.8 minutes per day interacting with professional staff such as psychiatrists, and they were administered a total of 2,100 pills, primarily tranquilizers, which they hid in their cheeks and flushed down the toilet. In the end, none of them were detected. That is, no one suspected that they were normal people who

Starting point is 00:03:53 were just faking their symptoms. One was discharged with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, the others with schizophrenia in remission. Altogether, their hospital stays ranged from 7 to 52 days, with an average stay of 19 days. The staff of a research and teaching hospital heard of these findings and said that they doubted they would make the same mistake. Rosenhan said he'd send one or more pseudo-patients to that hospital over the following three months to see whether the staff could detect them. Over those three months, the hospital admitted 193 patients.

Starting point is 00:04:21 Of those, 41 were judged with high confidence by at least one staff member to be pseudopatients. 23 were considered suspect by at least one psychiatrist, and 19 were suspected by one psychiatrist and one other staff member. In fact, as you may have guessed, Rosenhan had sent none at all. Rosenhan wrote up these results in an article he called On Being Sane in Insane Places, and it was published in the journal Science in January 1973. He wrote, it is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals. The hospital itself imposes a special environment in which the meanings of behavior can easily be misunderstood. In effect, he claimed that his first experiment had shown that psychiatric hospitals can mistake sane people for insane ones, and the second experiment had shown that they can mistake insane people for sane ones. He wrote, any diagnostic process that

Starting point is 00:05:09 lends itself so readily to massive errors of this sort cannot be a very reliable one. One particular problem, he said, is what he called the stickiness of the diagnostic label. Once you're labeled schizophrenic, that becomes the central fact about you, and everything you do is seen in that light. For example, when one of the pseudo-patients approached a doctor and said, pardon me, Dr. Blank, could you tell me when I am eligible for grounds privileges? The doctor just said, good morning, Dave, how are you today? And walked on. When a nurse found a pseudo-patient pacing the corridor, she said, nervous, Mr. X? He said, no, bored. She hadn't seemed to realize that there was nothing to do. In one hospital where Rosenhan himself was a pseudo-patient, he saw a nurse adjust her bra in a ward full of men, not to be

Starting point is 00:05:49 provocative, but he said, because she didn't notice us. She didn't seem to regard the people around her as fully human. And if a patient had an outburst because he was mistreated by an attendant, a nurse would rarely ask what had happened. She assumed that the patient's behavior was a sign of his pathology. Rosenhan wrote, never were the staff found to assume that one of themselves or the structure of the hospital had anything to do with the patient's behavior. And yet, as I mentioned, the other patients often suspected that the pseudo patients were healthy. During the first three hospitalizations, 35 out of 118 patients on the admissions ward said, you're not crazy, you're a journalist or a professor, you're checking up on the hospital.

Starting point is 00:06:29 Rosenhan wrote, the fact that the patients often recognize normality when the staff did not raises important questions. Rosenhan acknowledged that in general, physicians prefer to make the mistake of judging a healthy person to be sick than a sick person to be healthy. He wrote, better to err on the side of caution to suspect illness even among the healthy. But he says that psychiatric diagnoses are different because they carry stigma and that stigma is hard to shed. And he told the New York Times, the psychiatric diagnoses, once they're made, are rarely changed. He said, a diagnosis of cancer that has been found in error is a cause of celebration, but psychiatric diagnoses are rarely found in error. The label sticks. And even beyond that, we're all anxious or depressed or act out or behave strangely from

Starting point is 00:07:05 time to time. Rosenhan says maybe it would be best if mental health professionals focused on specific problems and behaviors rather than applying labels that are hard to shed and that depersonalize and dehumanize people. As you might imagine, the article brought an outraged response from the psychiatric community. They began with a title on being sane in insane places. Sanity and insanity are legal terms, they said, not medical ones. Generally, being sane means being able to tell right from wrong, so it's not clear what Rosenhan thought he was studying. The psychiatrists argued that it wasn't their job to look for hoaxers.

Starting point is 00:07:36 In any field of medicine, a patient could show up claiming fake symptoms and get an unnecessary treatment. Even if the doctor is tricked, that doesn't mean the diagnostic methods are invalid. One wrote, If I were to drink a quart of blood and, concealing what I had done, come to the emergency room of any hospital vomiting blood, the behavior of the staff would be quite predictable. If they labeled and treated me as having a bleeding peptic ulcer, I doubt that I could argue convincingly that medical science does not know how to diagnose that condition. On top of this, it's extremely rare for healthy people to submit themselves to psychiatric hospitals, and turning one away could incur legal liability, so it's not surprising that the hospitals took them seriously. At the same time, many critics

Starting point is 00:08:13 pointed out that the admitting staff at these hospitals don't seem to have followed the normal procedure. It seems strange that so many pseudopatients could have been admitted as inpatients on the strength of a single subjective symptom, especially if, as Rosenhan said, the words empty, hollow, and thud were not associated with schizophrenia in any psychiatry textbook. No one seems to have considered that the pseudopatients might be malingering, and no one did any organic workups. Investigating auditory hallucinations can require lumbar punctures, skull x-rays, and brain scans, and it's not clear that Rosenhan had considered that or warned his volunteers of at-risk. Once the pseudopatients were inside, Rosenhan had written that they would

Starting point is 00:08:49 have to get out by their own devices, essentially by convincing the staff that they were sane. But that's not what they did. They stayed passively in the ward, and they mentioned that their symptoms had stopped only if someone asked them about it. The critics pointed out that that's not really normal behavior. A normal person would have gone to the desk and said, Hi, I lied to get in here and I'd like to go home now, please. Rosenhan seemed to assume that behaving normally in a psych ward would be noticeable, but it's not. A psych ward is designed in part to allay distress, and a psychiatric patient doesn't act floridly crazy all the time. That's a stereotype.

Starting point is 00:09:19 Yeah, I mean, that's a good point, right? Even if you do have a mental illness, you're not acting symptomatic 24 hours a day necessarily. The symptoms can wax and wane. So if you just sit there and you don't even mention that your symptoms have abated unless someone asks, that's not going to make you stand out. Because they don't know. You could still be having the hallucinations, for example. Yeah. The critics also said that Rosenhan seemed to be making a lot of guesses about the thoughts and motives of the staff without any evidence. Rosenhan himself had been admitted to several

Starting point is 00:09:48 hospitals under the name David Lurie. He wrote, I can still recall my own impulse to go up to the nurses and say, you think I'm David Lurie. Well, I'm not. I'm David Rosenhan, professor of psychology. It was only my anticipation of their likely response. Do you often think you're a professor of psychology? It stopped me doing it. But the critics asked, how did he know he was right about that? How could he know that that's how they'd respond? Finally, many critics pointed out that the patients had been released from the hospital with a diagnosis of schizophrenia in remission, meaning that the staff thought they weren't psychotic, which they weren't.

Starting point is 00:10:19 That's not a failure. The Yale psychiatrist Paul Fleischman wrote, Rosenhan's study demonstrates that despite false historical data and the set of the hospital environment, 12 non-psychotics were observed by the psychiatrist to be non-psychotic, a record of 100% accuracy. Although they were still given a diagnosis. Yeah, and it's saying it's in remission. Presuming that they had been psychotic. Which I think would be Rosenhan's point, that you're still carrying that label out of the hospital.

Starting point is 00:10:43 Yeah. Even if they say it's in remission, you're still schizophrenic. Yeah. One of the most vociferous critics of Rosenhan's study was Robert Spitzer, who's been called the father of modern psychiatry. He called the experiment pseudoscience masquerading as science. Spitzer argued that the fact that so many of the pseudopatients were given the same diagnosis when they were admitted

Starting point is 00:10:59 shows the reliability of the diagnosis, and that the diagnosis of schizophrenia in remission when they were released shows that the staff had noticed that the symptoms had abated. The diagnosis of in remission was rarely given at that time. Rosenhan did have some defenders. After the flurry of objections in science, the Cornell psychologist Ulrich Nieser wrote in to thank him for pointing out that psychiatric diagnoses, unlike those in other branches of medicine, are rarely reversed. He wrote, internists, neurologists, and pediatricians sometimes have to admit errors, but a psychiatrist never does. It is not he who is remiss, but the schizophrenia which is in remission.

Starting point is 00:11:32 A medical diagnosis is much like a hypothesis in science. It should lead to further predictions and be subject to disconfirmation. In science, hypotheses that cannot be disproved by any conceivable evidence are not hypotheses at all. Should we not conclude that diagnoses which cannot be disproved are equally meaningless? By showing that the diagnosis of schizophrenia is essentially irreversible, no matter how the patient subsequently behaves, Rosenhan has dealt the scientific pretensions of psychiatry a serious blow. Whatever we think of Rosenhan's study, it took place 45 years ago, and the field of psychiatry has changed enormously since then. The problems that Rosenhan pointed out began to decline as fewer people were admitted to psychiatric hospitals, particularly through the increased use of antipsychotic medications that

Starting point is 00:12:12 were discovered in the 1950s. Those reduced symptoms enough that patients can live outside the hospital and lead relatively normal lives. And there's been a rise in community mental health facilities, crisis intervention centers, and behavior therapies that avoid labels and focus on specific problems and behaviors. If one of Rosenhan's pseudo-patients appeared at an emergency room today, they'd examine him and might do some lab tests, and maybe consult a psychiatrist if that workup didn't present anything remarkable. And even the psychiatrist would look into the patient's background and talk to previous providers and others who might be able to shed some light on the case.

Starting point is 00:12:44 Writing in the Washington Post, Nathaniel Morris of the Stanford University School of Medicine said, to be hospitalized, patients need to have symptoms of a psychiatric disorder, such as hearing voices, suffering from depression, and feeling suicidal, that are so profound as to cause safety concerns or significant impairments in daily living, such as dysfunction at work or home. Also, Rosenhan's study made no mention of insurance or the costs of care. Today, insurance won't pay for a patient to remain in a hospital if they don't have symptoms. If anything, getting hospital care today may be too hard. One small study in 2001 followed seven people with well-documented histories of schizophrenia

Starting point is 00:13:17 who presented themselves to mental health intake offices when they were actually in crisis. Six of those seven were denied treatment, often because of a lack of resources. Rosenhan's study had a profound impact on popular perceptions of psychiatry when it first appeared in 1973, and it became one of the most widely cited articles in psychological journals. But its influence seems to be waning. In the late 1980s, it was mentioned in 80% of introductory psychology textbooks, but last year it appeared in only 45%. Rosenhan died in 2012, so we don't know what he'd make of all this, but in 1993, 20 years after his study, he still seemed to have doubts. He said, I don't have any data, but my impression is that no, the nature of psychiatric hospitals has not changed much, and the issues that were brought up by that paper have been dealt with to some extent,

Starting point is 00:13:59 but it is not my view that things have changed greatly. We just wouldn't be able to commit to the amount of time that the show takes to make if it weren't for the donations and pledges we get. If you'd like to contribute to our celebration of the quirky and the curious, you can find a donate button in the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com. Or if you'd like to support us in a more ongoing way, you can join our Patreon campaign, where you'll also get access to outtakes, extra information and discussion on some of the stories, where you'll also get access to outtakes, extra information and discussion on some of the stories, more lateral thinking puzzles, and updates on what Sasha, the Futility Closet feline, has been doing lately. You can check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the link at the website. And thanks again to everyone who is a part of Futility Closet. of Futility Closet.

Starting point is 00:15:07 Duncan Reynolds wrote, Dear Sasha, Your team's conversation about London's foxes and pigeons in episode 195 reminded me that there are now parrots living wild in London, having escaped from aviaries or, according to some theories,

Starting point is 00:15:19 from film sets or rock stars, and set up a stable breeding population sometime last century. And Duncan suggested that Sasha could pass this along to us if she thought it might be of interest. Sasha does generally have a rather high interest in birds, especially somewhat smaller ones like parakeets, which it turns out are the kind of parrots now living feraly in the UK. Wow.

Starting point is 00:15:41 These British feral parakeets are specifically ring-necked or rose-ringed parakeets, which are a non-migratory species that is native to southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and the ones in Britain are thought to be from the foothills of the Himalayas around Pakistan. This parakeet population had been concentrated primarily in the suburban areas of London and nearby Kent, but they are doing so well that they are now being seen in other parts of Britain too, and as far north as Inverness, Scotland. As Duncan noted, there are several theories on how these parakeets came to be living fairly in the London area in the first place. Some say that Jimi Hendrix deliberately released a breeding

Starting point is 00:16:22 pair to inject more color into the London streets in the 1960s. Others think that the birds escaped from the film set of The African Queen in 1951, or from the London Zoo when it was damaged during the Blitz in World War II, or from a cargo ship that capsized near London. Experts think that the more boring but likely explanation is just that the birds are popular as pets, and some either escaped or were released from private homes. the more boring but likely explanation is just that the birds are popular as pets, and some either escaped or were released from private homes. And more than one theory could be right, as the biodiversity of the wild parakeet population

Starting point is 00:16:54 suggests that the birds have escaped from captivity more than once. Wild ring-necked parakeets were actually spotted in Britain back in the late 1800s, but they apparently didn't survive. It's thought that possibly the now warmer winters due to climate change, combined with the increasing numbers of people who feed birds, has allowed this new population to not just survive, but to flourish. Yeah, I was going to say, I wouldn't have thought that London's climate would be the best for parakeets, but I guess if these might be a variety that normally lives in

Starting point is 00:17:23 mountainous foothills, maybe that's not too far off. Yeah. And with the winters being a little warmer than they used to be, they're thinking that that helps them out a lot. And this sounds funny to say about pretty little birds, but these parakeets are actually considered to be one of the most successful invasive species in the world right now. As is common when a non-native species moves into an area, there are concerns about the parakeet's negative effects on native bird species, as well as concerns about agriculture, especially orchards and vineyards. For example, a few years ago, parakeets ate about one-third of the harvest at a vineyard southwest of London. That's a lot.

Starting point is 00:17:58 These parakeets have no natural predators in the UK and have been recorded to live as long as 34 years. have no natural predators in the UK and have been recorded to live as long as 34 years. Hazel Jackson, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Kent who studies the bird's expansion, says that the ring-necked parakeet is currently the fastest growing bird species in the UK. She actually wrote an article for CNN entitled, Move Aside Pigeons, Wild Parakeets Poised for World Domination. And Jackson notes that there are now independently established breeding populations of wild parakeets in at least 65 cities in Europe, including in Belgium, Spain, Germany, Turkey, and the Netherlands. Overall, wild parakeets are now found in more than 30 countries across five continents, including near the St. Lawrence

Starting point is 00:18:43 River Basin in Canada, and a large population in Bakersfield, California that is believed to stem from an aviary that was destroyed in a storm in 1977. Many of these populations appear to be well-established and increasing, leading to Jackson's statement that parakeets are on a trajectory to global domination. And I will note that Sasha stands ready to defend our yard should they decide to spread here, especially if they will fight fair and stay on the ground. So while parakeets might represent a future problem, pigeons are currently the nuisance birds for many cities,

Starting point is 00:19:16 though as we discussed in episode 195, sometimes the answer for that is another bird. Christian Clarkson tweeted at us, On bird control, the All England Tennis Club keep pigeons away from Wimbledon with a resident hawk. He's called Rufus. And Rufus the hawk has been the professional Wimbledon pigeon frightener since 2007, taking over at that time from Hamish the hawk. And Rufus is tasked with keeping pigeons from interrupting the championship games. Though Rufus is responsible for keeping the All England Club's 42-acre grounds pigeon-free year-round, he has also found the time to scare off pigeons from Westminster Abbey, as well as hospitals, airfields, and landfills.

Starting point is 00:19:58 What a strange job. To be a pigeon frightener. Yeah, I mean, I wonder what he thinks he's doing. I guess he's just being a hawk, but it's got like certain boundaries on it. Like it's not just a regular natural. Right, and they have to actually train him and feed him well enough so that he doesn't eat the pigeons. He just frightens them off. It must be quite difficult to manage that, yeah.

Starting point is 00:20:19 In June 2012, Rufus was birdnapped from the back of his owner's car while it was parked on a private street, and the theft had significant media coverage with Rufus being called the world's most notable bird. He was found three days later with a sore leg but otherwise quite well, and was fussed over quite a bit by his very relieved owner Imogen Davis by being given baths and his favorite treat of quail. Davis actually did sound quite attached to him and was pretty upset while he was missing. She was quoted in the Telegraph as saying that he was going to have to sleep next to her pillow at night so that she could make sure he was safe. Rufus has accounts on Twitter and Facebook as well as a Wimbledon security photo card

Starting point is 00:21:00 pass with his official job title of bird scarer on it. No word on whether he'd be up for scaring off parakeets, though I would guess that he would. And on the subject of Britain's urban foxes from episode 195, Charles Hargrove wrote, I thought you might like the photo from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the London Natural History Museum last year. Photographer of the Year exhibition at the London Natural History Museum last year. And Charles sent a link to a photo taken by Sam Hobson, a photographer who specializes in urban wildlife. The photo, which we'll have a link to in the show notes, is of a cute little fox using his front paws to hold himself up so that he can just peek over the top of a wall in Bristol. The text with the photo says that Hobson wanted to capture the inquisitive

Starting point is 00:21:45 nature of the urban red fox and that he spent time gaining the trust of this fox family so that he could get his photo. It probably helped that this family of foxes is used to people as they are regularly fed by several local residents, which I guess implies that at least some people seem to like the foxes. It turns out that Sam Hobson has a website of photos of urban wildlife, including a whole series on foxes and a rather dramatic photo of feral parakeets flying over a darkened cemetery. I thought that many of the photos were quite arresting, like seeing a full grown male deer in the middle of a nighttime London street or a badger framed against a large headstone as it climbed out

Starting point is 00:22:25 of a grave. Hobson has managed to catch many interesting moments and can really make you aware of how much urban wildlife there actually is. Link to the site, of course, in the show notes. Thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. We learn so much from our listeners. If you have anything that you'd like to share, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him an odd sounding situation, and he has to try to figure out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from one of our more regular puzzle contributors, Tommy Houghton, who says, here's a new puzzle and spoiler, no one dies. Thought this was just

Starting point is 00:23:10 fascinating. We'll see how long it takes Greg to get this. Here's Tommy's puzzle. A payment processing company regularly denies transactions based on information entered into the name field. Why? Wow. Is this true? Okay. Payment processing, do I need to pursue that? That's just what I think it is? Like an online payment processor. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:23:33 Regularly denies transactions based on... Information entered into the name field. Okay. Information entered, does that mean something other than a name? No. Okay. So someone enters their name into that field. Yes. And in some circumstances, this processor will reject the transaction on that basis alone.

Starting point is 00:23:49 Is that fair to say? Yes. Okay. Oh, that's very interesting. Is it based on gender or sex? Yes. Really? Yes.

Starting point is 00:23:58 So just so I know, does it deny women? It denies female names, people who enter female names. Okay, so just to nail this down. Women? It denies female names, people who enter female names. Okay. So just to nail this down, is that what I'm looking for? I mean, are there other criteria that I also need to work out? No. That's it? Yes.

Starting point is 00:24:15 Okay. So I need to work out why they would do that. Yes. Under what situations or why they would do that. Payment processor means these women were trying to purchase something? Yes. Do I need to know what that is? Yes. Okay. Wow. All right. So women are trying to buy something. If a man had bought the same thing, he would have been allowed to? Yes. So that means the merchant, the person who's selling it, doesn't want women customers? Is that right?

Starting point is 00:24:45 That's incorrect. Okay, so the merchant would be glad to get these women as customers? It's the processor that's turning them down? Would you say that? I wouldn't say that. Would you say the merchant doesn't want female customers? I wouldn't say that. Well, someone doesn't want female customers? I wouldn't say that. Well, someone doesn't want them.

Starting point is 00:25:09 Do I need to work out what they're trying to buy? Yes. Okay. I don't think it's right to say that they don't want female customers. I don't think that that's quite the right way to say it. Do they expect the women not to pay? That's partly something along those lines. So you'd say they'd rather sell to men than women?

Starting point is 00:25:35 I guess I could say that, yeah. All right, and I'm trying to see if I need to distinguish between the processor and the merchant. Yeah, it's the payment processing company that's denying the transactions. But are they doing that at the request of the merchant? I'm just trying to sign that. So does the merchant know this is happening? I don't know.

Starting point is 00:25:52 I mean, Tommy just knew about this happening at the payment processing company doing it. Okay. So I don't know what the merchant's thoughts are or feelings are on the whole business. I'm just trying to work that out. So possibly the merchant doesn't even know this is happening, but it's the payment processor that's making the judgment. Yes. Yes.

Starting point is 00:26:10 Do I need to know about like geography or the regime where this is like? No. I don't need to know where this is happening. That's correct. With currency or anything like that. Right. Okay. Why the payment processor then?

Starting point is 00:26:24 And this is for a certain class of merchandise would you say yes so what a woman wants to buy something and it's turned down but a man isn't is what this comes down to yes that's actually that is what it comes down to

Starting point is 00:26:40 see I'm the naturalness thing would be to try to figure out what she's trying to buy but that would take a long time yeah i'm gonna say merchandise is not quite the right word a service um i'm not sure what you would call this somewhere between merchandise and a service i'm not sure exactly what you would call this like renting or leasing something like getting the use of something no no no, not quite like that. Or like a subscription or something? Like an online access to something?

Starting point is 00:27:08 Yes. More like that. Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay. So that would be granted to men but not to women? Yes.

Starting point is 00:27:21 And it's the payment processing company that's denying it, not the merchant themselves. And you were saying that has something to do with them expecting those women to be a greater, I guess, risk, you'd call it? Yes. Expecting the people who put women's names into the name field to be a greater risk. That's artfully

Starting point is 00:27:42 worded. That was artfully worded. Meaning they might think they're not truly women? That's, yes. Is that the concern? That's part of the concern. Well, if they're not women, they would be men. So they think that some men are posing as women who, and they're trying to prevent that?

Starting point is 00:28:00 That's not quite right. No, that's not quite right. But they're worried that for some reason that some of these women are not really women? Yes. Is that the essence of their concern? Well, it's more than that. I mean, they don't care about that just in general terms. They don't care if men are posing as women for ethical reasons or whatever but they they have a specific concern as a payment processing company okay um is this like a dating app something no with that no

Starting point is 00:28:35 or like you know uber some kind of online service that has online customers not like uber not like an uber kind of thing you were saying before is it like something that you would get online access to and i was saying yes that was that was correct the the payment processing company is concerned about fraud they don't want to not be paid so they are regular you know regularly denying transactions if people enter women's names into the name field because they think there's a much higher chance that they're not going to get paid, that it's going to be fraud. And you're saying at least part of the time it's because they're not really women. Yes. But that's not the whole of it. Well, that's it with what I just told you, that they're worried about the fraud angle.

Starting point is 00:29:33 So what is it that they think, okay, it's legitimate if a man puts his name in the field, but if we see a woman's name in the field, then this is unlikely to be legitimate, is what it comes down to. Does this have to do with sex? Yes. Pornography? Yes, that's exactly it, which is that apparently extremely few women pay for pornography. And so Tommy says,

Starting point is 00:29:52 according to the neuroscientist who wrote A Billion Wicked Thoughts, women do not often pay for porn. Authors Ogus and Gaddam wrote, according to CC Bill, the billing service most commonly used by the online adult industry, only 2% of all subscriptions to pornography sites are made on credit cards with women's names. In fact, CC Bill even flags women's names, female names as potential fraud, since so many of these charges result in an angry wife or mother demanding a refund for the misuse of her card.

Starting point is 00:30:21 It's just so rare for women to actually be legitimately buying the service. That if they get a woman's name, they just assume it's just so rare for women to actually be legitimately buying the service. That if they get a woman's name, they just assume it's fraudulent. They just assume it's most likely to be fraudulent. Wow. So thanks to Tommy for another of his non-fatal puzzles. If anyone else has a puzzle for us to try, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. And if you want to specify who should read the puzzle,

Starting point is 00:30:43 you can put that in the subject line. And if you want to specify who should read the puzzle, you can put that in the subject line. everyone who's pitched in to help keep it going. You can check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com. While you're at the site, you can also check out Greg's collection of over 10,000 quirky curiosities, browse the Futility Closet store, learn about the Futility Closet books, and see the show notes for the podcast with links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any questions or comments for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by Greg's awesome brother, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 202-The Rosenhan Experiment

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