Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Rat Park/archive1

Rat Park

The story of a largely forgotten psychology experiment. Self nomination. Slim 10:11, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

• Object. It has a POV problem, as evidenced by the concluding comment about the 'War on Drugs'. A good copyedit to remove POV could make it up to the required standard. Dbiv 12:31, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Dbiv, thanks for your comment. Apart from the concluding comment, can you point to anything else you feel is specifically POV and should be removed?

• Object. My main problem is with the images. The first two seem both too big and somewhat out of place. I'd prefer to see the good Dr A as the first image. Not sure that the poppy or the junkie are needed at all. Filiocht 12:51, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

I like the junkie a lot. Perhaps you're right about the poppy. I'll get rid of it. Slim

• Object. The article is detailed and very interesting, but it seems to be a one-sided story. I know that the scientific world can be sometimes quite conservative when it comes to accepting new ideas, but there are, surely, reasons why this work has been ignored. Was its methodology discussed? Etc. And, as Dbiv said, the final comment shows some POV (it could surely be reworded as something like "Dr Foobar deplored that so little was spent on such projects while considerable sums are expended on the War on Drugs [ref]"). David.Monniaux 13:03, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

David, the problem with this study is that it doesn't seem to have been criticized. Just not taken up. The author Lauren Slater goes into detail about how the drug czar Prof. Kleber and his colleagues are "disdainful of any research north of the Connecticut River." I didn't put that in because it's too POV even as a quote. But I've looked around a lot over the last couple of weeks for criticism of this experiment and couldn't find any. I have e-mailed the pharmacology journal who published it to ask if they received any critical responses, but so far I've had no reply. Slim 21:35, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Well, I'm curious. I'm unaware of the usages of experimental psychology and drug studies, but in some other scientific fields it is common usage that the authors of papers refused by scholarly journals get a copy of the reviews of the referee that caused the paper to be refused. The mere fact that a "drug czar" and close associates were disdainful of the paper is not necessarily a good indication about this – good scholarly journals seek the opinion of several specialists, often in several countries. I doubt that whatever influence an American drug czar has, it probably cannot does not dictate his opinion to researchers in Europe or Japan. But, again, I don't know the particular usages of those fields and I don't know what happened to these papers.

Note that, on the other hand, the "drug czar" and disdain explanation may be appropriate for the absence of funding, since such things are generally set by committees staffed by national personalities. David.Monniaux 18:57, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• Object for reasons above. I really want to support, though. It's an interesting topic, but it does sound crankish and could do with NPOving. Johnleemk | Talk 14:14, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• Object in its present state. I've tidied up a lot of the bad punctuation, but there's far too much "quotes" said X, replied Y, etc., which needs to be cleaned up into normal prose. At the moment it reads more like a cheap thriller than a good wikipedia article. - MPF 14:40, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

MPF, you put a Cleanup tag on the article, which I feel is inappropriate (as do others: another editor removed it, thinking it was there as a joke. Also, you made only a tiny number of changes, including changing "wild Norway rat" to "Brown Rat," which is not what the author said, and changing some North American punctuation to British. I'd appreciate it if you'd recommend and discuss changes here first. Slim 21:35, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

• Object: POV. The writing follows its hero so closely as to write a biography of an experiment, with a vested interest in its truth. Also, there is a very serious problem with the experiment, as it does not show in any way that there is no physical addiction to opiates, but only that, left to their own devices, rats will not choose to become addicted. I.e. the article argues that morphine isn't addictive, but that's not what the experiment shows. The experiment shows who will and will not grab morphine and get to the level of addiction, not that morphine is not addictive. It could conceivably show that rats with a plentiful supply of opiates are capable of withdrawing slowly when they get to self-administer. That's all well and good. It argues that unhappy people start taking the drugs. No shock there. However, the escalation of addiction and the physical basis of addiction isn't even argued against by the experiment. Either the professor wasn't trying to argue against physical addiction and the article misrepresents the aims, or he was making up one really terrible experimental design. Also, the physical basis of addiction is pretty darned empirical. What's not stated is that lots of rat brains have been chopped up and photographed to show the chemical alterations in the addicted brain. Geogre 15:32, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

George, the points you raise are interesting. First, the rats' brains: being able to view physical changes isn't enough. You have to be able to say why those physical changes led the animal to lose control of its intake. No scientist has shown that. (That goes to the heart of what the word "causation" means.) You also have to say something about what you mean when you refer to loss of control and choice. Again, to my knowledge, no scientist has done that. Second, Alexander started off with rats who were physically addicted to morphine, and who had been drinking nothing but morphine-laced water for 57 days. When he put them in Rat Park, where they had a choice, they started drinking plain tap water instead. Does this not show that morphine is not "addictive," in the sense of robbing the user of all, most or some control and choice; that is, in the sense of causing a degree of compulsion? Slim 21:35, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

I didn't see, in the article, that the rats at the outset had addiction of 57 days. That may be my fault. My point, however, is "addiction" as physiologic dependence vs. behavioral compulsion. Unhappy animals want relief, naturally. However, whether they are unhappy or happy, opiates produce a physiological change, and withdrawal causes a change. I.e. a rat or a human will become dependent upon the drug, something that the article mentions. However, the article says that the physical dependence was trivial, which is POV. Creatures that can communicate their status, and in particular humans, report pretty severe withdrawal problems, whether they were addicted by their own choice or not. E.g. patients who had received too much and too often a morphine dose in a hospital stay and were suddenly stopped were not psychologically or morally weak, and yet they became addicts upon release. This was a common enough problem with WW1 soldiers, and it continued to be a problem through the 1940's. These days, hospital protocols prevent it by tapering a dose. My problem is that the claim in the article for the experiment is that it shows a lack of physical basis for "addiction." Addiction can refer either to psychological or physical dependence. Geogre 02:57, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

But George, don't you see that you're doing exactly what you say the article is doing. That is, you are, in my view, begging the question. First, I will make it clearer in the article that the Rat Park rats had already been fed morphine for 57 days, and where what the physicalists would call "addicted."

I1) You write "opiates produce a physiological change, and withdrawal causes a change." That is not in dispute. What is in dispute is the extent to which the physical changes in the brain CAUSE. or whether they merely ACCOMPANY, the perceived physical and psychological addiction of the user. You are simply stating that there is a relationship of causation here. That has to be shown.

Actually I do dispute that withdrawal causes a change. The observation here is that when opiates are used to control pain, as in palliative care, provided that no more morphine has been given than is necessary to control the pain, then addiction does not result. If the level of pain reduces or the pain disappears, then the druig can be reduced or stopped (respectively) without the symptoms of addiction appearing. Therefore the effect that the drug has, in terms of addiction, is dependent on the degree of physical pain that the paitent is suffering. I don't think this point is covered here or elsewhere, and it may, of course not be relevant here. Matt Stan 20:49, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

(2) SOME creatures who can communicate their status report severe withdrawal problems. Some do not. It's the same with cigarettes. Some long-term smokers end up dying because they say they cannot stop. Other long-term smokers stop cold turkey with very little difficulty. (I used to work as a smoking-cessation counsellor, so I saw these disparities firsthand and they are very pronounced.)

(3) Again, SOME patients who take morphine for long-term pain relief become what they say is "addicted." But many do not. In fact, I believe that most do not. (I will check the known figures). This is one of the issues that the psycho-social theorists rely on: that most patients who are prescribed morphine do not become either physically or psychologically addicted. Tapering a dose would not prevent addiction, if the argument is that you need ever-increasing doses to get the same hit.

(4) You talk about psychological addiction. What is that? It doesn't even have the perceived physical changes in the brain accompanying it. It is just a statement made by scientists who cannot find any physical basis for an addiction.

I can see why you feel this article is POV. But I argue that it is the physicalist side that is so POV and so completely accepted, that anything that argues against it looks POV. Take a look at Wikipedia's Drug addiction. There is no doubt expressed in that article, no room for any other debate, no questioning of results, no questioning of methodology. But the most funadamental problem is, as I said above, a confusion between a change in a physical state CAUSING a change in behavior, and the physical change ACCOMPANYING the behavioral change. This is a fundamental logical and epistemological error that all first-year undergraduate philosophy students are taught not to make. And yet all the drugs-are-addictive scientists are making that error, apparently unaware that it's cauing them to beg the very question they're seeking to answer.

That's why I find Rat Park impressive. It doesn't do anything fancy; doesn't commit any logical errors; doesn't use fancy equipment; doesn't interpret the fancy results of the fancy equipment; doesn't start talking about how the brain functions as though much is actually known about brain function. All Rat Park does is this: It takes a bunch of morphine-soaked rats ("addicts" by anyone else's standards) and it offers them morphine to see what they'll do. And what do they do? They don't want it. That has to tell us something. And Alexander is very cautious in what he claims Rat Park tells us: only that the theory of physical and psychological addiction has not been empirically proven. Slim 03:23, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

• Reluctant Object: Its an interesting subject, but its not featured article material, there must be another side of the coin here. The picture of the opium poppy seems to be there just to make the page attractive, and the one of the drug addict for unclear reasons, although it is hard to know what images could illustrate this page - certainly Dr. Alexander and the rat . Perhaps this needs to be incorporated in a biographical page of Bruce Alexander Giano 19:38, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Abstain for now, there is a lot of work and thought going on here at the moment Giano 21:48, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yes, the picture of the poppy is there to make the page attractive and to show readers what opium/morphine comes from. The drug addict is there to show what heroin/morphine does to people. The woman is in her early 30s but looks a great deal older.

Heroin produces dreadful effects, but do the images help explain Rat Park? Giano 21:52, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I felt they did. I felt the picture of the woman showed what a compulsion heroin use can become. The definition scientists use of "addictive" (I think I should make this clearer in the article) is if the activity becomes self-destructive or destructive of others, or of relationships. No matter how much you feel you need to take a substance, scientists will not say you are addicted until you start to want the substance more than you want other important things in life (food, love, work, health etc). I felt the picture of this young woman totally summed that up. The Rat Park author took rats who were the equivalent of that woman (they had drunk nothing but morphine-laced water for 57 days). Yet, he put them in Rat Park, and they suddenly didn't want it anymore.

I have a query about Wikipedia articles and illustrations in general. I would always prefer a nicely illustrated article, whether in a newspaper, magazine or encyclopedia, to one that isn't. Yet I've noticed some Wikipedia editors don't like photographs. I've had that criticism of my articles before: either that the pics are too big, or there are too many of them. Can anyone explain the reasoning behind that? Slim 22:03, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

• Object Interesting topic, worthy of an article. But not in this form. - DavidWBrooks 21:09, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC) (whoops - typo'd by own signature)

• Support. Lead section includes the phrase "It was rat heaven". That's good enough for me! - Ta bu shi da yu 02:40, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

LOL I wouldn't mind being in there myself.  :-) Slim 03:24, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

• Object. As above, serious POV sections. This piece of pseudo-conspiracy theory doesn't need to have specific objections to the experiment itself mentioned (I'm not suprised an experimental conclusion based on the somewhat shaky foundation that the only evidence for physiological addiction comes from 'depressed lab rats' was largely ignored, actually), what needs to be described is evidence for physiological addiction and why this experiment doesn't address this. This should be done, preferably, not by the original authour of the article, but by someone who isn't trying to support the experiment's conclusion. This stinks of the 'all scientists are in a big conspiracy so they're ignoring this idea' argument used by pseudo scientists the world over. Psychobabble 09:09, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm . . . I think to be fair you should acknowledge that you're doing a degree in commerce/law, and the author of the book that drew attention to Rat Park has a PhD in psychology. The author of the original study, Bruce Alexander, is a professor of psychology; the sponsoring university is a reputable one; and the journal that published the results, and has subsequently published more material from the same man, is a reputable peer-reviewed academic journal. Based on these facts, I would suggest you have no reason to call this pseudo-science. What this was, and remains, was an experiment that went against the grain ideologically, as many rigorous scientific projects do every day. I apologize if I have created a conspiratorial tone; I will remove it when I do the re-write. The fault for that tone is mine, not Bruce Alexander's. Slim 21:05, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

I wrote after speaking to my wife, with a degree in behavioural neuroscience, who has looked fairly extensively at addiction. She assured me, as I thought, that the scientific consensus on addiction actually does exist for a reason. Gasp. Psychobabble 22:40, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Psychobabble, please be civil and realistic about this, and please assume good faith. It is simply false to call the Rat Park study "pseudo-science." It was funded by a major university. It was published in a peer-reviewed journal. The author has written a book about the issue, which has been published by a reputable publisher. There was a similar study showing similar results before it. There have been similar studies showing similar results since it. It is definitely a minority position, but not to the point of being "pseudo-science," or being so much in the minority that it is not worthy of a Wikipedia entry. If you want to see a real POV article on this issue, take a look at Drug addiction. To read that, you'd think no other view existed and that the matter had been settled.

I would be most grateful if your wife could supply a reference for her position and would happily incorporate it into the article. I am looking for the most reputable and most decisive studies that suggest opiates are physically and psychologically addictive. Over the last few days, I've been in touch with several scientists on the majority side of the debate, and have asked them to refer me to papers that most clearly show the opposite of the Bruce Alexander position. The papers show that the scientific community is having a great deal of difficulty in finding a consensus. For example, one recent paper I'll be quoting from in Science says: "[M]any people have at some time self-administered a potentially addictive drug, but very few become addicts"; "Mere self-administration [in rats] is not evidence of addiction"; and "There are no good animal models to distinguish mere drug self-administration behavior from the compulsive drug self-administration behavior that characterizes addiction." This paper is written by a scientist who appears to be on the drugs-are-addictive side of the debate, and the paper acknowledges that the empirical evidence to support this view is weak, though it ends by saying it hopes future studies may strengthen it. Slim 23:36, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

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Dealing with the objections: The overriding objection seems to be POV, partly due to my writing style, but largely due to there being no reference to published criticism of the study. The latter is because, using all the normal research methods, I was not able to find any criticism other than the one sentence from the former drug czar in the Lauren Slater book, which I quoted. I've therefore e-mailed the current editor-in-chief of the pharmacology journal that published the Rat Park research in 1981 and have asked him whether he can help me to find any published responses to the experiment; and if there were none, at least then I can say in the article that there were none. And I've e-mailed Kleber, the former deputy drug tzar who was quoted by Lauren Slater as saying he recalled there was a methodology problem with Rat Park but couldn't remember what it was. I've asked him if he can direct me to some published criticism of Rat Park. I'll have to wait for a while for their responses, but I'll report back as soon as I receive more information. I've also removed the drawing of the poppy and the photograph of the heroin user, which a couple of editors felt were not appropriate. Slim 09:03, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

As a scientist, my reaction, when faced with the claims of some fellow scientist of having been unfairly disregarded by mainstream science and official policies, is always that of prudent scepticism. I do not exclude that such things happen. However, there are many examples of people who try to win in the arena of the popular press / book writing for the general population the recognition that they could not win among their peers due to shoddy experimentation or reasoning.

I really find the topic interesting, but due to its sensitivity and the risks for undue endorsement of a dubious theory, I would much prefer that somebody with some good knowledge of the field look into it, before making it a featured article. David.Monniaux 18:57, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

David, I take your point about scientists trying to score points in the court of popular opinion. But so far as I can tell, that is not what happened here. The author of this experiment was sought out by Lauren Slater, who is a psychologist and who had heard of Rat Park but wondered what had become of it. He actually said to her during the interview: "Why do you want to do Rat Park? It's forgotten." There was no impression given that he was seeking publicity. Anyway, I've written to a few scientists in the field today, including the editors-in-chief of a couple of pharmacology/psychopharmacology journals, and so far, I'm surprised and touched by the response. One of them has assigned two research assistants to find out whether published criticism of Rat Park exists. And all for Wikipedia. Slim 03:38, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

• Object. The article is very interesting but: 1) The experiment results - wheter Dr.Alexander hypothesis was proven right or false, and how it was ignored and why - must be added to the lead. Also, the section 'The physicalist model of drug addiction' while interesting and fairly well written, seems out of place in that article - I think it should be moved to its own article instead. Finally, some more ilinks are in order (names, concepts...). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 23:06, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• Support. Very interesting. I can think of a few Wikipedians who need such a park. - Xed 00:15, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

:-) Thank you, Xed. I'm one of them. Slim 00:16, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC)

• Support. POV issues appear to be, as far as I can tell, addressed. Informative and researched, AND interesting.--ZayZayEM 10:33, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• Support. As it says in the talk page, it's not really POV - the problem is that the opposite theory has become so often repeated that people accept it as 'fact', and anything which does not agree with it seems POV. Dehumanizer 21:04, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)