Dark Side of Science: The Monster Study
In 1939, a highly controversial experiment unfolded in Davenport, Iowa, where Dr. Wendell Johnson, a speech pathologist, conducted what is now infamously known as The Monster Study. The premise? To find out if stuttering could be created in children by labeling their speech as disfluent. Johnson’s hypothesis was that external factors—like being called a "stutterer"—might actually cause a child to develop speech problems.
To test this, Johnson took 22 orphaned children, dividing them into 2 groups. One group received positive speech therapy—praised for their fluency and encouraged to speak confidently. The other group, however, was subjected to negative speech therapy; criticized, and told that they had speech problems. None of them stuttered before the study, but soon, things started to change.
Of the 6 "normal" children in the negative therapy group, 5 began stuttering after being told they had speech problems. Of the 5 children who already stuttered, 3 became significantly worse. Meanwhile, the group that received praise mostly continued to speak fluently, with only 1 child showing signs of speech difficulties after the study.
Realizing the damage they had caused, Johnson and his team desperately tried to reverse the effects of the negative therapy, but it was too late. The harm was done, and many of these children carried their newly developed speech issues—and emotional trauma—for the rest of their lives.
The study was dubbed The Monster Study, not because of the children, but because of the monstrous ethical violations involved. Johnson hadn’t intended to harm anyone; his goal was to better understand stuttering so that he could help those who suffered from it. But the unethical methods used and the trauma inflicted on the children became the lasting legacy of this research.
For decades, this experiment remained hidden from public view, unpublished and relatively unknown—until 2001, when an investigative reporter uncovered the disturbing details. In the aftermath, the University of Iowa issued a formal apology and paid $925,000 to seven of the surviving participants for the emotional and psychological scars they endured.
The Monster Study serves as a powerful reminder of the ethical boundaries in research and has since played a key role in shaping the ethical standards we now have in psychological and medical studies today.
You can gain more insight on this study through this article here — a fascinating story about two orphan girls involved in the experiment.
