The Monster Study - Story Origins

Story Origins

The lawsuit was an outgrowth of a San Jose Mercury News article in 2001 conducted by an investigative reporter.

The article revealed that several of the orphans had long-lasting psychological effects stemming from the experiment. The state tried unsuccessfully to have the lawsuit dismissed but in September, 2005, the Iowa's Supreme Court justices agreed with a lower court in rejecting the state's claim of immunity and petition for dismissal.

Many of the orphans testified that they were harmed by the "Monster Study" but outside of Mary Tudor, who testified in a deposition on Nov. 19, 2002, there were no actual eye witnesses to the events. The advanced age of the three surviving former orphans on the plaintiff's side helped expedite a settlement with the state. The Iowa attorney general's office said in a press release on Aug. 17, 2007, that the settlement of $925,000 was fair and appropriate, although the state refused to accept liability for any potential harm caused to the orphans.

"For the plaintiffs, we hope and believe it will help provide closure relating to experiences from long ago and to memories going back almost 70 years. For all parties, it ends long-running, difficult and costly litigation that only would have run up more expenses and delayed resolution to plaintiffs who are in their seventies and eighties." (DM Register)

Despite the settlement, the debate remains contentious over what harm, if any, the Monster Study caused the orphan children., the son of the late Wendell Johnson, has vehemently defended his father. He and some speech pathologists have argued that Wendell Johnson did not intend to harm the orphan children and that none of the orphans actually were diagnosed as "stutterers" at the end of the experiment. Other speech pathologists have condemned the experiment and said that the orphans' speech and behavior was adversely affected by the negative conditioning they received. Letters between Mary Tudor and Wendell Johnson that were written shortly after the experiment ended showed that the children's speech had deteriorated significantly. Mary Tudor returned to the orphanage three times to try and reverse the negative effects caused by the experiment but lamented the fact that she was unable to provide enough positive therapy to reverse the deleterious effects. (Ethics and Orphans. San Jose Mercury News).

Today the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association prohibits experimentation on children when there exists a significant chance of causing lasting harmful consequences. It may be unfair, however, to judge the study by the formal ethical standards that were only created later. The negative consequences of this study appear minor when compared with ethical violations in human subjects research in other fields, conducted throughout the second half of the 20th century. These latter cases, reviewed, approved and funded in major research institutions, sometimes resulted in the death of subjects.

The study was "suppressed" in the sense that Wendell Johnson made no attempt to pursue publication of his results, reportedly on the advice of colleagues, who warned him that the experiment could tarnish his career. However, the thesis was bound, catalogued, and made available in the university's library in identical fashion to all other masters theses. It was often checked out over the years. It was referred to in academic and general publications.

Within the profession of speech pathology, there is to this day no single, agreed-upon hypothesis of stuttering—either as to its cause or a single, most appropriate therapy. (This statement is consistent with what is attributed to Patricia Zebrowski, above).