Talk:Rat Park/Archive 1

American v British punctuation
Cleanup - 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 - MPF 14:37, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Removed "Clean Up" tag as it is a contradiction of terms for a page to be simultaneously a 'featured article candidate' and have a 'clean up' request. One surely has to go; and this page is definitely not desperately in need of a clean up. Giano 19:43, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Of course it isn't a contradiction. It is only a candidate for featured article, not an actual featured article. And at that, its candidature promoted by its author (hardly a good way to proceed!). That it has received a pretty soud drubbing by all who have (so far) commented on its candidature merely shows that it does need a lot of cleanup to make it readable and NPOV, before it can hope to gain featured article status - MPF 20:54, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

MPF, when I saw your edit, I thought it was vandalism. With respect, there is no bad punctuation for you to clean up. You edited in errors. I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know in advance what you'd like to change so we can discuss changes before they're made. Many thanks. Slim 20:44, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC):
 * Hi Slim - First; the punctuation was bad, the close quote should come before any punctuation, unless the punctuation mark was specifically part of the quotation, in which case further punctuation might be required after the close quote to clarify the sentence structure. Second, it is a science article, so scientific measures should be used; third, Brown Rat is the correct species name. Finally, which I've not edited (due to lack of time), there's far too much quoting in the whole article. It needs to read more cleanly without the constant re-reference (Ibid, Ibid, Ibid, every few lines) - that only needs to go in once or twice. - MPF 20:54, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * This reads like a magazine article - a good magazine article, well written and interesting - but not an encyclopedia article. All the narrative, back-and-forth quotes are way out of place in wikipedia. We're not here to make a case for or against this entity, but just to present a reasonable summary of its history, findings, reaction by others, and its future (if any), in encyclopedia form. The quotes need to be greately distilled. - DavidWBrooks 21:00, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

NOTE TO EVERYBODY: Please don't intersperse your responses among people's comments - that makes this very hard to read. Just put new comments at the bottom, so people can follow the discussion as it progresses. - DavidWBrooks 21:02, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * MPF, the punctuation you're referring to is North American style. You're advocating British style. Either is acceptable, so long as it's consistent within the article, and it is. As for wild Norway rat or Brown Rat, the author of the study calls them wild Norway rats. This is the term he used in the paper he gave to the Canadian Senate. Regarding too much quoting in the article, this is about an academic study. Academic studies, and articles about them. require a lot of quotes and references. Most candidates for Featured Article status get criticized for not having enough references. But finally, even if everything you said were true, that is still no justification for putting the Clean-Up tag on it. That's reserved for articles that are a complete dog's breakfast, which this is not. If you put it on again, I'll ask for page protection. Slim 21:10, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)


 * OK I'll remove the cleanup note, but I stand fully by my other edits. - MPF 21:12, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Not least, Brown Rat links to the relevant page, rather than to the nation of Norway, which is wholly irrelevant to the article - MPF 21:16, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * No, it's not wholly irrelevant to the article. It's what the author of the study said to the Canadian Senate (that all lab rats are descended from wild Norway rats). This is what the sentence says: as Alexander told the Canadian Senate. Therefore, I say what he told them. Not what you think he ought to have told them. Regarding your punctuation points, please read the Wikpedia style guides that caution against changing American to British, or British to American style. Slim 21:40, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Excess linking is hard to read
How about taking out some of the links, especially to common words that most people understand ... all those underlined terms make it hard to read! Only words likely to confuse somebody or to contain background information should be linked, to maintain readability ... after all, as wiktionary expands, virtually every single word could get an internal link. Discretion needs to be used. - DavidWBrooks 21:20, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Yes, I'll remove some of these, David. Thanks for the comment. Slim 21:40, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Begging the question?
George, I find what you're saying at the featured article nomination page very interesting, but it's getting pretty long for that page, so I'm copying it to here in case you want to continue the debate (but don't feel you have to). Slim 03:32, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Copied from Featured article candidates/Rat Park:
 * 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.


 * (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)
 * "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." -- I'm sorry but this is completely and utterly false.  The statistics suggest that PSYCHOLOGICAL addiction is rare amoung people with long term pain killer treatment, HOWEVER, physical addiction is very common.  You obviously have no idea what you're talking about here.  I myself have chronic pain and do have long term pain killer treatment, I've seen many specialists in chronic pain and addiction and THERE IS A UNANIMOUS CONSENSUS that long-term pain killer treatment is best to be avoided because physical addiction is EXTREMELY common.  It's common even with some non-narcotic drugs too.  This theory is nothing but pseudo science and POV which goes against the consensus of the entire drug addiction community.  --70.21.16.38 18:37, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I see the argument you're making, but brain/body is so mixed as to make it virtually impossible to ascribe cause. However, we can produce narcotic changes with drugs that produce no euphoria, drugs that do not involve the patient/subject getting "high."  For example, methadone produces no mood effect.  Now, a person (I'll deal with people) on methadone gets no perceivable benefit except pain relief.  At the same time, when the person begins taking it, he or she might (granted there is a vast range of response) get nausea, constipation, and slowed respiration.  Stop the methadone, and the same person -- who has never gotten any high from the drug -- will often have stomach cramps, "ants under the skin," muscle spasms, and pain.  That there is a range of response is certainly true.  Since the neuroscientists have been able to isolate receptors that are filled by the drug and even describe pathways, the natural assumption is either that some people have more receptors or that there is some other mechanism that allows people to quit.  The cold turkey folks are lucky people, but I thought they were no more than 10% of nicotine addicts.  I don't know what they are for opiates.  Geogre 05:23, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It's an interesting article but I think it definitely treads a fine line between NPOV and advocacy. I can see that you've put the opposite point of view where you could, but there is far too much of what Alexander thinks going on in it. I'd like to see lots more criticism of his thought. Okay, the experiment might be largely forgotten, but presumably it was noted at the time. All in all, I think it would make a good magazine article at this point but it was a little vain to nominate it as a featured article. That's not to say it has no merit -- it does, but I definitely think it needs work. Dr Zen 04:47, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A minor-ish suggestion
While I think this article is still too magazine-ish (distill those interviews down!), what it really needs is something needed by many wikipedia articles: A quick summary for the casual reader at the beginning. It has a bit of that, but the intro never says how Rat Park worked - you have to wade through paragraph after paragraph to find out. INHO, it needs something like this in the first paragraph:
 * Alexander believed that addiction behavior by lab rats was at least partly the result of unhappiness at their unpleasant surroundings in small research cages. He built Rat Park as a sort of rodent utopia to see if "happier" rats would respond differently to drugs.

- DavidWBrooks 14:19, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

HI David, thanks for the suggestion. I agree and will rewrite the intro. I'll be doing quite a bit of re-writing over the next few days to de-POV it and made it more encylopedia. Best, Slim 19:49, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

"Rat Heaven"??
I know that the phrase "rat heaven" is supposed to be amusing, but is an encyclopedia really the place for jokes? Also, some of the descriptions of the environment show that it was not an ideal place for rats to live. For example, it mentions cedar shavings - these are not recommended for rats as they have been linked to illness, and rats prefer other beddings if given a choice. The term "idyllic" is also used in the article - POV in my opinion. How can we say what is "idyllic" or "heaven" to a rat? A large cage with paintings of hills and pink clouds isn't my idea of heaven, and I can't imagine why anyone would think they are a rat's! I've posted this here rather than just making the changes in case other think I'm being too pedantic. --Raye 21:49, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * HI Raye, I take your point, and thanks for the link about the cedar shavings, whch I had no idea about. My point was only that, compared to the standard lab cage, this was rat heaven, and Alexander built it with that in mind (I bet he didn't know about the cedar-shavings issue either). In an interview, one of the research team said of the rats: "We gave them a life," which sums up the attitude of the team, in my view. A lot of re-jigging has to be done with this article, because I put it up for featured-article status but a few objectors thought it was POV (too pro-Alexander), so I have to do more research and re-writing. The POV objection was that I didn't show the other side. Problem is: there is no other side. With absolute consistency, if you treat animals badly then give them access to morphine, they use it. This is regarded by most scientists as a function of the addictive properties of the morphine rather than a function of the animals' horrible environments. It's bad science, pure and simple. I don't know how I can make it sound positive or NPOV. SlimVirgin 22:03, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)


 * I moved the "rat heaven" comment to say it was "his idea of rat heaven" ... that seems a quick fix. - DavidWBrooks 22:24, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Slim: here are a few random ideas after skimming the article again. Probably not usable, but may spark off some more ideas. Haven't there been any other studies similar to Alexander's that produce different results? It seems hard to believe that he has produced these results and that few people have attempted to do the experiment again to verify or disprove them. If few people have, then this is a flaw in itself - a few studies using a few rats are hardly comprahensive. The results could have been coincidental, or due to some environmental factor. The results could have simply been misread. They could even have been fabricated.

Another point is that experiments on rats can not be transferred straight to humans. Maybe they don't become addicted in the same way as we do; or maybe they experience drug use differently to us. How can we know how a rat on heroin feels? How can we know how a rat suffering from withdawal feels? Alexander says that rats in rat park didn't look to be suffering as much as humans suffering experiencing withdrawal claim they suffer - how completely subjective! Plus, you wouldn't expect rats going through withdrawal to look or feel exactly as humans going through withdrawal. Humans are not rats and vice-versa. Have there been any human studies looking at the relationship between likelihood of addiction vs living conditions etc? Maybe poorer people are more likely to try drugs and so get addicted in the first place, but do they really find it harder to give them up than richer people do? After all, many rich celebrities have battled with drug addiction.

Some of it seems very disrespectful to drug users too; it is implied that "they could give up if they really wanted to" - hardly helpful for them. It doesn't seem to be explicitely stated enough in the article that physical withdrawal symptoms actually exist, and that psychological addiction is also very powerful. Perhaps a rat's lack of intelligence is a factor here - heroin addicted rat is put in "rat heaven", runs around exploring etc and starts to feel withdrawal symptoms. He doesn't realise or remember that he can make them all go away by taking some more heroin, as a human does. In any case, the power of psychological addiction should not be underestimated - obese people may be unable to slim down even though their health and happiness depends on it, despite the fact that giving up junk food does not cause serious physical side-effects. --Raye 23:26, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Just saw this article about new human studies that indicate that human heroin users are capable of having steady jobs, relationships etc - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4230985.stm Unlike the happy rats, these people still want to take heroin. Unlike unhappy drug users, they do not become addicted to the point where their job/relationships etc are neglected. Maybe someone could add something about this to the article? --Raye


 * This sounds interesting, but we have to be careful not to think we can turn a wikipedia article into an in-depth analysis of the state of research, arguing pros and cons, etc. This isn't a research essay; it's just a general introduction to the topic. Part of the problem with this not-very-readable article is that there was an element of argument/support/advocacy at first; we don't have to sweat getting and balancing every reference to every researcher - DavidWBrooks 15:54, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

David, why do you feel it's not-very-readable? I'd like to improve it, but don't see how to do it, so I'd appreciate constructive feedback. SlimVirgin 16:07, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)


 * It reads like a long magazine article - which on the Web is not a good thing, and is particularly not a good thing in an encyclopedia, where readers approach articles looking for quick, concise explanations of the issue. (I make my living, by the way, writing such articles for print, so I'm not disparaging the format: But this is the wrong place for it.)
 * There are way too many quotes, too many he-said-this he-said-that, too much narrative style - the casual reader still doesn't know until a screen or two down exactly how Rat Park was supposed to make rats happy and whether it had any effect, and why others disparage the results. The article should be rewritten from the top so that when somebody like me, who had never heard of Rat Park before coming here via Random Page, reads only one screen, he/she will know those facts. (I almost did this once, but since my only knowledge of the issue is from this article I figured I'd probably screw something up!) - DavidWBrooks 16:59, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

David, thanks for the input, which is much appreciated. I also write for a living, and perhaps that's the problem - that I'm wedded to a particular style. By all means have a go if you'd like to change it. I keep meaning to do it, but feel quite despondent at the thought of restarting the research. I looked into the subject in some depth when I first put it up for FAC, and the fact of the matter is that the drugs-are-inherently-addictive lobby is highly politicized, well-organized, and dominant (backed by Western governments, parents' lobbies, scientists and companies who make money from the research), even though the entire edifice is based on poor science. So making this article what other editors would call NPOV is virtually impossible. In addition to the drugs-are-addictive POV, there's the who-cares-about-animals POV. ;-) So I felt I'd be battling against too many ingrained attitudes in trying to present what I see as a truly scientific experiment free of ideology &mdash; take a bunch of animals, give them what they regard as a life, then ask them whether they want morphine. Answer? No. Even the supposedly addicted ones didn't want it. But the results are ignored by the scientific community and dismissed as pseudo-science by editors here. Go figure. SlimVirgin 18:29, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

Redo intro
I expanded the introduction (although I hate to expand something in an article this long!) in an attempt to summarize very quickly the whole issue for the casual reader who's not going to scroll down past one screen. It made me realize one thing: This article doesn'really t say why his conclusions were ignored; if they're as strong as the many paragraphs of narrative say they are, then that's odd. It could just be the drug lobby, etc., but there may be more solid reasons. - DavidWBrooks 20:47, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your changes, David. You've improved it. Regarding why his research was ignored: I contacted several prominent researchers on the other side and asked them, but they couldn't say. They said they remembered the research and that it was "very interesting," but that was all they could remember. (I also asked them to refer me to the best drugs-are-addictive research they knew of, but what they referred me to was very weak.) I contacted the journal that published the Rat Park experiment and asked whether there had been a response in that journal (even a letter), but it appears there was not. I contacted Alexander's team and the person I spoke to also couldn't explain the absence of response. This was why I had difficulty NPOV-ing the article. There doesn't appear to be a coherent "other side" and the research the drugs researchers referred me to was so weak that, by using it, I'd have made Rat Park look even stronger. A lot, and perhaps most, research in this field is financed by pharmaceutical companies or anti-drug lobbying groups, and there would be no interest from these groups in financing research to look into Rat Park's conclusions. In the absence of research showing different results from Alexander's or confirming his results, and in the absence of methodological problems with Rat Park, there would be no response to offer.
 * The man from Alexander's team said this to me of Rat Park's methodology: "We gave the rats a life." This is the kind of attitude that would not go down well with many scientists, especially back then.
 * Regarding length, excluding references it's only 2,600 words, which is pretty standard. SlimVirgin 21:21, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)