Talk:Rat Park

Use versus abuse

I'm not sure I agree with the change of abuse to use. Alexander wasn't arguing that heroin use is the result of unhappiness. He argued that it was the abuse of it — the repeated use to the point of self-destruction — that was a product of social conditions, and not a physical phenomenon, or at least not entirely (and not even mostly). He writes somewhere about morphine that it's a safe drug to use, so long as it is not abused, and the crossing from one to the other is not connected to any supposed addictive quality of the drug itself. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:53, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

"Abuse" introduces a POV that he himself steered clear of. Look at claim A. He describes what he is investigating as "continued use". There is no suggestion of "abuse". The model that he questions says that any use is "abuse" because the use of drugs for recreation is improper. The distinction in the word "abuse" is not between "sensible usage" and "destructive usage" but between "proper usage" and "improper usage". People who write screeds about "drug abuse" are not, after all, suggesting that using heroin is okay in moderation. Grace Note 03:52, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, point taken. Continued use makes it clear. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 03:58, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

Exactly - abuse is a value judgement - if we say abuse, it should be in the context of someone's opinion. Guttlekraw 18:47, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Introduction

I think that the introduction as it is now - returned from before I fiddled with it - has way too much detail. The purpose of an intro is to touch quickly on the main points of the article so the casual reader knows what is there, and can decide whether to learn more. Now it has long quotes giving fairly detailed arguments - that will halt casual readers completely, meaning they will miss a portion of what's below. I had attempted to summarize quickly the main points, moving that detail down so it's no longer a show-stopper for the person browsing wikipedia. - DavidWBrooks 21:01, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

The thing about your intro is that it didn't say what was special about Rat Park. Someone reading the intro should be given an overview of the article such that, if they want to, they can read the intro and nothing else, and still get the gist of the page. Sort of an upside-down pyramid. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 21:08, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. But this: Alexander told the Canadian Senate in 2001, but are isolated in cramped metal cages, then "subjected to surgical implantations in the hands of an eager (but seldom skilful) graduate student, followed by being tethered in a self-injection apparatus." Such experiments show only that "severely distressed animals, like severely distressed people, will relieve their distress pharmacologically if they can," he said. is WAY too much detail for an introduction. - DavidWBrooks 00:18, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Among several other criticisms, there was a factual error relating to the size of Rat Park. The journal article cited refers to an enclosure of 8.8 square meters which is substantially less than 200 square feet. The error was corrected. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.219.239.30 (talk) 02:46, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Reception

There are a couple of problems with this article.

It is factually incorrect to say that the experiment met only lukewarm reception. The main paper has been cited more than three dozen times; an earlier paper from the same series ("The effect of housing and gender on morphine self-administration in rats", Psychopharmacology (Berl) 1978, 58, 175-9, PMID 98787) has been cited nearly 100 times. All sorts of drugs have been tried with this experimental setup, e.g. nicotine (PMID 8524982), ampetamine (PMID 1579621) and alcohol (PMID 8776675). Especially problematic is that in a later study the results of "Rat Park" could not be reproduced (PMID 9148292). The researcher concludes that genetic factors may play a role and all earlier studies must be approached with great caution.

It's also not true that most animal studies support the disease model of addiction. Nowadays the "three-hit" model is favored by researchers - which takes into account genetic factors, early-life events and late environmental factors.

The article would benefit from discussing a recent reviev on the psychology of addiction. Dr Zak 15:20, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

This article is not about the psychology of addiction as such. Alexander designed his study to counter the disease model, not the "three-hit" model. The section on the "disease model" is, I think, only as overwritten as it is to satisfy the mouse-torturers who felt that an article that didn't put their case strongly would not be neutral, even if the case itself is not entirely apropos.

By all means though you should rewrite the bit about a lukewarm reception to mention that it has been cited many times and sparked off other studies. I'd be careful with the Petrie study though, because what it didn't replicate is not entirely central to Alexander's hypothesis (which is not that terrible conditions will necessarily make rats addicts but that continued use in itself will not; his rats "came off" the smack, whereas Petrie's, it seems, didn't become addicts to the same degree in the first place). Grace Note 04:39, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Petrie is an ex-Ph.D. student of Alexander; he defended his thesis in Simon Fraser on how Alexander's experiments could not be replicated in Alexander's lab under Alexander's supervision. Given the fact that it's extremely hard to defend such a hostile thesis without a good reason, and that Alexander's project funding was pulled in the same year the thesis went through, and that no data (other than the thesis) from 1982-1985 was published by Alexander, I suspect that Petrie had good reasons to refute the studies. --198.96.180.245 (talk) 16:39, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

First we have to find out where we want the article to go. The data from this experiment doesn't prove that "drug addiction is a myth", Alexander in his first paper in the series went no further to state that morphine consumption interferes with the animals' social functioning and consequently they will wean themselves off of it. What this study did do is spread the notion that the social environment is an important determining factor, and that that is true in laboratory rats as well. The reception history is important here.

Instead we have paragraphs about what Alexander thinks about the experiment. The sourcing is terrible, too; we have one report to Parliament whose title is hardly neutral, and from what I can see the article is based around Lauren Slaters "Opening Skinner's Box", which has been described as creative non-fiction and whose accuracy has been disputed.

I'm not sure, though, that I want to do work on this, there are better things to do with one's time than arguing with non-experts, possessive authors and those who use the encyclopedia to promote their pet ideologies. The recent antics of management leave a bad taste, too. Dr Zak 14:19, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Dr Zak, on every article I've encountered you, it's the same: tags, arguments, policy disagreements, problems with the writing. Please. That section, and perhaps others, are about to be rewritten anyway, so please just leave the tags off for the time being. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:55, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Can we argue about the article instead? That is the common theme in everycontext I have encountered you: playing the person instead of the content. Dr Zak 21:06, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry no. I've never been able to make you understand our content policies, and I have no desire to try again. I'd rather leave your tag on. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 21:29, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry? You are arguing about matters of style, which trump matters of fact, or so it seems if I read you right. The serious neutrality problems that were pointed out to you 18 months ago in the Featured Article review still haven't been fixed, and you are waving the content policies?! Dr Zak 22:24, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Replaceable image

Please note: availability of free images would show the image is replaceable. The lack of free images does not show that the image is not replaceable. The subject is alive and it is assumed (under policy) that an equivalent image can be made by simply taking a picture of the individual. Whether or not the subject would agree to this is moot. - Mdsummermsw (talk) 14:15, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

The image [File:Ratselfinject.gif] is a sanitized PhotoShop recreation of a controversial vivisection procedure. It does not accurately portray what the article discusses- conditions under which social animals rat will maintain or avoid narcotic dependence. It does not even portray what the image box claims- a surgically modified animal.

Is there a fair reason why any government whitewash image should remain in this article? Hilarleo ^Hey,L.E.O. 10:50, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

criticism - allegedly rats hate taste of opiates

here is an interesting critical quote about the experiment, from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9017037. I have no way to evaluate it, but FWIW: 76.119.30.87 (talk) 22:30, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Getting a rat in a rat colony addicted to opiates isn't easy at all, opiates taste so disgustingly bitter that rats just won't touch them. I think they had to go up to 20 % sugar and even then the animals preferred to be thirsty. Some went so far as not to touch the sugar/opiate solution at all and found it better to die of thirst. Contrary to popular opinion/Wikipedia, Rat Park wasn't paradise.

The other thing is that opiates don't help rats being rats. Anyone who has ever interacted with rat knows they are curious and social animals, they like to explore, fight and have sex. Nothing you can do while high on opiates. From this angle you'd almost predict that a rat might not like to be addicted to opiates. The experiment actually confirms the hypothesis.

Now alcohol on the contrary - it doesn't taste quite as awful, you can have much fun being drunk, have barfights and drunk sex, as Friday night in a British city center confirms, and it works just as well with rats as with humans. The follow-up experiments have been made. No rat ever voluntarily gave up booze.

Coambs, one of the co-authors, did a M.Sc. thesis on this topic, so they at least tried. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.96.180.245 (talk) 20:43, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Related research

I removed the related research section on the grounds of OR, because none of the sources mention Rat Park or cite Alexander's work. This article still has the same POV issues that were previously raised (see archived discussions for more). Permstrump (talk) 00:39, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

For followers, here's another list of articles that "lean toward" rat park but don't mention it explicitly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7743089 Rogerdpack (talk) 01:08, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Deleted content unsupported by sources used

I deleted content b/c the referenced sources said the exact opposite of what was stated in this article. The truth is that when Herbert Kleber, former U.S. deputy drug czar, was interviewed by Bruce Alexander's daughter-in-law for her book, she asked him "What makes the [Rat Park] experiment great?" He replied, "The experiment's not great." She also wrote that Alexander himself said to her, "Rat park's not famous. Why would you include it? It has a small cult following, but that's it." Those are direct quotes from his DIL's book (pg 173).

I also deleted the assertion that there have been studies by other researchers that replicated Alexander's finding. The citation used to support that argument, Bozarth, Murray and Wise in 1989, stated that they were UNABLE to replicate the findings, and in fact, rats in the more socialized housing self-administered more cocaine than rats in isolation.

I also removed references to Alexander's newest book as they were clearly promotional and unrelated to this article. Permstrump (talk) 02:56, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Reconciling Alexander's Senate paper with published results

I notice that Alexander's Senate paper seems to lift data from his 1980 paper, with some points cherry picked and some notation changed. I.e. he changes group names from IC, CI and so on to CP, PC and so on; what's more, he seemingly picks his best point to arrive at "19 times as much morphine" number. However, Figure 1 from the article show that "19 times" was an intermediate result; what's more, not only 5 days later the gap shrunk to "5 times" at best for PP (or CC) group, but the morphine consumption by "Paradise" rats was steadily increasing, while their isolated comrades reached the plateau. Should the Wiki article describe the experiment setup based on peer-reviewed paper and not on its retelling by one of the authors? - 3:40, October 11, 2018 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.96.180.245 (talk) 20:40, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes it should. Zezen (talk) 17:12, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Relevance of funding line

There's already a talk topic challenging the "lukewarm" reception of this research, but I'd like to discuss the lines suggesting that cutting of funding was relevant to the credibility of the research. There's a lot of profit to be made based on the current model of addiction so I would assert that the motivations behind defunding are unknown. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.16.110.225 (talk) 22:19, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree; funding priorities change, often with govt priorities (a lot of research at institutions like SFU are funded by TriCouncil funds [NSERC, SSHRC, CIHR]), and are not reflective of the quality of research. I also wonder about including the line "The two major science journals, Science and Nature, rejected Alexander". The overwhelming majority of articles submitted to those journals do not get accepted, and not necessarily because they are poorly done. While I'm unsure about the research regarding profits off of addictions model, I agree that those lines may be worth altering. GVK 07:56, 4 February 2021 (UTC)