Stanford professor who changed America with just one study was also a liar, by Susannah Cahalan
Suggested by Philip Salter, Founder, The Entrepreneurs Network
Most lectures are dull – not David Rosenhan's. The Stanford psychology and law professor opened one of his lectures sitting on a student’s lap as a way to test the class’ reaction to abnormal behaviour.
The 70s were wild. Rosenhan is famous for convincing his students to go undercover as psychiatric patients. The story goes that eight healthy volunteers went into 12 psychiatric hospitals across the country, each telling doctors that they heard voices that said, “thud, empty, hollow”, after which they were diagnosed with a mental illness, hospitalised and only able to leave “against medical advice.”
Rosenhan's 1973 paper 'On Being Sane in Insane Places' was hugely influential, expediting the widespread closure of psychiatric institutions across America. It should shock us that a paper with such a small sample size had any impact at all; it should appal us that it seems to be based on lies. In 'The Great Pretender', Susannah Cahalan finds that Rosenhan "paints the picture of a brilliant but flawed psychologist who was likely also a fabulist."
It is said that the worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves. I disagree. It's the lies told by Stanford University Professors in the 1970s.
Principles for the Application of Human Intelligence, by Jason Collins
Suggested by Sam Dumitriu, Research Director, The Entrepreneurs Network
We tend to be biased in favour of the status quo. As a result, we tend to overweight risks and underweight benefits when deciding whether to adopt new technologies. In this article, Jason Collins flips our concerns about algorithmic decision making on their head, asking us to imagine what if human intelligence was the new technology. Collins writes “Humans may be a powerful technology with great potential. But until we have developed human decision-making systems that comply with some basic principles, we risk substantial harm.”
We need to start a more nuanced debate about the use of algorithms in decision making, Collins intuition pump is a good attempt at that. You can read my own attempt, with a special focus on fintech, here.
Small Projects, Big Companies, by Daniel Gross
Suggested by Sam Dumitriu, Research Director, The Entrepreneurs Network
When we think about entrepreneurship, we often picture people like Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, college dropouts who founded companies in their twenties. Yet some evidence suggests the average entrepreneur is older and that older entrepreneurs are on average more successful. One reason for the success of older entrepreneurs might be the benefit of having the right frustrations. As Daniel Gross notes:
“Pizza delivery. Event planning. Bill splitting. We see many of these at Pioneer. I call them “incombustible ideas”. Founders relentlessly try to ignite them, but they just don’t light up. I don’t blame the firebrands. Solving anecdotal problems is a good instinct in most situations. But it can also lead founding teams down a stray path, spending years working on a company in a dog market.”
Entrepreneurs in their early 20s don’t tend to have the kind of gripes that can lead to creating massive B2B businesses. To help them out Daniel Gross has listed 7 business problems worth solving. Perhaps, they might inspire you to build the next Salesforce.
Don’t miss another Big Idea – sign up here!