The rise and fall of bogus stories about Little Albert and the history of psychology

What is it about?

This is the story of sensationalistic discoveries in the history of psychology which turned out to be bogus. I examine the rise and fall of claims about the identity of “Little Albert” (John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner’s famous subject). Using medical records from 1919 to 1920 and close readings of published work, I argue that articles by Skip Beck, Allan Fridlund and colleagues were based on questionable logic and selective reporting of data. Using unpublished correspondence, media coverage, and editorial exchanges, I offer a backstage look at the process by which claims about Albert’s identity were published in APA journals, abetted by credulous editors and then contradicted by new research. In publicizing both sides of this controversy, textbook authors and journalists played a more constructive role than critics of popularization might expect. Rather than a simple case of truth winning out over falsehood, this seems to have been a clash of rhetorical styles and sources of authority. That clash complicated the process of peer review, which became a negotiation over conflicting criteria from different disciplines.

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