Talk:Rat Park

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: Use versus abuse

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text:  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)
thread_title:  Introduction 

message: 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)
thread_title:  criticism - allegedly rats hate taste of opiates 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Related research 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Deleted content unsupported by sources used 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Reconciling Alexander's Senate paper with published results 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Relevance of funding line