An award-winning 2018 documentary entitled "Three Identical Strangers" tells a provocative and ultimately disturbing story of three men who through a series of seeming coincidences discover 19 years after their births and subsequent adoptions that they are triplets. What seems like a separation that was made by the adoption agency at the time for the purpose of having a better chance of placing each boy in a loving home ends up being a far more disturbing tale of scientists purposely separating twins at birth to see if they can once and for all put to rest the question of whether nature or nurture plays a larger role on human growth and development.
Suffice it to note that the families who adopted these infants had no idea that they were part of a multiple-child birth. As investigators dug deeper, they found that the separation of these three boys was part of a larger study overseen by a psychiatrist who conspired with this adoption agency to deliberately separate twins for purposes of scientific inquiry. The research is eerily similar to the wildly inhumane and unethical studies perpetrated by the Nazi regime, made all the more disturbing because the lead investigator, prominent psychiatrist Peter Neubauer, was a refugee from Austria who escaped Nazi persecution himself.
As I was watching this film, I couldn’t help but wonder, what was the name of this study, and why isn’t it taught as one of the infamous examples of ethical violations in research, alongside prominent examples such as Watson’s conditioning of baby Albert and the Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis? Moreover, did this study actually get approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB), which is the overseeing body that approves and sanctions research in the field of psychology?
It appears that this research was conducted in the 1960s-1970s, which would have been decades after formal ethical guidelines were codified in the field of psychology, unlike the Watson study which was significantly older, as was the start of the Tuskegee study. This is why the ethical violations are so much more disturbing in this case, as the investigators could not hide behind “we didn’t know any better back then” (although some of those involved with the project attempt such a flimsy justification for their participation as data collectors).
The documentary provided more questions than answers. A database search of scholarly, peer-reviews journals uncovers no mention of this study or official reaction from the field after the release of this film. In fact, the most information I could gain was from other writers for Psychology Today, most of whom offered reviews of the film after its release, as did other mainstream publications.
For example, fellow PT writer Hoffman (2018) doesn’t appear to be as disturbed by the actions of the researcher, even suggesting that those who were upset may have been overreacting, or that the documentary may have promoted a particular position regarding the research that isn’t necessarily accurate. In contrast, another PT writer, Trimberger (2018) uses the release of the documentary to reflect on the larger question of how more ethical studies on twins have been conducted to answer significant questions in the field. I wish that there was more substantive information regarding Neubauer’s study, such as whether it did go through IRB, what agencies may have funded it, and how many participants were in the sample. Without such information, each of these analyses, while interesting in the issues they raise, feels incomplete.
Based on what I can gather from other mainstream publications, there was no informed consent from the participants, rendering the study unethical from the start. This is another critical reason why I wonder whether it was ever sanctioned by an ethical review board or the researchers embarked on the investigation without any official approval. Given that the “results” were never actually published, and the data appear to be sealed and archived at Yale University — with explicit directives to remain so until 2065 — even referring to this as research or a study is dubious at best.
Alas, this documentary raises substantial ethical questions that unfortunately are not resolved — or able to be — by the end of it. Moreover, it shows to devastating effect the long-lasting repercussions on unsuspecting participants when they are deceived and used by scientists for their own gain. My impression at the end of watching this film was that it casts a wide shadow across our field and that such exploitative scientists do a tremendous disservice to the rest of us who seek to use our positions for the betterment of society and ultimately the participants we recruit to participate in our research projects.
If anyone is able to answer the questions I have posed regarding more explicit details of the twin study presented by this film, I welcome your comments/feedback.
Copyright Azadeh Aalai 2019