The Monster Study

The Monster Study was a non-consensual experiment performed on 22 orphan children in Davenport, Iowa in 1939 about stuttering. It was conducted by Wendell Johnson through the University of Iowa with the physical experiment being performed by his graduate student Mary Tudor. Wendell Johnson, a former student at the University of Iowa, dedicated his life’s work to identifying the causes of stuttering and discovering a cure. Johnson, who had a severe stutter himself, wanted to understand where it originated and how it could be stopped, largely because he had been teased throughout his life. When he began studying speech pathology, he tested his own speech patterns, and the leading theory at the time suggested that stuttering had genetic origins. Johnson, who understood the impact that early stuttering could have on a child’s mental state, once stated, “The stuttering child is a crippled child.”  Read more here.