Should Wikipedia Reproduce Rorschach Plates Online?

Want to cheat on your upcoming Rorschach test? Just go to Wikipedia.

The New York Times reports that the online encyclopedia has been under fire from psychologists, who believe that publishing the series of 10 inkblot plates, as well as the common responses for each, diminishes the usefulness of the test.

The Rorschach plates were created nearly 90 years ago, so they are no longer under copyright protection in the United States, the Times said.

“The more test materials are promulgated widely, the more possibility there is to game it,” Bruce L. Smith, a psychologist and president of the International Society of the Rorschach and Projective Methods, told the Times. And American Psychological Association executive director for science Steve J. Breckler added, “Our ethics code that governs the behavior of psychologists talks about maintaining test security. We wouldn’t be in favor of putting the plates out where anyone can get hold of them.”

Trudi Finger, a spokeswoman for Hogrefe & Huber Publishing, the German company that bought an early publisher of Hermann Rorschach‘s book, said in an email to the Times last week, “We are assessing legal steps against Wikimedia,” but Wikimedia general counsel Mike Godwin was unconcerned, saying he “had to laugh a bit” at the legal and ethical arguments.

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