Wikipedia has published the images used in the Rorschach test.
Today's New York Times asks the question, "Has Wikipedia created a Rorschach cheat sheet?" That's a question?
How about looking to Hippocrates: "First, do no harm?"
What harm? Read everything you can get your hands on about Kenneth Bianchi, the Hillside Strangler. He was a fairly high-IQ serial killer who studied psychological literature, and nearly succeeded in passing himself off as a case of multiple personality disorder. At the extremes, publishing the Rorschach images provides a recipe for sociopaths to buy time by figuring out how to look normal--not to mention the confounding effect it'll have for therapists and researchers who want to use the test in the normal ranges of the psychological spectra.
Publishing the images destroys their ability to elicit a candid, unstudied response. Therein lies their SOLE benefit. Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia founder) should have been smart enough to figure that out, and to take a stand on this example against the vortex of the Internet, which sucks everything inward and downward.
Much of psychological testing relies on the ability to elicit norms and variances. To do that, you need back-comparability between those who take the instrument now vs earlier. If that's destroyed, value is lost. No two ways about it.
Oh, I forgot. There's always the lowest-common-denominator argument that made tabloids out of the great newspapers: "If I don't do it, somebody with lower ethics will."
So what. Take a stand. Give it a try. Oops, too late.
