Broken Speech

In 1939, speech pathologist Wendell Johnson believed that stuttering was a learned behavior, not a biological defect. To prove it, he conducted an experiment at an orphanage in Iowa. He took twenty-two children, half of whom spoke perfectly fine, and subjected them to intense negative therapy, telling them they were developing a stutter and must not speak unless they could do so perfectly.



Known today as the "Monster Study," this experiment ruined the lives of children who were shamed into silence. This book exposes the dark side of academia, where the pursuit of a hypothesis overrode basic humanity. It tracks the lifelong trauma of the subjects ("The Mary Tudor group") and the decades-long cover-up by a university that knew it had crossed the line.