The Jellinek Curve: When Ideology Shapes Research

If you’ve been to rehab, you probably remember receiving piles of handouts of varying quality, from coloring exercises to relapse prevention worksheets. The one that sticks in my mind is a picture of a u-shape curve that slopes to the bottom of the page, makes a little circle around itself, like a roller coaster, and slopes back up

The Geographical Cure

Fun fact:  in Hong Kong, one of the main locations for Alcoholics Anonymous meetings is a church almost directly across from the United States Consulate.  I wound up in both places just over a year ago.

Read the 1953 Harvard Crimson coverage of groundbreaking Yale alcohol study

 

In preparing a longer post about E. M. Jellinek and the Jellinek curve (to come soon), I came across an article titled “Yale Center of Alcohol Studies Investigates Drinking Habits of Carefree Undergraduates” from the Harvard Crimson, published November 21, 1953, and made available on the Crimson’s website.  The subject of the article is a ground breaking study of college drinking behavior, and it begins, quite hilariously, like this: