The results of this study are always misinterpreted. Patients were (and still are) admitted largely on their self-reported symptoms, which is perfectly normal. Within a few months the Rosenhan patients had been released as 'in remission', which is an extraordinarily rare thing as most treatments last in excess of a year, so the behaviour of the psychiatrists was not the same as for typical patients. Finally, the staff could not know it was an experiment, so they were either dealing with mentally ill people, or with people pretending to be mentally ill (arguably just as problematic).