ABOUT | Astroten

ABOUT

The story of our name

In 1966, in a US psychiatric hospital, a doctor named Charles Hofling set out to investigate the power of authority.

He invented a fake medicine and placed bottles of the imagined drug in the hospital pharmacy. Every bottle clearly stated: Maximum dose 10mg.

Then, he asked a group of nurses a theoretical question: "If a doctor called you on the phone (against hospital policy) and instructed you to give your patient 20mg of this medicine, would you?"

94% said no, of course, they'd follow the rules.

But among another group of nurses, Hofling tested the reality. Posing as "Dr Smith", he phoned them up and asked them to give 20mg dose of the stuff.

And guess what?

95% of nurses did.

They ignored the label, flouted policy, and unquestioningly followed the instructions of an anonymous authority to overdose their patients. Thankfully, the pills were harmless.

The name of the imaginary drug was ASTROTEN*

*In fact, the name of the drug in the experiment was Astrogen. But somewhere along the line, it was misreported as Astroten and the mistake was carried forward. When we found this out, we considered using the correct version - Astrogen - but actually, prefer Astroten! More space-y.