1954: Senate Hearing Reporttrello1954

The document produced from the hearing has a pretty searing take down of Wertham early on: “Wertham's major claims rest only on a few selected and extreme cases of children's deviate behavior where it is said the comics have played an important role in producing delinquency. Although Wertham has claimed in his various writings that he and his associates have studied thousands of children, normal and deviate, rich and poor, gifted and mediocre, he presents no statistical summary of his investigations. He makes no attempt to substantiate that his illustrative cases are in any way typical of all delinquents what read comics. or that delinquents who do not read the comics do not commit similar types of offenses. He claims to use control groups (non-delinquents), but he does not describe these controls, bow they were set up, how they were equated with his experimental groups (delinquents) to assure that the difference in incidence of comic book reading, if any, was due to anything more than a selective process brought about by the particular area in which he was working. "On the basis of the material presented by Wertham with reference to children's experience with the comics, it is doubtful if he has met the requirements of scientific case study or the criteria for handling life history materials. He does not describe his techniques or show how they were set up so as to safe-guard his findings against invalid conclusions. Unless and until Wertham's methods of investigation are described, and demonstrated to be valid and reliable, the scientific worker in this field can place no credence in his results. "In conclusion, it may be said that no acceptable evidence has been produced by Wertham or anyone else for the conclusion that the reading of comic magazines has or has not a significant relation to delinquent behavior."

🔗 archive.org/details/juveniledelinque54unit/page/n5