Watching the Documentary Film "Three Identical Strangers"

Abstract

"Three Identical Strangers" (2018) is a sensational documentary film telling a "bizarre" story of American triplets – Edward Galland, David Kellman and Robert Shafran – who were born on July 12, 1961 by an unmarried young mother who gave them up for adoption. All of them were adopted as six-month-old babies by separate families. All of them grew up unaware that actually they were born as a quadruplet, and that their fourth brother died at birth. The film tells us that neither the boys nor their adoptive parents were informed that all of them were the part of a secret twin study experiment conducted by a child psychiatrist Peter Bela Neubauer (1913-2008).

This paper attempts to cast light on interesting aspects of both research ethics and prenatal psychology.