The scientists are human, too.
Walter Goodman favorably reviewed in The New York Times our NOVA story of a contemporary wild child, with the pseudonym Genie. He called the program "absorbing."
"In addition to stirring the compassion of Los Angeles child psychologists, Genie presented them with an opportunity for what was known as the 'forbidden experiment.' The hope was that her sad condition would enable researchers to test the thesis that the ability to speak a language must be learned by puberty if it is to be learnedd at all. (The perfect test, to keep a normal baby isolated during the so-called critical period before puberty, is of course forbidden.)...
"The appealing qualities that all the researchers found in Genie come through in the pictures here, taken from hundreds of hours of videotape of the much-studied teen-ager. We root for her to succeed. But you will learn more about those who tried to help her or study her or exploit her than about Genie herself. Their secret is that they are human, too."
