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Tibees brings an art historian to the inkblot test

Mary McGillivray joins Toby to examine creativity, interpretation and the assumptions behind Rorschach's famous plates.

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Tibees Story of October 27, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? The channel's weekly summary: what went up this week, what is drawing views now, and where the channel stands among similar channels.

Rorschach slop is out of control

Things we can learn from the video

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3:10Rorschach emphasized how people perceived an image, rather than simply which object they named.
4:20Scoring codes distinguish whole-image answers, perceived movement and original responses.
16:36James Wood says some scores have limited valid uses, but most have little or no validity.
20:48Mary McGillivray connects seeing forms in random shapes with a long history of artistic inspiration.
28:02Toby and Mary explore how scientific image-making also involves interpretation and creativity.

What does an inkblot reveal about the person interpreting it, including the person doing the scoring? Toby's only new Tibees upload this week, "Rorschach slop is out of control", turns that question back on a famously mysterious psychological test.

She opens Hermann Rorschach's original text and works through its scoring: whole images, movement, color and unusual answers. The distinction matters. As Toby explains, "Rorschach believed that what his patients saw mattered less than how they saw it." Clinical psychologist James Wood then draws a line between scores with limited valid uses and the many he says have little or none.

The essay takes a particularly interesting turn when art historian Mary McGillivray joins. Seeing figures in random marks is also material for artists, she explains, bringing in Leonardo da Vinci's advice to look at splatters and stones. Together, they question Rorschach's grouping of artists with psychiatric patients and explore the creativity shared by art and science. Toby's verdict has a neat sting: "It's criticized for being bad science, but it might also be criticized for being bad art."

Viewers are supplying interpretations of their own. High-fiving bears recur in the comments, alongside a Pikachu and a very literal explanation involving spilled ink and folded paper. Others pick up the discussion of scientific work as a creative practice.

The upload reached roughly 29,000 views in its first 16 hours and is comfortably the channel's busiest video right now. Daily channel viewing is running at more than four times its usual pace, although subscribers stayed unchanged over the week. Among nearby science channels, Domain of Science is also seeing above-usual daily viewing, while Ben Eater is quieter than usual.

Beyond the inkblots, "A Different Way to Measure Dimension" and "The cost of adding gold edges to a book" continue to draw smaller daily audiences, keeping mathematics and bookmaking beside Toby's excursion into psychology.

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Where next?

Also in Science and experimentsA video worth knowingHank Green tests RFK Jr.'s measles explanation against vaccination trendsHis commentary contrasts Kennedy's account of pandemic disruption with falling MMR coverage and the demands of containing a highly infectious disease.Channel: Hank Green · Story of October 31, 2026

A different discovery todayVideo taking off 47x its usual first dayDiane Sawyer's Patrick Stewart interview closes World News TonightThe October 29 edition also covers Alaska's Senate probes and a Pentagon firing, but its comment section belongs largely to the actor.Channel: ABC News · Story of October 31, 2026

What viewers say

They all look like two bears high fiving to me
@alm958See it on YouTube
Rorschach's notes on how to use the Rorschach test is like a Rorschach test on Rorschach's own psychology.
@taylankammerSee it on YouTube
"Back in 1999" *shows grainy black and white footage*. Way to make me feel old.
@onc-g9zSee it on YouTube

4 more comments

"it looks like someone has spilled ink on a piece of paper and then folded it in half briefly before opening it back up and letting it dry"
@daruekellerSee it on YouTube
30:56 I feel like people who say science and math as fields of research are not creative are revealing what little they know about this work. It feels incredibly creative to me.
@mehill00See it on YouTube
Pikachu lurching forward in a puddle, after letting off a lightening bolt, the other half is the reflection in the puddle.
@bearwolffishSee it on YouTube
The first one looks like two angels flanking some kind of large ancient technology.
@MetroAndroidSee it on YouTube