Talk:Military stress card

Is it underlying reason true?

It shouldn't be hard to find expert opinions as to whether or not recruits were more or less able to tolerate the stress of basic training. Other than Louis Gosset's first line from An Officer and a Gentleman; latest recruits are always called the worst they've ever seen. This article for example says quality is down https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/recruits-ineligibility-tests-the-military-1403909945 except it dates at 2014. The period for the supposed stress cards would be the mid 1990s. That article also addresses the proportion of qualified candidates who contacted a recruiter, rather than the quality of those in basic training. It also only vaguely mentions if recruiting goals are being met. IIRC during the mid 90s there were few if any enlistment bonuses, indicating there was no reason to send less than stellar candidates to training. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 20:01, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Dennis: Interesting line of inquiry for the mutable recruiting standards. See [1][2][3][4][5] for related concerns re pot smoking, obesity, single motherhood, tattoos. But where to put it?-Brianhe (talk) 20:46, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

The post-Iraq War articles are dealing with a totally different issue: they weren't meeting recruiting and retention goals because fewer people wanted to be in a war, particularly with repeated deployments. It's true a lot of the coverage about the wartime personnel issues mentioned the stress cards, but the origin of the myth is in the 1990s, during the post-Cold War drawdown, when the only recruiting problem would have been a strong economy. Except unemployed was 7.5% in 1992, and didn't drop below 5% until 1997. As far as I can tell, the only basis for the origin of the myth was dislike of the Clinton administration, and opposition to reducing force sizes during that period.

Anyway, here's a report from someone who knows more about this than me. After the first Gulf War, their was public enthusiasm for the armed forces. The new 1993 minimum standards for 90% high school diplomas and 60% with above average on the AFQT scores was easily met. However in, the years from that point, quality declined through 2002, thought the minimums were never missed by any branch of service. They have a list of possible causes, including increased college and others. I guess it is at least superficially possible for someone to believe the stress card story is plausible, though in fact it's more complicated than that. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 22:22, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

I added some data about the 1990s. It might be too far off topic and excessive but I think it gives some context. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 00:48, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

What is it/what does it do?

The article is missing an explanation what it even is or what its purpose is. It only talks about how it might exist, and how it might soften the military. So it's a card with a thermometer, but what are you measuring? Body temperature? "Press here" is what the card says, what happens if you press it? Why does it exist, and what is it supposed to do? Also it is nor clear at all how the "background" subject relates to it. The whole background paragraph only mentions the stress card once, by saying it existed during the time of ... and then follows a text about how recruit number and quality changed during that time. It is not clear if the stress card was issued because of these numbers, or if the stress card caused these numbers to change, or how they are related. It is not possible to understand this article without prior knowledge about this thing. 46.223.193.141 (talk) 19:23, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Military stress card

The Military stress card article should be deleted; it is based on misinterpretation and misrepresentation of the TIME source.

It contains the sentences:

"The military stress card, a wallet-size card incorporating a liquid crystal thermometer, is the subject of debate whether or not its use by recruits is an urban legend. According to Snopes.com and Stars and Stripes, stress cards can not be used by recruits in boot camp to halt training.[1][2] But according to Time magazine, it was issued for this purpose by the Navy for recruits heading to boot camp at RTC Great Lakes."

However, the TIME source does not mention anything about a card that incorporates a liquid crystal thermometer.

The TIME source talks about the same card that was mentioned in the snopes (which is blue and does not contain a thermometer). TIME does not say it can be used to halt training. It says: "The card instructs a recruit to hand it over to a Navy trainer if he or she feels blue." and if we look at the image on snopes we see the card contains the sentence: "present this card to your RDC".

The image used in the article is misleading; that is not the real card. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.72.102.7 (talk) 06:23, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

If you are not intentionally misrepresenting the source to add a hoax to Wikipedia then you should get that article deleted.

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,138095,00.html

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/stress-cards/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_stress_card — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.72.102.7 (talk) 05:52, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Moved cmt above from my personal talkpage so more people can participate. I may or may not have time to deal with it right away. ☆ Bri (talk) 15:24, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Military stress card

Please provide evidence for the following claims:

-The TIME source is talking about a card that incorporates a liquid crystal thermometer -The TIME source says this card can be used by recruits in boot camp to halt training -The image used in the article shows the military stress card (the card shown has nothing to do with the military; the Snopes article contains an image of the real card) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.72.102.7 (talk) 17:02, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

I have asked Dennis Bratland to provide evidence for these claims. I did get a response but not the evidence i asked for. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.72.102.7 (talk) 17:11, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

I did fix the problem but my improvements have been undone. So now the article is misrepresenting the TIME source again. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.72.102.7 (talk) 17:15, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Don't expect a response in five minutes. Five days would be unusually quick. This article is not that high a priority and most of us are in the middle of other things at the moment. But rest assured we can work with you. Your "improvements" were wholesale deletions of most of the article content, and the only clear reason you've given is that one image is misidentified? Why not simply go ahead now and change the caption a little to more accurately identify the image?

I think we should all agree that, as it says in the very first sentence of this article, this subject is not straightforward, but rather is something that has been widely misunderstood and misreported by various different sources. The basic point of the article is to review various claims that have been made over the years, and try to state clearly and verifiably who said what when, and which of those things we can be sure of and which are dubious. To get our in-text attribution correct, in other words. I think the main goal is to phrase it correctly so we aren't mixing up facts, opinions and speculation. We can do that. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 18:07, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

You wrote: "the only clear reason you've given is that one image is misidentified?" Please read the section above, the editsummaries in the history of the article and the TIME and Snopes pages. Also see your page and Bri's page. You have responded there. Bri's page contains the same text as the first post of the section above and it gives multiple reasons why this article is problematic.

The article is misrepresenting what TIME says.

The article says:

"The military stress card, a wallet-size card incorporating a liquid crystal thermometer, is the subject of debate whether or not its use by recruits is an urban legend. According to Snopes.com and Stars and Stripes, stress cards can not be used by recruits in boot camp to halt training.[1][2] But according to Time magazine, it was issued for this purpose by the Navy for recruits heading to boot camp at RTC Great Lakes."

TIME does not mention a card that incorporates a thermometer.

TIME does not say this alleged card can be used to force superiors to stop the training or be more nice.

The TIME article is referring to the card seen in the image on the Snopes page.

The image used on wikipedia is not of the real card, but of some weird other non-military card that has nothing to do with this topic.

The real card simply informs soldiers that if they feel depressed or wish to self harm that they have some options of people they can talk to.

Changing the caption would not fix the problem that this image is misleading because it is a completely different card that has nothing to do with what the article is about. If there is a picture of a zebra on the page about inflation it is best to remove that picture, not to explain in the subtitles that zebras and inflation have nothing to do with eachother.

Please re-implement my improvements.

I read through all of the sources, and none of them mention a "liquid crystal thermometer". Schazjmd (talk) 00:08, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Of course not. I hope I don't get sent to Guantanamo for revealing this secret; but US military personnel use their eyes and ears to detect unhealthy levels of stress in others. Not liquid crystal thermometers. Thermometers measure temperature, not stress. Please don't tell wikileaks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.72.102.7 (talk) 00:59, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

I expect that the image name on commons (of a card issued by a Family Support Center on a Navy base) somehow got conflated with the "stress" card that the sources talk about. Removing the picture and the mention of the liquid crystal thermometer would clean it up. Schazjmd (talk) 01:12, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

That would be a good start. But unfortunately there are quite a few problems with the page. The TIME source simply does not support the claims made in the article. Reading Wikipedia it seems like TIME is saying there are cards that recruits in bootcamp can use to stop their training. The source is being misrepresented. 188.72.102.7 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.72.102.7 (talk) 01:22, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Good point, there's other tweaking also needed. I'll take a look at this again tomorrow. Schazjmd (talk) 01:29, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

I think part of the problem is there are probably two cards. One is a liquid crystal thermometer as shown in the current image, including official Navy logos and such, supposedly measures stress with the same principle as a mood ring. The blurred out text (due to copyright issues but available at the vendor's website [6]) explains this. The other card is more apocryphal, Snopes has a picture of something, with no military identification at all, but is it authentic?

By the way, I took the picture used in the article, and probably have the card somewhere. It is definitely authentic. ☆ Bri (talk) 01:41, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Here you go: https://www.quora.com/Do-stress-cards-actually-exist-in-the-military/answer/Vance-Baker

quote: " Do things call stress cards exist and have they at times been handed out by units or support organization within the military. Yes. Were the given out by any branch of service to everyone? No. Did they give any power to avoid doing anything? No."

So yes the card you have is authentic but its not from any branch of service. And you have misrepresented the TIME source.