Section Hub · Media
What has been written, filmed, and reported.
The study became publicly knowable largely through the work of journalists, documentary filmmakers, and the subjects themselves. This section catalogs the major works — what each one covers, how it came to be made, and where it sits in the unfolding of the story.
The reporting on the Neubauer study is uneven. Some works are based on years of access to the subjects and to limited parts of the records; others are reactive coverage produced after a documentary release. The annotations below indicate where each work sits on that spectrum, and what original material it brings.
Documentaries
Three Identical Strangers
Tim Wardle’s feature documentary on the triplets Bobby Shafran, Eddy Galland, and David Kellman. The work that brought the study to a mass audience and prompted the partial record releases that followed. Sundance U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Storytelling, 2018.
The Twinning Reaction
Lori Shinseki’s earlier and quieter documentary, which centered on twins reunited as adults — including Doug Rausch and Howard Burack — and was the first film to address the study directly.
Books
Identical Strangers
Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein’s alternating-voice memoir of meeting each other for the first time as adults and discovering, in the process, that they had been part of a research study.
The longer bibliography
Books that touch on the study in the context of broader histories of twin research, adoption ethics, or postwar American psychiatry.