At first, I was very skeptical of Ehrenreich and the way she organized the study. She makes it very clear at the beginning of the book that she wasn't doing this for emotional reasons. She explains: “My goal here was much more simple and objective: simply to see if I could match income with expenses, as the truly poor try to do every day (Ehrenreich, 2001, p. 6). This struck me as not only a bit heartless, but also a complete and utter flaw in his research methods. As a doctor of biology, Ehrenreich is of course used to the objective side of research, but he should have known from the start that the real world is not an objective laboratory. The people she spent all those months working and interacting with weren't just robots who only went to work and sleep. They had emotions, dreams, and aspirations other than just making enough money to pay next month's rent. At the beginning of the study, Ehrenreich took nothing into account. She simply set up a point-blank experiment, to try to live like the other half lives, but she soon discovered that it wasn't as simple as paying rent for an apartment.