Psychology isn't falsifiable. It is not science.
Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment
21–30 of 130 posts
Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment
#22Psychology isn't falsifiable. It is not science.
[deleted]
Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment
#23If anything, this whole debacle has revealed to me how pathetic the whole "science" of psychology is in its current state. I mean, the emblem of its field can't even acknowledge any flaw in his experiment. I'm not saying it was bogus, but it's pretty obviously biased and flawed in many ways. Even if executed with perfect methodology, which it clearly wasn't, that sample size and the bias in participants literally pro…
The problem, from where I sit, is that certain types of experiments have a built error detection or safety rails and psychology doesn't have this. For instance if a physics experiment has a result which appears to violate conservation of momentum or has information being sent faster than the speed of life, then it is likely that there is a flaw in the experiment. Unfortunately many of the social sciences don't have these easily detected error conditions. Thus, it becomes much harder to determine is an experiment is flawed or not. Making this situation even worse social sciences are very hard to control for and replicate because you can't just order "one standard human" for the experiment. Two experiments may not replicate each other due to no fault of the experiment. What we need is a model of human psychology that provides clear boundary conditions.
Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I find interesting are the people who are absolutely fanatical about disputing Zimbardo's conclusions. It's as if it's very important to them personally to be able to classify potential perpetrators of atrocities into two simplistic categories, People Who Do Stuff Like That and People Who, Somehow, Magically, Don't. Any experiments that might reveal human nature as the ultimate culprit are considered politically…
> Yes, the Stanford Prison Experiment was a dumpster fire. It was a scientific dumpster fire as well. What was the control group exactly?
If there had been a control group, it would have consisted of prisoners held by guards who didn't behave anything like prison guards are trained to behave.
So whether that would be useful is a matter of opinion, I guess. In the real world, you don't always have the luxury of controlled experiments. Ask astronomers, climatologists, paleontologists, or any number of other practitioners about that.
Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think that’s an accurate characterization of the criticism. The Milgram study, and its numerous replications, have pretty conclusively shown that most folks will do something they know is wrong if a perceived authority instructs them to. That’s not really in dispute. The allegation is that Zimbardo orchestrated his project in order to produce a more dramatic narrative of spontaneous cruelty that wasn’t scient…
Most of the people in the Milgram experiment knew it was fake. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/12/12/interviews-with-milgram...
Most of the people in the Milgram experiment said they knew it was fake which isn't the same thing as actually knowing. On one hand of course they knew it wasn't a real prison, they were told it wasn't a real prison and it clearly wasn't. Did they believe they weren't hurting "the prisoners"? That is far less clear and plenty of people have used the excuse that they didn't think they were actually hurting the other person.
I'm not weighing in one way or the other on the Milgram experiments, but we should not take reported experiences at face value in psychology experiments especially when there is a strong incentive for the subject to engage in self-deception.
Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment
#26Psychology isn't falsifiable. It is not science.
Your hypothesis seems too broad to be true.
Let’s get specific and see if you’re right. The theory of classical conditioning says if you present a neutral stimulus together with a biologically significant one, an animal will eventually show the same response to the neutral stimulus alone as it does to the biologically significant one.
Is this falsifiable? Seems like it. You’d just have to show cases where qualifying stimuli are repeated and the neutral stimulus alone provoked no reaction.
Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't see why that is something a person might want to believe, if at all possible? The people I respect want to know the truth, even if it's upsetting or disillusioning. I think Zimbardo and Milgram were similarly motivated, even if their methods were questionable. We are, after all, talking about a scientific experiment here. Starting with a conclusion and looking for evidence to justify it is what the research…
Yes, even if your comforting bias is pro-Zimbardo.
Sigh, here come the ad hominems. I do not have a "pro-Zimbardo bias," whatever that is. I wouldn't know Zimbardo if he came to the door selling encyclopedias.
I have read Solzhenitsyn, Mayer, Ma Bo, and any number of other authors who have recounted similar 'experiments' that also took place outside the comforting oversight of a peer-reviewed ethics committee, though. At some point, patterns emerge and conclusions are drawn.
Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment
#28If anything, this whole debacle has revealed to me how pathetic the whole "science" of psychology is in its current state. I mean, the emblem of its field can't even acknowledge any flaw in his experiment. I'm not saying it was bogus, but it's pretty obviously biased and flawed in many ways. Even if executed with perfect methodology, which it clearly wasn't, that sample size and the bias in participants literally pro…
The problem, from where I sit, is that certain types of experiments have a built error detection or safety rails and psychology doesn't have this. For instance if a physics experiment has a result which appears to violate conservation of momentum or has information being sent faster than the speed of life, then it is likely that there is a flaw in the experiment. Unfortunately many of the social sciences don't have t…
But there are methods to deal with more or less all of these problems, that is why social scientists learn research design/methodology separately so much. In my opinion being able to replicate results should still be required to accept a theory. My problem with this case is that things that I consider basics for the scientific method (replication or even a control group) are obviously missing.
Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment
#29If anything, this whole debacle has revealed to me how pathetic the whole "science" of psychology is in its current state. I mean, the emblem of its field can't even acknowledge any flaw in his experiment. I'm not saying it was bogus, but it's pretty obviously biased and flawed in many ways. Even if executed with perfect methodology, which it clearly wasn't, that sample size and the bias in participants literally pro…
I am not going to describe the multitude of advances due to psychological sciences. I'd just like to point out that while the Stanford Prison Experiments got a lot of press, these experiments occurred a long time ago in a particular subfield of pschology, and has very little to do with the validity of psychological sciences as a whole.
Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment
#30What's there to debate? Run it 2 or 3 times again. Publish the results.
Is that not the definition of Science?