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Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment

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Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment

#31

Post by YouAreGreat »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #3
wildmusings wrote: post #2

The criticism that the participants were just doing as they were told has always seemed to me as rather missing the point. What better demonstration is there of the human capacity for cruelty than a bunch of Stanford undergrads torturing other students because a professor told them to?

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…

> fanatical about disputing Zimbardo's conclusions

What you're misrepresenting as "fanaticism" is simply a strong but justified emotional reaction to what the debunking of Zimbardo implies.

An emotional reaction triggered by the revelation of a revealed hostile bias against normal people just like themselves by formerly trusted scientists, formerly trusted journalists, and other formerly trusted opinion leaders.

Interesting times ahead.

Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment

#32

Post by chiefalchemist »

schizoidboy wrote: post #9

Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17287319 I have no strong opinions either way, but one meta-point I personally find interesting is: why don't journalists send a final draft of an article to the people involved and get a final round of comments? That just seems fair. Zimbardo claims some facts in the article are simply wrong, and either 1) those errors would be corrected, or 2) Zimbardo's…

Um. Pardon what might sound snarky / troll-esque... Because they're not really journalists?

We have stop stop calling anything with four legs a cat whem it's a dog.

Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment

#33

Post by garmaine »

didibus wrote: post #17

If 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…

Whatever problems there are, this doesn’t reflect them. As you say, he is the emblem of the field. How do you think he got there? This is someone who has made their career on one surprising result, and is probably quite used to the conference circuit and interviews now. Lots of personal reasons to fight the truth.

Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment

#34

Post by YouAreGreat »

Svexar wrote: post #21

Psychology isn't falsifiable. It is not science.

Not necessarily. In an ideal world psychology could be scientific.

In this world, however, we observe that the Behaviorists, who were uniquely concerned with holding psychology to strict scientific standards, where ganged up upon and hounded out of the field. The hounders can't be trusted.

Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment

#35

Post by panic »

didibus wrote: post #17

If 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 mean, has the field of psychology given us anything of value?

The interactive computer system, thanks to the vision of J.C.R. Licklider (who was trained as a psychologist).

Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment

#36

Post by bruthafez »

Zimbardo has lost all credibility, the fact that this begins with anything but a point-by-point refutation of the Medium article just highlights that fact.

The Medium article was highly illuminating and included so many different sources that Zimbardo's response here just reads as a desperate attempt to regain credibility that's LONG gone.

Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment

#37

Post by wildmusings »

dp141 wrote: post #18
schizoidboy wrote: post #9

Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17287319 I have no strong opinions either way, but one meta-point I personally find interesting is: why don't journalists send a final draft of an article to the people involved and get a final round of comments? That just seems fair. Zimbardo claims some facts in the article are simply wrong, and either 1) those errors would be corrected, or 2) Zimbardo's…

Having worked as a journalist previously, it's funny how this is often almost impossible in practice. Most of the time subjects don't want to comment, ignore, or responses are handled by a PR person who doesn't provide adequate comment. Then, when you do publish and you get X detail wrong they blast you, or the subject themselves bemoans how they were never given the opportunity to comment. Not that journalists are a…

Giving a statement to a journalist who has already made up their mind that you’re a bad guy is probably a mistake. Especially when it comes to politics, the other side will take whatever you say out of context and present it in the light most unfavorable to you. Morally-exculpatory nuance goes out the window, or buried at the bottom of the article (the part that we know no one reads). The headline will be spun to make you sound like a monster (see CNN’s headlines about Mr. Damore: that he thought “women are biologically unfit for tech jobs”).

Most people should make all statements with the assistance of professional PR if they’re in such a situation. Just like how anyone being interrogated by the police should only speak with the advice with a lawyer, no matter how innocent they actually are.

Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment

#38

Post by anitil »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #30

What's there to debate? Run it 2 or 3 times again. Publish the results. Is that not the definition of Science?

I think that the experiment would struggle to pass ethical review these days, so this might never be possible.

Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment

#39

Post by mickronome »

didibus wrote: post #17

If 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 reproducibility problems of psychology general - of which this is only a small fragment - is showing a few things:

1) Psychology is harder than almost anyone thought.

2) We are only now starting to have enough data to know just how hard psychology really is.

3) There is too much of an onus to publish, "Publish or perish" in science in general.

4) Negative results are very valuable for the public and all other researchers, but generally negative for the researchers career. Even scientists need food.

5) People will use whatever that can pass for facts to further their own agenda, whatever that may be. Left, right, and center. Incidentally, psychology as a science has now taught us that both through its successes in that area, and through how people outside of psychology believed the authorities of psychology to be implicitly right whenever it fit their point of view.

Psychology is a science, no need for the quotes, it's just happens to be incredibly hard to turn the experimental results into reliable facts in that particular field, so shortcomings of both people and systems become magnified. The high difficulty is probably also why some authorities might have gotten an unusually large role in the social networks underlying any area of research, and the public eye. People want answers, even if there isn't really enough data, and even when researchers says: We really don't know.

Science is always only our best guess, in some areas it pretty darn good, but in others not so much, yet.

Re: Zimbardo’s Rebuttal Against Recent Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment

#40

Post by wavegeek »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #30

What's there to debate? Run it 2 or 3 times again. Publish the results. Is that not the definition of Science?

It is very hard to get reproduction experiments published. Even though reproducibility is absolutely core to the scientific process.

You cannot make this stuff up.

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