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The Stanford Prison Experiment was hugely influential. We learned it was a fraud (2018)

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Re: The Stanford Prison Experiment was hugely influential. We learned it was a fraud (2018)

#31

I'm guessing most ted talks reference ""science"" that can't be replicated as well. It's ironic that this of happening immediately before we enter the ai fueled post-truth era.

The debunking of Zimbardo's experiment has been well known for many decades. It isn't something that happened just recently.

Re: The Stanford Prison Experiment was hugely influential. We learned it was a fraud (2018)

#32

Are there discoveries or theories from the field of psychology that are (a) not obvious and (b) generally regarded as correct? For example, things like general relativity, continental drift, or evolution from the fields of physics, geology, and biology. Does psychology have anything like that?

Not a psychology researcher, but I think that the Milgram experiment has been fairly well replicated. Please anyone let me know if not.

I personally found it to be non-obvious.

Re: The Stanford Prison Experiment was hugely influential. We learned it was a fraud (2018)

#33

Are there discoveries or theories from the field of psychology that are (a) not obvious and (b) generally regarded as correct? For example, things like general relativity, continental drift, or evolution from the fields of physics, geology, and biology. Does psychology have anything like that?

I tend to think of it more like chemistry, in that once you understand how the small parts fit together and impact each other, it helps understand and predict results when more complex combinations of those parts are mixed together. And you can look at a complex result and break it down to know what parts it is made of.

Re: The Stanford Prison Experiment was hugely influential. We learned it was a fraud (2018)

#34
post #21

Everyone's heard the stories of how it was "fake." How many of you have actually read Dr. Zimbardo's own response to the debunking? https://www.prisonexp.org/response

No one because they want it to be false cuz of neo-romanticism

[deleted]

Re: The Stanford Prison Experiment was hugely influential. We learned it was a fraud (2018)

#35

Everyone's heard the stories of how it was "fake." How many of you have actually read Dr. Zimbardo's own response to the debunking? https://www.prisonexp.org/response

I have read it. He basically doesn’t address any of the criticism, he just reframes to claim that the experiment was actually testing something different than what we’ve all understood it to be. Maybe that is true. In which case he would be a terrible scientist rather than a fraudulent one. Even so, that still makes the legacy of the SPE false, and one has to wonder why he never corrected the record in the nearly 50…

> the experiment was actually testing something different than what we’ve all understood it to be

Even if this is true, whose fault is it? Is it Zimbardo's? Or is it all the academics and media hacks who ran with their own mistaken understanding of what the experiment was actually testing, without bothering to check their understanding against what Zimbardo actually published? (Not to mention all the supporting information that he went to great trouble to make publicly available, as he describes in his response.)

> one has to wonder why he never corrected the record

Trying to correct mistaken or intentionally false claims in the media is a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. Very few scientists have the time or the wherewithal to do this. Zimbardo published several peer-reviewed papers, as he describes in his response; that's the "record". Anyone who takes media descriptions of any scientific research as accurate is kidding themselves.

> its failure to replicate

Zimbardo's response specifically addresses this point (both in discussing the claimed failure to replicate by a British research team, and in describing other research which has replicated the main findings), so I don't think you can just help yourself to this claim.

Re: The Stanford Prison Experiment was hugely influential. We learned it was a fraud (2018)

#36
post #14

I'm guessing most ted talks reference ""science"" that can't be replicated as well. It's ironic that this of happening immediately before we enter the ai fueled post-truth era.

TED Talks are a disaster in general. Lots of charlatans and bad science. People should treat them aa entertainment, not as a reputable, fact-checked publication of science.

A rule of thumb is if the speaker talks in the signature TED(tm) tone of voice, it's probably just entertainment.

Re: The Stanford Prison Experiment was hugely influential. We learned it was a fraud (2018)

#37

Are there discoveries or theories from the field of psychology that are (a) not obvious and (b) generally regarded as correct? For example, things like general relativity, continental drift, or evolution from the fields of physics, geology, and biology. Does psychology have anything like that?

the genetic influence on IQ increases with age

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4739500/

Re: The Stanford Prison Experiment was hugely influential. We learned it was a fraud (2018)

#38

Are there discoveries or theories from the field of psychology that are (a) not obvious and (b) generally regarded as correct? For example, things like general relativity, continental drift, or evolution from the fields of physics, geology, and biology. Does psychology have anything like that?

Instinctual drift is somewhat counterintuitive. In particular, it's controversial how much it affects human behavior in modern society. But it replicates!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instinctive_drift

More generally, psychological concepts that can be tested in animals, particularly those found repeatedly in many different animals, can be pretty robust. It's experiments on humans that are hard, both for ethical reasons and because it's hard to "experiment" on something that's as smart as you are. But it's also specifically human cognitive psychology that makes the headlines.

While Kahneman and Tversky's mistakes have been widely touted by people who don't like them, many parts of prospect theory also replicate:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0886-x

Re: The Stanford Prison Experiment was hugely influential. We learned it was a fraud (2018)

#40

Are there discoveries or theories from the field of psychology that are (a) not obvious and (b) generally regarded as correct? For example, things like general relativity, continental drift, or evolution from the fields of physics, geology, and biology. Does psychology have anything like that?

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