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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)

#121

Post by saghm »

d3w4s9 wrote: post #110
saghm wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading his response, it seems pretty sketchy the way he defends some of the stuff. I'm not sure "fraud" is the term I'd use as much as "cruel" and "unethical" human experimentation: > One of three guards on a shift that day left the area during a prisoner count and wasn't even requiring prisoners to follow orders issued by the other guards, so David Jaffee, acting as the SPE Warden, took this guard aside and asked h…

At the time of the experiment, there isn't really such a thing as the ethics of social psychology research. Strict, formal ethics rules appeared after this.

Sure, but given that he refers to 47 years having passed since the experiment, I'd expect he's well aware of the ethics that have evolved since then. It wouldn't be hard for him to admit that in the light of current ethics, the experiment probably wouldn't fly, but instead he doubles down and insists that the experiment was both ethical and correct, which is a pretty terrible take.

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

#122

Post by tacocataco »

Sophistifunk wrote: post #19
mensetmanusman wrote: post #12

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.

I'm still waiting for my anti-mosquito star wars system. Maybe the "AI" will help.

What happened to the mosquito "genophage" where the male mosquitoes were altered to be sterile?

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

#123

Post by mcv »

overstay8930 wrote: post #117
beenBoutIT wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the record, Zimbardo is a fraudulent pseudo scientist. Even in a best case scenario Zimbardo's work doesn't qualify as any sort of actual science.

> doesn't qualify as any sort of actual science. That could be said about plenty of psychologists and sociologists. I hate that the general public thinks of the social sciences on the same level as other branches of science.

It is an ongoing problem with psychology. Psychology desperately wants to be a real science, and puts a lot of effort into teaching and emphasising the scientific method, statistics, etc, to the point that most of the emphasis on the scientific method came from my psychology classes, but somehow the people who choose psychology as their field of research seem to be more interested in spectacular results than in proper science. Psychology's history is steeped in unscientific thinking and elevating hypothesis to theory without proper scientific rigor, and it's struggling to free itself from that history. Keeping experiments like this in high regard is part of the problem.

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

#124

Post by mcv »

lupusreal wrote: post #90
mgh2 wrote: post #39

Is there anything similar on Milgram's experiment? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

The popular shocking interpretation of the Milgram experiment is that most people will follow orders and obey authority, even in service of an ideology they don't believe in. For instance, if given an order by Nazis to kill Jews, most people would follow the order and do so. There's a Nazi in all of us, that's the shocking result that made the experiment famous. It's BS though. The Milgram experiment s actually showe…

I've also heard that most of the people who continued pressing the button believed the shocks to be fake. The actual number of people who believed they were electrocuting someone and yet continued doing it was very small.

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

#125

Post by mcv »

jongjong wrote: post #48

I'm not surprised. I never believed in the "power corrupts" narrative. It's just a cover for an uglier reality that we are ruled by people who want to do evil and corrupt people are selected for positions of power because they can be controlled into enabling and covering for those evil deeds.

Does power corrupt or does power attract the corrupt? I do think power is unhealthy, but its corruption works more slowly and subtly than these experiments can possibly test.

Not to mention that these guards didn't have real power; they weren't the ones running the experiment. They had a very limited pretend power. If you want to know whether power corrupts, it's better to look at Zimbardo himself.

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

#126

Post by ruszki »

creatonez wrote: post #108
pdonis wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 infor…

> Even if this is true, whose fault is it? Is it Zimbardo's? The study itself described what they thought it might be able to demonstrate. The fraud is Zimbardo's. He was pretty clear that he was testing the hypothesis that the guards would become tyrants. He told the guards to become tyrants.

So at the end, was that shown at least in this experiment that generally it’s enough to tell people that they should act as a tyrant and they would do as that?

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

#127

Post by qingcharles »

jongjong wrote: post #48

I'm not surprised. I never believed in the "power corrupts" narrative. It's just a cover for an uglier reality that we are ruled by people who want to do evil and corrupt people are selected for positions of power because they can be controlled into enabling and covering for those evil deeds.

I've spent sufficiently long time in jails to watch new guards start the job and go from being fun, friendly guys, to being power-infesting evil jerks. There are few guards who manage to keep their nice ways intact.

And on another note, I have run forums with hundreds of thousands of users. Almost every time I have promoted a user to staff they became (literally) Hitler within six months and I had to ban them.

IMO, power definitely corrupts.

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