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Behavior of young children in a situation simulating entrapment in refrigerators

pediatrics.aappublications.org

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Re: Behavior of young children in a situation simulating entrapment in refrigerators

#31

Post by troels »

davidw wrote: post #28
cellularmitosis wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put a microphone inside and outside the fridge. If the noise coming from inside the fridge is louder than the noise from outside the fridge, pop the hatch automatically. Not a viable solution for 1958x but today we are talking about a few dollars in electronics and an electromagnet.

Not a viable solution today: the problem is not fridges in active use in houses, it's fridges in people's backyards/dumps/barns/whatever where they are no longer plugged into anything. More information on the problem: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2586/is-it-impossib...

A battery could presumably power it long after being unplugged. But you're right - That article basically states that the problem was solved in 1958, by replacing the mechanical latch with a magnetic door. Coincidentally this research was from 1958, so I assume there is a connection there. Thanks for posting that - It puts thing into perspective.

Re: Behavior of young children in a situation simulating entrapment in refrigerators

#32

Post by gregtour »

gregtour wrote: post #30

As someone who has lived in Fukushima Prefecture, I am going to dare and ask, can nuclear energy, fertilizer, and reverse osmosis save our souls? Shutting down computer, opening window, sitting outside.

Jesus Christ, philosoraptor, hydrochronics, manana, pbr, manzanas, after apple picking, eclipse.

Re: Behavior of young children in a situation simulating entrapment in refrigerators

#33

Post by ColinWright »

nitrogen wrote: post #25
ColinWright wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be good to add (1958) to the title Won't fit in the 80 character limit.

Get rid of the word "young", perhaps?

Now too late, but even so, given the moderators' tendencies to change titles so they match exactly the article, even when the supplied title is significantly more informative, I've stopped trying to be helpful with titles.

Re: Behavior of young children in a situation simulating entrapment in refrigerators

#34

Post by vacri »

nitrogen wrote: post #27
nitrogen wrote: post #7

It would be good to add (1958) to the title -- I doubt such an experiment would fly today, and this presents a fascinating look back in history both at the state of experimental ethics and the development of modern refrigerator doors. The only experience I have with fridges so old is the one that my grandfather rotated 90 degrees and buried in his yard, to serve as a root cellar. I think the door may have had an actu…

For some reason this post by Ihavenoname is [dead], but it is an interesting anecdote. Ihavenoname 12 minutes ago | link [dead] There were a frightening number of children that were trapped in the old refrigerators. They often used them as hiding places and could not get out until they were redesined They had latches and even when there were interior releases it was not obvious to a child how to open it when in the d…

The answer is: these days you wouldn't need a study. All you'd need to do is cause a PR ruckus and it would change.

The issue with ethics in this experiment is not "the researchers might be creepy people", it's that it violates the basic idea that human experimentation on non-consenting people shouldn't cause harm (which includes negative emotions like fear, embarassment, etc). Sometimes such experimentation does get past ethics committees, but it generally has much more stringent reporting requirements and control, plus it usually has to answer a useful question and not something trivial. If kids are getting locked in fridges, this is not something that particularly needs an empirical study, just change the fridge doors.

Re: Behavior of young children in a situation simulating entrapment in refrigerators

#35

Post by 46Bit »

slurgfest wrote: post #29
JonnieCache wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't fridges pretty airtight though? Isn't that the whole point here? If so, then crying loud and long is at best a hell of a bet. I'd be willing to bet that fridges are pretty good sound insulators. The inside is sort of suspended IIRC.

Crying loud is a pretty good mammal trick for most situations other than an imminent predator-grabbing - being trapped in an airtight refrigerator is definitely an evolutionary edge case.

Agreed. Although one option would be to require all two year old children to escape a refrigerator or die trying, in order to evolve out of this problem.

Re: Behavior of young children in a situation simulating entrapment in refrigerators

#36

Post by vacri »

ColinWright wrote: post #8
JonnieCache wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't fridges pretty airtight though? Isn't that the whole point here? If so, then crying loud and long is at best a hell of a bet. I'd be willing to bet that fridges are pretty good sound insulators. The inside is sort of suspended IIRC.

Airtight does not imply soundproof. Well-insulated is better correlated, and fridges do tend to be that as well.

Not soundproof, but certainly sound-dampening. Quality speakers have an airhole to allow movement of air in and out of the box, for example.

Re: Behavior of young children in a situation simulating entrapment in refrigerators

#37

Post by sp332 »

humbledrone wrote: post #21
dminor14 wrote: post #10

Pretty disgusting, maybe we should drown them and burn them also to see how they react.

> Instead, the scientists designed a very small, rather dense, playhouse. It looked just like a normal kid's playhouse, except that it was the exact dimensions of the average home fridge. Not only that, the house was equipped with an infrared camera on the top, which took videos of the kid while they were inside, while at the same time keeping it dark, like it would be in a fridge with the door shut. It should also b…

Replace "discomfort" with "trauma", especially once they find out that their parents heard them crying but decided not to come.

Re: Behavior of young children in a situation simulating entrapment in refrigerators

#38

Post by ColinWright »

vacri wrote: post #34
nitrogen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason this post by Ihavenoname is [dead], but it is an interesting anecdote. Ihavenoname 12 minutes ago | link [dead] There were a frightening number of children that were trapped in the old refrigerators. They often used them as hiding places and could not get out until they were redesined They had latches and even when there were interior releases it was not obvious to a child how to open it when in the d…

The answer is: these days you wouldn't need a study. All you'd need to do is cause a PR ruckus and it would change. The issue with ethics in this experiment is not "the researchers might be creepy people", it's that it violates the basic idea that human experimentation on non-consenting people shouldn't cause harm (which includes negative emotions like fear, embarassment, etc). Sometimes such experimentation does get…

  > ... just change the fridge doors.
That's what this research was intended to answer: change the fridge doors to what?

At the time there was no such thing as magnetic strips. To seal the fridge you had a rubber seal, and then you had to close the door with significant force. The handles were effectively levers so an ordinary person could provide enough force to open them, and fridges were advertised with elephants standing on them to show how strong they were, and, by implication, how well the door seal worked.

This research was intended to work out what kind of internal release mechanism could be provided to allow children, in the dark, to release the door quickly.

So yes, "just change the fridge doors".

Using 1958 technology - how? In what way? To what?

Re: Behavior of young children in a situation simulating entrapment in refrigerators

#39

Post by nitrogen »

vacri wrote: post #34
nitrogen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason this post by Ihavenoname is [dead], but it is an interesting anecdote. Ihavenoname 12 minutes ago | link [dead] There were a frightening number of children that were trapped in the old refrigerators. They often used them as hiding places and could not get out until they were redesined They had latches and even when there were interior releases it was not obvious to a child how to open it when in the d…

The answer is: these days you wouldn't need a study. All you'd need to do is cause a PR ruckus and it would change. The issue with ethics in this experiment is not "the researchers might be creepy people", it's that it violates the basic idea that human experimentation on non-consenting people shouldn't cause harm (which includes negative emotions like fear, embarassment, etc). Sometimes such experimentation does get…

According to the linked abstract, the study considered how to change fridge doors. In other words, the question being answered was, "What style of door is easiest for children to open from the inside?"

Given that many (most? all?) fridges of 1958 had locking latches that opened only from the outside, it's not inconceivable that moving to a magnetically sealed door like modern fridges was not seen as a trivial, or the most obvious, change at the time.

Re: Behavior of young children in a situation simulating entrapment in refrigerators

#40

Post by nitrogen »

vacri wrote: post #36
ColinWright wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airtight does not imply soundproof. Well-insulated is better correlated, and fridges do tend to be that as well.

Not soundproof, but certainly sound-dampening. Quality speakers have an airhole to allow movement of air in and out of the box, for example.

Though this is straying a bit from the topic at hand, I must point out that quality speakers employ a range of designs, from simple sealed designs, to the ported designs you mention, on up to folded or full-scale (built with cinder block walls[0]) subwoofer horns.

The purpose of the port in ported designs is not just to allow movement of air, but to control the resonant frequency and Q-factor of the speaker. The individual dimensions, size, shape, and materials of quality speaker enclosures are all tuned to control resonance.

To sum up, there's a lot more to it than "an airhole to allow movement of air."

[0] I can't find the actual system I recall, but here is an older system with a similar design: http://www.burwenaudio.com/images/20000_WATT_HOME_HI-FI_0476...

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