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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

#51

Ah yes, the Stanford Prison Experiment, which makes serious psychologists sigh and roll there eyes. Putting aside ethical considerations, it was so confounded as to be completely useless.

It's taken seriously enough to be taught in every university survey course on psychology and sociology, and that wouldn't still be happening if the "serious" people in those disciplines wanted to stop.

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

#52
post #18

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…

It's largely about who gets to control the narrative. If you give a quote to a journalist, they control the narrative - they can choose how to piece it together with other quotes, and where to put it in the article, and how to spin it, and with what emotional tone. If you say "no comment" to the journalist and then post your own version of the narrative on your blog later, you control the narrative from start to finish.

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

#53
> He had befriended both Carlo and me in an attempt to get me to agree to give him screen rights to a Hollywood movie about the SPE. When instead, I chose to go with Maverick Films producer, Brent Emery, Lazarou began writing negative critiques of both me and the SPE.

Why does anyone need Zimbardo's permission to write a screenplay involving the SPE?

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

#54

Ah yes, the Stanford Prison Experiment, which makes serious psychologists sigh and roll there eyes. Putting aside ethical considerations, it was so confounded as to be completely useless.

It's taken seriously enough to be taught in every university survey course on psychology and sociology, and that wouldn't still be happening if the "serious" people in those disciplines wanted to stop.

I've typically only seen it taught as a cautionary tale, both about research ethics and about experiment design.

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

#57

Ah yes, the Stanford Prison Experiment, which makes serious psychologists sigh and roll there eyes. Putting aside ethical considerations, it was so confounded as to be completely useless.

It's taken seriously enough to be taught in every university survey course on psychology and sociology, and that wouldn't still be happening if the "serious" people in those disciplines wanted to stop.

I was taught it.... in a way to say "this is not how to research things and if you heard about this you should probabbly rethink anything you think about it".

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

#58

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…

[deleted]

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

#59
post #18

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…

Not that it's necessarily the case here, but people might not want to correct errors before someone publishes their piece- if the errors stay in, you can write a rebuttal that focuses on those errors and ignores other points which are harder to rebuke.

If you're interested in winning an argument in public debate, then giving your opposition the chance to see your first rebuttal before they've publish their first attack is a huge, huge handicap.

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

#60

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…

In general, I think journalists do always at least try to get both sides, and responses to any criticism, and would keep going back and forth. (If they don't, it's a basic ethical failure.)

And especially for technical articles, it's fairly common to send maybe a bullet list of all the points you're using from what they told you.

The reason sending drafts around is considered bad journalistic practice comes from political and commercial interests. People will object to minutiae in your article not because it's wrong, but because it's inconvenient for them, including blocking publication etc. (Again, less relevant for science, but the most important pieces of journalism can be a battle to get published.)

(A further point is that there do exist wiki-style summaries, more full and precise discussions, etc. But it's the pop media-style articles that have so much more reach, partly because of the often-erring attempts to simplify and make readable.)

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