I feel like maybe we’ve gone too far on research ethics restrictions.
We couldn’t do the Milgram experiment today under modern ethical guidelines. I think that it was important that it was performed, even at the cost of the stress that participants experienced. And I doubt that it is the last experiment for which that is true.
If we want to mandate some kind of careful scrutiny of such experiments and some after-the-fact compensation be paid to participants in experiments in which trauma-producing deception is imposed, maybe that’d be reasonable.
That doesn’t mean every study that violates present ethics standards should be greenlighted, but I do think that the present bar is too high.
In 2012, Australian psychologist Gina Perry investigated Milgram’s data and writings and concluded that Milgram had manipulated the results, and that there was a “troubling mismatch between (published) descriptions of the experiment and evidence of what actually transpired.” She wrote that “only half of the people who undertook the experiment fully believed it was real and of those, 66% disobeyed the experimenter”.[26][27] She described her findings as “an unexpected outcome” that “leaves social psychology in a difficult situation.”[28]
I feel like maybe we’ve gone too far on research ethics restrictions.
We couldn’t do the Milgram experiment today under modern ethical guidelines. I think that it was important that it was performed, even at the cost of the stress that participants experienced. And I doubt that it is the last experiment for which that is true.
If we want to mandate some kind of careful scrutiny of such experiments and some after-the-fact compensation be paid to participants in experiments in which trauma-producing deception is imposed, maybe that’d be reasonable.
That doesn’t mean every study that violates present ethics standards should be greenlighted, but I do think that the present bar is too high.
From the link you provide:
I mean, maybe it shouldn’t have been done?