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We interrupt this travel report to bring you a world-class rant.
Someone in rasseff is spouting off about the Milgram experiments.
In fact - as I explained to her - Milgram's studies haven't been branded "unethical" (note the scare quotes) because they revealed truths about authority, they've been branded unethical because they were unethical. He misrepresented the risks of research participation and impeded his subjects when they tried to quit by ordering them (with the full weight of Science and the authority of Yale University) that "You have no choice. You must go on." The experiment induced incredible emotional stress in participants, a fact which Milgram calmly notes in his papers but doesn't seem concerned about. And he sent his subjects home thinking of themselves as monsters.
I corrected her mistaken assumption that human subjects protections were prompted by the Milgram experiments - they weren't. The fundamental rights of research subjects were articulated in 1949 in the Nuremburg Code, adopted after the Nazi "medical experiments" on concentration camp prisoners were brought to light. They were further bolstered by the infamous Tuskegee syphillis study. American policies for the protection of research subjects were outlined in the Belmont Report, which extended protections to participants in behavioral (not just biomedical) research and required universities to approve the ethics of any research conducted under their aegis. Milgram's experiments were conducted before the Belmont Report came out, but they clearly violated the spirit of the Nuremburg Code, which establishes as basic principles of ethical research the requirements that (1) research participations must be unconstrained, uncoerced volunteers who are free to leave the study, and (2) it is not permissible to cause harm to individual research participants in the name of benefiting society. Research subjects may only be subjected to harm if they may benefit individually from the procedure (as in a risky experimental medical treatment for a presently incurable disease).
Strangely - silly me, huh? - I expected her to back off, or qualify her statements, or something. But instead I got a stubborn insistence that Milgram didn't really do anything to his subjects - he didn't physically harm them, and the distress they felt was entirely in their own heads. "It was an agony entirely
created by dissonance within themselves and their belief in the reality of the fake situation, not by anything physical he did to them." He had no actual authority over them, just the authority of prestige, association with legitimate institutions, and social pressure - so he didn't do anything wrong.
That's bad enough - it's wrong-headed and unkind, but plenty of people make the mistake of thinking that only physical hurt or physical constraint is worth bothering about. But then, this:
For God's sake! She presumes to wave dead relatives at me, to invoke the forces of family, religion, culture, and God help me, the threat of another fucking Holocaust to try to cow me into agreeing that it's okay to harm innocent individuals because you think you'll get worthwhile information out of it. For. God's. Sake. Why aren't I grateful that Milgram violated the principles of the Nuremburg code? Why aren't I grateful?
Milgram was horrified that his subjects did something they thought would harm an innocent person, just because he told them they had to. He couldn't believe that they sat there and listened to the complaints and protests and pleadings of the experimental confederate, and still agreed to continue. Well, he sat and watched innocent ordinary people sweating and shaking and crying and pleading to be released from the experiment, again and again. He lied to them, and watched the devastating effects his lies had on them, and coolly lied again. And planned the next replication. He repeated the study again and again, even after he knew that participation would be deeply distressing to the subjects. No one told him to do it - what was his excuse? Why aren't I grateful?
Let's completely leave alone for the moment that she utterly failed to support her claim that the real purpose of human subjects protections is to prevent uncomfortable truths from being known. She completely failed to engage with anything I said about the true origins of human subjects regulations. She didn't retract her claim that those research protections rose from the Milgram studies. She didn't defend her claim that they were put into place for ulterior motives. Never mind any of that.
She thinks that the harm to the subjects didn't matter because it was only psychological. She thinks that it's okay to lie to subjects and cause them great stress if you debrief them afterward. She thinks that coercion isn't significant if it's not physical coercion. And she by God thinks that she can shame me with my supposed Holocaust survivor's guilt into agreeing with her.
Let's look at the Tuskegee syphillis study again. Hey, it's not like the researchers physically constrained those men from seeking alternative medical treatment. It's not like they forced them to stay in the study using physical threats or confinement. They were just verbally deceptive, they just made use of their (imaginary, nonexistent) authority as public health workers. So what's wrong with that?
Or how about this? I've got a great study in mind that would teach us so much about bereavement. We could really help people much better if we understood the grieving process better. So let's bring people in to the lab on a pretext - we'll tell them we're studying learning, how's that? - and then we'll break in with a phone call and tell them that their spouse has just been killed in an accident. We'll observe the effects for an hour or so, and then we'll debrief them and explain that it was just an experiment. We'll even bring the spouse into the lab and show that everything is okay. What's wrong with that? After all, their suffering will just be in their minds. We won't be doing anything physical to them. And we'll debrief them afterward. What do you mean, you think that's unethical? I'd think that you people, mourning Anna, would be the last people to argue with anything that might help bereaved people in the future!
My God. She thinks she's on humanity's side. She thinks she's the compassionate one. And I... Christ. I've been working in human subjects research for ten years now. I cherish my research subjects. I am so exquisitely sensitive to my responsibilities towards them. I'm so careful of my duty to avoid bringing the authority of this hospital, or of myself as a clinician, to unduly pressure people to participate in studies. But I guess all this time I've just been a dupe of the people in power, supporting protections that only serve to keep important work from being done. Why can't I see the benefit of just sacrificing these few for the good of the many? Scientific progress is at stake here! If there's another Holocaust, it will be all my fault.
Here's how I responded in rasseff to that part of her post:
Stanley Milgram conclusively demonstrated
the power that authority has in his experiments on
obedience --they were so frightening to the ruling
class, because of how much they exposed to public
view, that similar experiments have since been banned.
It's now 'unethical' to conduct such experiments.
In fact - as I explained to her - Milgram's studies haven't been branded "unethical" (note the scare quotes) because they revealed truths about authority, they've been branded unethical because they were unethical. He misrepresented the risks of research participation and impeded his subjects when they tried to quit by ordering them (with the full weight of Science and the authority of Yale University) that "You have no choice. You must go on." The experiment induced incredible emotional stress in participants, a fact which Milgram calmly notes in his papers but doesn't seem concerned about. And he sent his subjects home thinking of themselves as monsters.
I corrected her mistaken assumption that human subjects protections were prompted by the Milgram experiments - they weren't. The fundamental rights of research subjects were articulated in 1949 in the Nuremburg Code, adopted after the Nazi "medical experiments" on concentration camp prisoners were brought to light. They were further bolstered by the infamous Tuskegee syphillis study. American policies for the protection of research subjects were outlined in the Belmont Report, which extended protections to participants in behavioral (not just biomedical) research and required universities to approve the ethics of any research conducted under their aegis. Milgram's experiments were conducted before the Belmont Report came out, but they clearly violated the spirit of the Nuremburg Code, which establishes as basic principles of ethical research the requirements that (1) research participations must be unconstrained, uncoerced volunteers who are free to leave the study, and (2) it is not permissible to cause harm to individual research participants in the name of benefiting society. Research subjects may only be subjected to harm if they may benefit individually from the procedure (as in a risky experimental medical treatment for a presently incurable disease).
Strangely - silly me, huh? - I expected her to back off, or qualify her statements, or something. But instead I got a stubborn insistence that Milgram didn't really do anything to his subjects - he didn't physically harm them, and the distress they felt was entirely in their own heads. "It was an agony entirely
created by dissonance within themselves and their belief in the reality of the fake situation, not by anything physical he did to them." He had no actual authority over them, just the authority of prestige, association with legitimate institutions, and social pressure - so he didn't do anything wrong.
That's bad enough - it's wrong-headed and unkind, but plenty of people make the mistake of thinking that only physical hurt or physical constraint is worth bothering about. But then, this:
Given that I'd presume from your given name that you're
Ashkenazi and from a rather traditional family,
possibly one that lost members during Shoah, and that
Milgram's experiments were designed to discover how to
understand the forces that created Shoah so that people
could be, as it were, innoculated against a repetition,
I feel bemused that you're not fully supportive and
even grateful to him and his subjects for what they
learned. And angry that vital research like that can
no longer be done. I know *I* am, and I'm not even
Jewish.
For God's sake! She presumes to wave dead relatives at me, to invoke the forces of family, religion, culture, and God help me, the threat of another fucking Holocaust to try to cow me into agreeing that it's okay to harm innocent individuals because you think you'll get worthwhile information out of it. For. God's. Sake. Why aren't I grateful that Milgram violated the principles of the Nuremburg code? Why aren't I grateful?
Milgram was horrified that his subjects did something they thought would harm an innocent person, just because he told them they had to. He couldn't believe that they sat there and listened to the complaints and protests and pleadings of the experimental confederate, and still agreed to continue. Well, he sat and watched innocent ordinary people sweating and shaking and crying and pleading to be released from the experiment, again and again. He lied to them, and watched the devastating effects his lies had on them, and coolly lied again. And planned the next replication. He repeated the study again and again, even after he knew that participation would be deeply distressing to the subjects. No one told him to do it - what was his excuse? Why aren't I grateful?
Let's completely leave alone for the moment that she utterly failed to support her claim that the real purpose of human subjects protections is to prevent uncomfortable truths from being known. She completely failed to engage with anything I said about the true origins of human subjects regulations. She didn't retract her claim that those research protections rose from the Milgram studies. She didn't defend her claim that they were put into place for ulterior motives. Never mind any of that.
She thinks that the harm to the subjects didn't matter because it was only psychological. She thinks that it's okay to lie to subjects and cause them great stress if you debrief them afterward. She thinks that coercion isn't significant if it's not physical coercion. And she by God thinks that she can shame me with my supposed Holocaust survivor's guilt into agreeing with her.
Let's look at the Tuskegee syphillis study again. Hey, it's not like the researchers physically constrained those men from seeking alternative medical treatment. It's not like they forced them to stay in the study using physical threats or confinement. They were just verbally deceptive, they just made use of their (imaginary, nonexistent) authority as public health workers. So what's wrong with that?
Or how about this? I've got a great study in mind that would teach us so much about bereavement. We could really help people much better if we understood the grieving process better. So let's bring people in to the lab on a pretext - we'll tell them we're studying learning, how's that? - and then we'll break in with a phone call and tell them that their spouse has just been killed in an accident. We'll observe the effects for an hour or so, and then we'll debrief them and explain that it was just an experiment. We'll even bring the spouse into the lab and show that everything is okay. What's wrong with that? After all, their suffering will just be in their minds. We won't be doing anything physical to them. And we'll debrief them afterward. What do you mean, you think that's unethical? I'd think that you people, mourning Anna, would be the last people to argue with anything that might help bereaved people in the future!
My God. She thinks she's on humanity's side. She thinks she's the compassionate one. And I... Christ. I've been working in human subjects research for ten years now. I cherish my research subjects. I am so exquisitely sensitive to my responsibilities towards them. I'm so careful of my duty to avoid bringing the authority of this hospital, or of myself as a clinician, to unduly pressure people to participate in studies. But I guess all this time I've just been a dupe of the people in power, supporting protections that only serve to keep important work from being done. Why can't I see the benefit of just sacrificing these few for the good of the many? Scientific progress is at stake here! If there's another Holocaust, it will be all my fault.
Here's how I responded in rasseff to that part of her post:
Heh. I'm not sure whether to be amused at your long string of mistaken assumptions or angry at your presumption. I think I'll pick angry.
How dare you, how DARE you wave my dead ancestors at me to try to cow me into accepting your argument? How DARE you attempt to use my religion and my family and, God help me, the threat of another Nazi regime, to shame me into conceding your apparent point that harm to the individual is justified by the benefit to society? You should be ashamed of yourself. You owe me an apology.
I argue with you as someone who has been conducting psychological research with human subjects for ten years, and who is currently employed to do so. I argue with you as someone who has studied research ethics at the graduate level and has served on a research ethics board. I argue with you as someone who, apparently, is much
more familiar with the concepts and extent of the kind of pressure Milgram placed on his participants, and of the history of research in general.
[...]
By the way: I'm a Unitarian Christian, of a Scottish/Welsh/German background, raised in a liberal Protestant home. Just so you know that you're continuing your amazing string of psychological accuracy.
no subject
no subject
Well, she's obviously a complete expert now. We should all defer to her. It was an *entire* book, after all.
Bleh.
Btw, I thought your responses (Well, the bits I've read here, anyway.:) were well thought out and far less heated than mine would have been.
Gesi, who'll chip in on the anvil *grin*