Shocking Psychological Studies and the Lessons They Teach

Today, research with human subjects is guided by a set of three ethical principles of the 1976 Belmont Report, but that was not always the case. In the first lecture of this six-lecture course, Professor Polk explores the famous Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment and how its ethical violations ultimately led to the development of the Belmont Report and the ethical principles it identified.

Why do good people sometimes do bad things? Professor Polk encourages us to grapple with two of the most famous psychological studies on ethics and human psychology: Milgram’s Obedience Study and the Stanford Prison Experiment. Each study offers invaluable lessons about human behavior. Look at the ways that these explorations into the causes of unethical human behavior were, themselves, astonishingly unethical.

Arguably, the most vulnerable people in any population are the children. Childhood development studies can also provide invaluable insights into human psychology. Here, explore two studies where children were the focus: Neubauer’s twin study and Johnson’s “Monster Study” of testing the origins of stuttering. Discover why, according to the Belmont Report’s principles, these “subjects” might be identified more accurately as “victims.”

Government organizations such as the CIA and military are charged with protecting the public, but in these shocking experiments, vulnerable low-ranking soldiers and psychiatric patients were unwittingly subjected to psychoactive drugs. Uncover the ways in which these observational studies lacked both rigorous scientific design and adherence to any of the Belmont Report’s principles. In fact, the results of these studies often led to hallucinations, paranoia, rage, and even death.

Studies of sex and sexual identity present unique ethical challenges for privacy and consent. In the next two studies, Professor Polk takes you into the private world of sexual identity and impulse. The Tearoom Trade Study considers the public identities and private choices of anonymous public sex participants. The John/Joan case explores the sexual identity of a biologically male child raised as a female.

Science still grapples with the ethics of studying human subjects. Increasingly, data is available about every aspect of human life through our uninhibited interactions with technology. The study of such data sets is affordable, widely generalizable, and easily accessible. But is it ethical? You’ll also discover that the conclusions presented in scientific journals, even under our more rigorous ethical guidelines, may not be as reliable as we thought.