[MUSIC] So yeah, you think, all of this is old stuff, and what does it matter? What about today? Do we still do things like that? And I'd love to say no, no, we don't do things like that. But this Guatemala study was back in the 1930s. So some of the research I'm going to talk to you about is from the 60s and 70s now. And so this is an experiment you might have heard about, you might have learned about it before, but it's the Milgram obedience to authority experiment. And what Dr. Milgram was studying was why people under Nazi control, the superiors, why did they obey the orders to do these horrible things to people? Why did they pick up people and put them in concentration camps? Why did they conform to these orders? And so Milgram set up an experiment where he advertised for people, so you can see the ad there. And then he set up where the person would come in, who was actually the subject, and they would sit at a booth and they would be told to press these buttons. And that other person that came in was supposed to be the subject or the student, and the student was supposed to deliver information. If they delivered it incorrectly, the real subject would press this button and would be told that he's given an electric shock. And on the panel, there was a really big red button, and that big red button was the ultimate shock. And it would really hurt someone if you delivered that shocked. And so people would come in, after they read the ad, they would come in and they would sit there. And the student or the learner would be repeating these things that they're supposed to repeat, and it would be wrong. And the person would then be told to press that shock button. And people did it. If they didn't really do it when there were supposed to, then Milgram was back there saying, please continue, the experiment requires you to continue. You need to go on, you have no other choice, you must go on. And he was back there, repeating this over and over again. And it turned out that a lot of people pushed that red button, giving the ultimate shock, because that student would never say the right thing. That was the plan, he was a confederate of Milgram. And so what's wrong with this study? You've got this person there being told to do a horrible thing to someone else. And when they do it, how do you think that makes them feel later? I mean, this could cause psychological injury to people. And so there was a big ethics issue here because the person really didn't know the whole story. They thought they were really hurting people and they thought they were part of an experiment, but they were delivering an experiment, they weren't its subject. And so they were lied to in this, and so no consent was obtained. And then things got even better, there's another really interesting one. Laud Humphreys is considered or was considered a real expert on homosexual behavior back in the 60s. And in the 1960s, homosexuality, the act of homosexuality was a crime. So people who were homosexual then were discriminated against harshly if they were caught performing any sexual act. And even if they did their time or whatever it was for the crime, their reputation was soiled forever. They were a persona non grata at that time, yes, it's long ago. And so what Laud Humphreys wanted to do was just to find out what motivations they had, and were they really good people or bad people? Because the feeling was they were bad people at that time. And so he would go into these buildings that were called tearoom trade shops. And that is where, it was like a bar, or a tea shop, or something where homosexuals would meet, usually homosexual men. And he would befriend them, he would act like one of them, he would even be the the person, the look-out when they would go into a bathroom maybe and engage in an act. But at the same time, he would write down their driver's license, not their driver's, their automobile license numbers. And he would later then look them up, and go to their home, and ask to speak to them, and then tell him what he really was doing and try to interview them then. And so he had this information about them, and then he would arrive at their home and then try to get more information from them. Now, I imagine most of them gave the information because they felt like they'd be penalized if they didn't give it, but they were deceived, really, through the whole thing. Now, the outcome of this study was actually very good, because he learned that, believe it or not, homosexual people were normal. They were just like everybody else, they had families, they had jobs, they were very important people in some instances. And so this was kind of like a breakthrough that stopped a really bad part of our history, where there was so much discrimination against homosexuality and homosexuals. So the outcome was good. But again, what about the people that he used in this research, did he respect them? Did he take care of their welfare? Was he really out to protect their welfare when they did this? It's really devastating. I have to get personal here. I had a very dear friend who, he was the brother of one of my high school friends, and I actually worked with him during the day. And he had a baby, he and his wife had a baby. And about three weeks later, he was arrested in a park with a lot of other men and engaged in homosexual activity. And he was released, his family then shunned him. And about four days after he was released, he committed suicide. So in many ways, I think Laud Humphrey was really good for trying to help us learn more about these individuals, this guy was a great guy. But at the same time, Laud Humphreys deceived people when he did it, could there have been a better way to do it. And so back in the 70s, this is in 1971, there was a big experiment at Stanford University, and that was the Stanford Prison Experiment. And so this one started where they put an ad in the paper, and they advertised for people to come in and be in a research study. You can see the ad on the screen over there. And they put them in a simulated prison, and it was a really good simulation. And some people were assigned to be guards and some people were assigned to be prisoners. And about the first day, people started taking on the persona, the role that they were given, they would actually take that persona on. And within six days, they had to stop the study. And they had to stop to study because the guards were actually abusing the prisoners. And the prisoner, people who were acting as prisoners, were getting into their own little shell and having some really big emotional issues with it. And then when it was over, of course, these people wondered about the actions they took during the experiment. But it was stopped on the sixth day because it was getting actually violent. And then there was an outcry among the public who heard about it, thinking, why would they put people in this situation, without getting a little bit more data before they did it? They should have realized the consequences. I mean, the study was to see if people would take on these personas, and so there was evidence that maybe that happened. So maybe they should have softened it down or done something to protect the people's well, their safety, their rights, and also their their mental health through this. And so again, this was considered an unethical type of research. So here are some quotes that people said in response to the Stanford Prison Experiment. I need to tell you that that experiment has been repeated by television networks and I think by another scientist, maybe in a softer situation, but the results are kind of repeated each time. And so this is the investigator that started this study, and this is this kind of what he learned, that the planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended. Because they really didn't understand the risks when they started the study. One more study just to tell you about, so you can just know that people's rights really were not protected back then. There's a clinic in San Antonio, where they did a study, and this is a clinical study. And poor women in Texas went to this clinic to get birth control, that's what they were there for. And the physicians there decided to do an experiment, they wanted to be author, they wanted to write a manuscript. And so they wanted to compare different contraceptives. And so they would give the women specific contraceptive, and then give other women a placebo, matching cohort would get placebo. They didn't obtain consent, none of the women knew that this was happening. They did get some good data, but they also got a lot of children out of this. The outcome of this study was unplanned pregnancies, and they were unplanned pregnancies to indigent women in San Antonio.
