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> In 1971, Dr. Philip Zimbardo conducted a psychological experiment that is now popularly known as the “Stanford Prison Experiment.” Why does a non-reproducibl
by afarrell 11y ago
> In 1971, Dr. Philip Zimbardo conducted a psychological experiment that is now popularly known as the “Stanford Prison Experiment.”
Why does a non-reproducible study without a control group in which the experimenter was an active participant get cited so much? It wasn't an experiment; It was a historical incident.
- mercer 11y agoThe same applies to Mazlow's hierarchy of needs and the addiction study involving mice that is referred to every time an article on addiction appears on HN (which seems to be a weekly thing almost). I see these things as little more than memes at this point. I suppose the purpose they serve is to question commonly-held beliefs, which is not all bad. I just wish we'd question these things based on valid information. (to be clear, it's not so much that the two examples I'm using are considered 100% bunk. It's rather that they're generally accepted to not be too well-supported, and definitely not well enough to cite them so much)
- afarrell 11y agoI thought Mazlow's hierarchy was a theory, one that should hopefully be tested by experiment somehow. Why is the addiction study not reproducible? I agree that you should perhaps take an additional step of having 4 groups: heroin+rat park, placebo heroin+rat park, heroin+rat jail, placebo heroin+rat jail. And blind the researcher making the observations as to the nature of the substance.