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Here's the true experiment: In surveys conducted in 2014 and 2015, Richard Griggs and Jared Bartels each found that nearly every introductory psychology textbo

Here's the true experiment: In surveys conducted in 2014 and 2015, Richard Griggs and Jared Bartels each found that nearly every introductory psychology textbook on the market included Zimbardo’s narrative of the experiment, most uncritically. Curious about why the field’s appointed gatekeepers, presumably well-informed about the experiment’s dubious history, would choose to include it nonetheless, I reached out. Three told me they had originally omitted the Stanford prison experiment from their first editions because of concerns about its scientific legitimacy. But even psychology professors are not immune to the forces of social influence: two added it back in under pressure from reviewers and teachers, a third because it was so much in the news after Abu Ghraib.

dalbasal 8y ago
In other words, the field just has very low standards for truth, in a scientific sense. This seems to go up and down the field... From academic publishing (replicability crisis) to undergraduate teaching. Psychology just doesn't have a scientific perspective on truth and knowledge. Instead of a need (Abu graib and timely relevance) for knowledge triggering research and the accumulation of knowledge, it triggers the field to accept bogus knowledge because they need something.
- rusk 8y ago
  I found when I was studying Psychology, that it's very much focused on pragmatics rather than intellectual rigor. i.e. if an explanation helps provide an effective therapeutic model then it's considered "good enough". I'm not saying it's right. In fact in terms of evaluating the field "as a science" it's wrong. I guess that's why it's a BA not a BSc ... probably also why various other more rigorous subfields such as neuroscience have split off to become their own disciplines. I think most people who have studied psychology will get this, and critically evaluating all the bullshit around you should be one of the fundamental skills that you learn. Unfortunately though, things are taken far more literally once they get "out into the open".
  - s-shellfish 8y ago
    Agreed. Approaching psychology with a permanent kind of rigour simply doesn't work. In order to change the mind that is not functioning in the way one desires, one has to believe that mind can change. Presenting information as though it's impermeable, absolute, matter of fact truth since the event(?) that allowed humans to first begin to think is absolutely absurd. If humans can go through all the different variations of thought they have gone through thus far, why do we work with the assumption that there's any absolute truth to the nature of thought to begin with? Therapeutic models have to be adaptive to the individual one is guiding towards mental wellness (or whatever the goal is). Someone undergoing the process of regaining trust in their own mind has to pass some of their own personally designed tests. Otherwise they are just consuming information that already exists, and that's back to the original problem - one can only trust in information that comes from others, and not from the individual self (unless it matches perfectly with others). That's paradoxical, and if all oneself can do is reproduce what already exists, one can not prove to oneself that one is different or has changed or has improved, from 'before therapy'. So psychology is going to keep changing. It has to. That's what students of psychology are interested in, right? Why force the model they learned that at one point, made absolute sense, to the student, at a prior time, onto others? What is the purpose of that? I think that stuff is obvious when it's out in the open, but every student, researcher, and doctor of psychology has their own fears and 'issues' to deal with. What if I get it wrong? What if I screw it up really badly for someone else? Didn't I go into this to help people? And I think those kinds of fears, if they are not dealt with in a responsible, respectful manner - can really control the dynamic far more than all the knowledge one has access to, and all the thought and reason one can muster.
- paidleaf 8y ago
  > In other words, the field just has very low standards for truth, in a scientific sense. The field has little to no scientific sense. It's why psychiatry/psychology is a soft science. It isn't based on the scientific method or reproducibility and testing. It's mostly based on consensus driven by a handful of powerful practitioners. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science What sigmund freud did wasn't science. His oedipal complex theory isn't a scientific theory. There is no scientific test to refute it. You just accept it or not. The biggest problem of our generation is the conflation of science ( hard science ) with pseudoscience ( soft science ). Because both has the word science in it, people give soft sciences far more credit than it deserves. If anyone is interested, Richard Feynman had a very interesting interview about it. https://youtu.be/tWr39Q9vBgo https://youtu.be/tWr39Q9vBgo
  - abakker 8y ago
    psychiatry != psychology. Do not over generalize. Psychiatry has many problems, namely overprescribing pharmaceuticals, but is it not the same thing as "social science", it is an actual branch of medicine, and a psychiatrist has to complete medical school,psychiatric specialization, and residency.
    - dalbasal 8y ago
      Erm.... Idk. What was Freud then? These are certainly separate fields in terms of accreditation, but in terms of academia, they're really subdisciplines.
      - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
        Sigmund Freud was a 19th century doctor. The modern medical field is not comparable to the one 150 years ago when the treatment of most things was "go breathe near the ocean for a bit".
        moosey 8y ago
        tbh, going to take a nice couple of breaths next to the ocean sounds like it would do me a lot of good at the moment.
- UncleMeat 8y ago
  You've never seen egregious errors in physics or cs textbooks? Textbooks are often bad. That's not unique to psychology.
  - neuromantik8086 8y ago
    In my experience, CS textbooks often fail to expose concepts in logical order. Whenever I read over a paragraph in one of them, there always seem to be one or two terms that get thrown out there, but that aren't introduced until four chapters later. My impression is that CS texts overall presuppose that you are already knowledgable in CS.
ataturk 8y ago
I think you're missing the overall point. There is also a major issue about human subjects used in experiments and how institutional review boards have been put in place to prevent such crazy, runaway nonsense. Whether or not SPE is replicable or whether or not the conclusions are valid, the issue of people being held against their will is definitely relevant all by itself.

dalbasal 8y ago

In other words, the field just has very low standards for truth, in a scientific sense. This seems to go up and down the field... From academic publishing (replicability crisis) to undergraduate teaching. Psychology just doesn't have a scientific perspective on truth and knowledge. Instead of a need (Abu graib and timely relevance) for knowledge triggering research and the accumulation of knowledge, it triggers the field to accept bogus knowledge because they need something.

rusk 8y ago
I found when I was studying Psychology, that it's very much focused on pragmatics rather than intellectual rigor. i.e. if an explanation helps provide an effective therapeutic model then it's considered "good enough". I'm not saying it's right. In fact in terms of evaluating the field "as a science" it's wrong. I guess that's why it's a BA not a BSc ... probably also why various other more rigorous subfields such as neuroscience have split off to become their own disciplines. I think most people who have studied psychology will get this, and critically evaluating all the bullshit around you should be one of the fundamental skills that you learn. Unfortunately though, things are taken far more literally once they get "out into the open".
- s-shellfish 8y ago
  Agreed. Approaching psychology with a permanent kind of rigour simply doesn't work. In order to change the mind that is not functioning in the way one desires, one has to believe that mind can change. Presenting information as though it's impermeable, absolute, matter of fact truth since the event(?) that allowed humans to first begin to think is absolutely absurd. If humans can go through all the different variations of thought they have gone through thus far, why do we work with the assumption that there's any absolute truth to the nature of thought to begin with? Therapeutic models have to be adaptive to the individual one is guiding towards mental wellness (or whatever the goal is). Someone undergoing the process of regaining trust in their own mind has to pass some of their own personally designed tests. Otherwise they are just consuming information that already exists, and that's back to the original problem - one can only trust in information that comes from others, and not from the individual self (unless it matches perfectly with others). That's paradoxical, and if all oneself can do is reproduce what already exists, one can not prove to oneself that one is different or has changed or has improved, from 'before therapy'. So psychology is going to keep changing. It has to. That's what students of psychology are interested in, right? Why force the model they learned that at one point, made absolute sense, to the student, at a prior time, onto others? What is the purpose of that? I think that stuff is obvious when it's out in the open, but every student, researcher, and doctor of psychology has their own fears and 'issues' to deal with. What if I get it wrong? What if I screw it up really badly for someone else? Didn't I go into this to help people? And I think those kinds of fears, if they are not dealt with in a responsible, respectful manner - can really control the dynamic far more than all the knowledge one has access to, and all the thought and reason one can muster.
paidleaf 8y ago
> In other words, the field just has very low standards for truth, in a scientific sense. The field has little to no scientific sense. It's why psychiatry/psychology is a soft science. It isn't based on the scientific method or reproducibility and testing. It's mostly based on consensus driven by a handful of powerful practitioners. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science What sigmund freud did wasn't science. His oedipal complex theory isn't a scientific theory. There is no scientific test to refute it. You just accept it or not. The biggest problem of our generation is the conflation of science ( hard science ) with pseudoscience ( soft science ). Because both has the word science in it, people give soft sciences far more credit than it deserves. If anyone is interested, Richard Feynman had a very interesting interview about it. https://youtu.be/tWr39Q9vBgo https://youtu.be/tWr39Q9vBgo
- abakker 8y ago
  psychiatry != psychology. Do not over generalize. Psychiatry has many problems, namely overprescribing pharmaceuticals, but is it not the same thing as "social science", it is an actual branch of medicine, and a psychiatrist has to complete medical school,psychiatric specialization, and residency.
  - dalbasal 8y ago
    Erm.... Idk. What was Freud then? These are certainly separate fields in terms of accreditation, but in terms of academia, they're really subdisciplines.
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      Sigmund Freud was a 19th century doctor. The modern medical field is not comparable to the one 150 years ago when the treatment of most things was "go breathe near the ocean for a bit".
      - moosey 8y ago
        tbh, going to take a nice couple of breaths next to the ocean sounds like it would do me a lot of good at the moment.
UncleMeat 8y ago
You've never seen egregious errors in physics or cs textbooks? Textbooks are often bad. That's not unique to psychology.
- neuromantik8086 8y ago
  In my experience, CS textbooks often fail to expose concepts in logical order. Whenever I read over a paragraph in one of them, there always seem to be one or two terms that get thrown out there, but that aren't introduced until four chapters later. My impression is that CS texts overall presuppose that you are already knowledgable in CS.

ataturk 8y ago

I think you're missing the overall point. There is also a major issue about human subjects used in experiments and how institutional review boards have been put in place to prevent such crazy, runaway nonsense. Whether or not SPE is replicable or whether or not the conclusions are valid, the issue of people being held against their will is definitely relevant all by itself.