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without any mention of the issues regarding the inability of anyone to reproduce the Milgram experiments and get the same results with any consistency, the whol

without any mention of the issues regarding the inability of anyone to reproduce the Milgram experiments and get the same results with any consistency, the whole example of "Obedience to Authority" as it relates to this sanctioned abuse of power should be thrown out. there isn't much left to learn from the milgram saga, other than that the consumer public absolutely loves pop-culture science.

jakubp 6y ago
You are wrong about inability to reproduce. At least one recent replication was done in Poland (2015) by a respected academic team incl. professor Dolinski. The main result was consistent with what Milgram observed: most people did what they were told. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170314081558.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170314081558.h...
- davetannenbaum 6y ago
  My understanding is that there have also been semi-recent replications done in France, Iran, and a partial replication conducted at Santa Clara university. All found the same basic pattern as the original study.
  - jbullock35 6y ago
    Yes. There have been dozens of replication efforts -- none of them exact replications. The closest and most careful one that I know about is the one done by Jerry Burger at Santa Clara University: "Replicating Milgram: Would People Still Obey Today?" It's at https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-64-1-1.pdf https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-64-1-1.pdf.
- hntrader 6y ago
  I wonder the impact of how widespread the knowledge of the original Milgram experiments is. If the subjects figure that the pain is fake because they've heard about this experiment before they might be more willing to administer the shock.
  - cutemonster 6y ago
    I'd think they'd react in the opposite way, if they knew about the test -- that they wouldn't want to be one of the yes sayers. (And some might have thought that the whole thing was then a waste of their time anyway?)
BurningFrog 6y ago
I've heard that these kind of experiments are impossible to do today, due to "ethics" rules in science. Those rules are of course another example of obeying authorities :)
- jbullock35 6y ago
  That's right. Universities' "institutional review boards" (IRBs) don't permit scholars to tell subjects that they are delivering very heavy shocks. Jerry Burger of Santa Clara University took this point up in his replication article (which was necessarily only a partial replication).
- pdonis 6y ago
  > I've heard that these kind of experiments are impossible to do today, due to "ethics" rules in science. If you're referring to the fact that the experimenters had to lie to the subjects and deceive them, not just in one individual statement but over the whole experimental scenario, the reason why that's not a good idea is actual practical, not ethical: constructing a false scenario and properly controlling what the subjects believe in a false scenario is very hard. For example, consider this post by The Last Psychiatrist: https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/05/first_person_account_of_milgra.html https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/05/first_person_account... The key point is here: "He didn't stop because of moral courage; he stopped because he thought he was being played." In other words, he figured out that it was a false scenario and his refusal was based on that, not on any moral objection to shocking people. But he got counted as a "refusal". How many other people who didn't refuse had some intuitive sense that the whole thing was a setup, thereby dampening whatever moral impulses they had? There's no way of knowing. The fact that it was a setup changes the whole experiment, as compared to one where all of the information being given to the subjects is truthful.

jakubp 6y ago

You are wrong about inability to reproduce. At least one recent replication was done in Poland (2015) by a respected academic team incl. professor Dolinski. The main result was consistent with what Milgram observed: most people did what they were told. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170314081558.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170314081558.h...

davetannenbaum 6y ago
My understanding is that there have also been semi-recent replications done in France, Iran, and a partial replication conducted at Santa Clara university. All found the same basic pattern as the original study.
- jbullock35 6y ago
  Yes. There have been dozens of replication efforts -- none of them exact replications. The closest and most careful one that I know about is the one done by Jerry Burger at Santa Clara University: "Replicating Milgram: Would People Still Obey Today?" It's at https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-64-1-1.pdf https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-64-1-1.pdf.
hntrader 6y ago
I wonder the impact of how widespread the knowledge of the original Milgram experiments is. If the subjects figure that the pain is fake because they've heard about this experiment before they might be more willing to administer the shock.
- cutemonster 6y ago
  I'd think they'd react in the opposite way, if they knew about the test -- that they wouldn't want to be one of the yes sayers. (And some might have thought that the whole thing was then a waste of their time anyway?)

BurningFrog 6y ago

I've heard that these kind of experiments are impossible to do today, due to "ethics" rules in science. Those rules are of course another example of obeying authorities :)

jbullock35 6y ago
That's right. Universities' "institutional review boards" (IRBs) don't permit scholars to tell subjects that they are delivering very heavy shocks. Jerry Burger of Santa Clara University took this point up in his replication article (which was necessarily only a partial replication).
pdonis 6y ago
> I've heard that these kind of experiments are impossible to do today, due to "ethics" rules in science. If you're referring to the fact that the experimenters had to lie to the subjects and deceive them, not just in one individual statement but over the whole experimental scenario, the reason why that's not a good idea is actual practical, not ethical: constructing a false scenario and properly controlling what the subjects believe in a false scenario is very hard. For example, consider this post by The Last Psychiatrist: https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/05/first_person_account_of_milgra.html https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/05/first_person_account... The key point is here: "He didn't stop because of moral courage; he stopped because he thought he was being played." In other words, he figured out that it was a false scenario and his refusal was based on that, not on any moral objection to shocking people. But he got counted as a "refusal". How many other people who didn't refuse had some intuitive sense that the whole thing was a setup, thereby dampening whatever moral impulses they had? There's no way of knowing. The fact that it was a setup changes the whole experiment, as compared to one where all of the information being given to the subjects is truthful.