4 ms·

A reminder that Milligram faked and selectively edited his data: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinking-one-of-psychologys-most-infamous-

by neaden 4y ago

A reminder that Milligram faked and selectively edited his data: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinking-one-of-psychologys-most-infamous-experiments/384913/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinkin... along with the equally famous and equally fake Stanford Prison experiment this was an "experiment" that had predefined results that has stuck around because it's what many of us want to believe.

pifm_guy 4y ago
Many of the criticisms of milgrams work are on ethical grounds. Just because something is unethical does not make the results incorrect.
chedca21 4y ago
mola 4y ago
There's been plenty of replications and variations done all over the world with similar results. The Atlantic magazine and other publications circa 2015 ran with this clickbaity narrative because it's , well, a good clickbait. But even though milgrams own expirements have been criticized, those replications do len credibility to the effect. See Wikipedia for details...
- Enginerrrd 4y ago
  Yeah as I see it, the attacks on Milgram were part of a larger fad that went around of finding any excuse to attack unethical science of the past as unscientific and useless or unhelpful. I think previously, the narrative was that such experiments were at least helpful or informative, and that made some people uncomfortable. I think also the particular conclusions of the Milgram and Stanford experiments also deeply upset university liberals because they humanized oppressors and provided some source of empathy for them. There are undoubtedly issues with all such historical science, but I think fighting that small window of empathy is misguided personally, because it forgets one of the most important lessons of history: There really are lots of "normal" people capable of great atrocities under the right conditions. I think it's important and takes more work to pay attention to those conditions, rather than to simply label the perpetrators as evil or inhuman and move on.

by neaden 4y ago

pifm_guy 4y ago

Many of the criticisms of milgrams work are on ethical grounds. Just because something is unethical does not make the results incorrect.

chedca21 4y ago

mola 4y ago

There's been plenty of replications and variations done all over the world with similar results. The Atlantic magazine and other publications circa 2015 ran with this clickbaity narrative because it's , well, a good clickbait. But even though milgrams own expirements have been criticized, those replications do len credibility to the effect. See Wikipedia for details...

Enginerrrd 4y ago
Yeah as I see it, the attacks on Milgram were part of a larger fad that went around of finding any excuse to attack unethical science of the past as unscientific and useless or unhelpful. I think previously, the narrative was that such experiments were at least helpful or informative, and that made some people uncomfortable. I think also the particular conclusions of the Milgram and Stanford experiments also deeply upset university liberals because they humanized oppressors and provided some source of empathy for them. There are undoubtedly issues with all such historical science, but I think fighting that small window of empathy is misguided personally, because it forgets one of the most important lessons of history: There really are lots of "normal" people capable of great atrocities under the right conditions. I think it's important and takes more work to pay attention to those conditions, rather than to simply label the perpetrators as evil or inhuman and move on.