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> the experiment was actually testing something different than what we’ve all understood it to be Even if this is true, whose fault is it? Is it Zimbardo's? Or
by pdonis 3y ago
> the experiment was actually testing something different than what we’ve all understood it to be
Even if this is true, whose fault is it? Is it Zimbardo's? Or is it all the academics and media hacks who ran with their own mistaken understanding of what the experiment was actually testing, without bothering to check their understanding against what Zimbardo actually published? (Not to mention all the supporting information that he went to great trouble to make publicly available, as he describes in his response.)
> one has to wonder why he never corrected the record
Trying to correct mistaken or intentionally false claims in the media is a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. Very few scientists have the time or the wherewithal to do this. Zimbardo published several peer-reviewed papers, as he describes in his response; that's the "record". Anyone who takes media descriptions of any scientific research as accurate is kidding themselves.
> its failure to replicate
Zimbardo's response specifically addresses this point (both in discussing the claimed failure to replicate by a British research team, and in describing other research which has replicated the main findings), so I don't think you can just help yourself to this claim.
- tshirthoodie 3y ago>Trying to correct mistaken or intentionally false claims in the media is a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. Wrong. Merely trying is in-fact incredibly easy to do, but there is no record of Zimbardo taking a single step in that direction. You don't have a case.
- pdonis 3y ago> there is no record of Zimbardo taking a single step in that direction You must be joking. In addition to the peer-reviewed papers he published, he gave media interviews, he testified in Congressional hearings, he published an article in the New York Times Magazine, he published a popular book, he made a PBS series, he made all of the study materials publicly available, he was an expert witness in three trials... It seems to me that the one who doesn't have a case is you.
- addicted 3y agoI’m confused. Are you saying he used all these opportunities in the media including a book he wrote (which you say was popular) to correct the ideas people had of the conclusion of the SPE? Because if he did then it would be highly surprising to me that despite having written a popular book it took until a few years ago and a research paper (not a popular book, not media interviews, etc that he gave where he corrected the record) for people to realize that the conclusion they had drawn about the experiment was wrong? So apparently what he couldn’t achieve through multiple popular media sources was conveyed very rapidly through a research paper?
- adastra22 3y agoAlso that book, the original paper, and everything else promotes the “wrong” idea that everyone has had all this time. If in fact he had other intentions for the experiment from the beginning, he took 40+ years to communicate them. Really I’m being needlessly kind here. He only changed his tune once called out, and his claims that this was what the experiment was about all along are in direct contrast to his communicated intent from the beginning. What do we call it when you publish something that says A, while knowing A is untrue? Scientific fraud.
- tshirthoodie 3y agoAnd yet he did not use any of those opportunities to correct the most common perception of his work. How is that supposed to be convincing?
- GoblinSlayer 3y agoWhat is the most common perception? I understand it as Zimbardo describes, maybe because I watched "Das Experiment".
- adastra22 3y agoThat if you do nothing more than divide people into two groups—prisoners and prison guards—and nothing else (no instructions), the prison guards end up on their own accord abusing the prisoners so badly that the experiment needs to be prematurely ended.
- creatonez 3y ago> Even if this is true, whose fault is it? Is it Zimbardo's? The study itself described what they thought it might be able to demonstrate. The fraud is Zimbardo's. He was pretty clear that he was testing the hypothesis that the guards would become tyrants. He told the guards to become tyrants.
- ruszki 3y agoSo at the end, was that shown at least in this experiment that generally it’s enough to tell people that they should act as a tyrant and they would do as that?