4 ms·

Unethical human experimentation in the United States

5 points by MrBra 14y ago

lutusp 14y ago
1. Please do not write your own headlines! Your title: "Human experimentation in the United States" The article title: "Unethical human experimentation in the United States" Notice the crucial missing word? 2. The article unfortunately left out pre-frontal lobotomy, a disastrous procedure that was almost always administered without informed consent.
- MrBra 14y ago
  You are right but I did not do that on the purpose of alterning the original meaning, I just copied it straight off the link url which is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_experimentation_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_experimentation_in_the_Un... Then when I noticed it, I thought that even in this form it evocates an unpleasant feeling...
  - dalke 14y ago
    You'll see that it says "redirected from ...". If Wikipedia redirects you from X to Y it will still use the URL for X. To get the canonical name for the page, I click on "Talk" and then back to "Article." Human experimentation is extremely common. Why does it give you an unpleasant feeling? I volunteer for a couple experiments while in psychology class in college. I've done human factors studies on people. Both of these are human experiments. In both, the experiments follow ethical practices, like informing the subject that they can quit at any time. When the city tests out different traffic light patterns, perhaps to improve traffic flow, it's also doing experiments on humans. A/B testing of a web site is yet another common form of human testing. These are all acceptable and ethical examples of human experimentation. That's why you need to include "unethical" in your statement.
    - MrBra 14y ago
      My answer is.. implicitness through common sense. "Human Experimentation" commonly evocate something wrong, and guess why? That's exactly because of what you can read in that article.. Or more generally because of the kind of world we live in, which, I am sad to remind you, it's not perfect. So I guess there is nothing wrong in titling something for what's commonly expected to refer to. Nonetheless I've edited the title :)
      - glurgh 14y ago
        I think you might mean 'evoke'.
        MrBra 14y ago
        yes thanks for correcting me
      - dalke 14y ago
        We need ways to do human experimentation. Without it, medical research would be dead, as would many other fields. For that matter, a chef wouldn't even be able to get others to do a taste test. That's why we've thought long and hard about the ethics of the topic. There are supposed to be policies in place, like an institutional review board, with the goal of protecting human subjects from physical or psychological harm, ensuring privacy, and making sure that the human subjects can make an informed consent. That's not saying the system is perfect. There's the worry that "many for-profit IRB's routinely approve the design and conduct of clinical trials for clients without adequately monitoring the safety of patients", like Coast IRB. Academic researchers working on humans and animals must go through the IRB process. This does help instill a strong sense of caution whenever humans subjects are involved. Here's a recent posting to show how strong that sense might be: http://boundarylayerphysiology.com/2013/02/17/why-im-worried-about-ethical-shenanigans-in-the-citizen-science-movement/ http://boundarylayerphysiology.com/2013/02/17/why-im-worried...
        MrBra 14y ago
        This is how things should be... But the whole point in posting a link to that wikipedia page is not condemning ethical and risk free human experimentation but the following: are sure that in this exact moment the american government isn't carrying on any other crazy human experimentation? I would spend a minute thinkin about that, instead of playing with words... (not trying to be offensive, but the topic is of such importance that this whole argumentation just feels redundant...) Again, think about what the goverment (togheter with private entities) could be doing RIGHT NOW.
protome 14y ago
unbelievable.. gives chills, we need not to forget these atrocities and spread these reports over and over and again and again.
bostonpete 14y ago
I wonder why the Milgram Experiment made the list but not the Stanford Prison Experiment...
- n3rdy 14y ago
  The Milgram Experiment does happen to shine a bright light on collectivism (it only takes one person to do the right thing, for everyone else to follow their example), while the Stanford Prison Experiment shines a darker light (or violet i guess?) on collectivism. Maybe it could have been omitted due to a bias, or the editors just didn't think to add it?
DanBC 14y ago
The book[1] "Men who stare at goats" gives an insight into some of the, uh, unusual programs the US military ran. [1] Not the film, which skips a lot of the detail.

5 points by MrBra 14y ago

1. Please do not write your own headlines! Your title: "Human experimentation in the United States" The article title: "Unethical human experimentation in the United States" Notice the crucial missing word? 2. The article unfortunately left out pre-frontal lobotomy, a disastrous procedure that was almost always administered without informed consent.

MrBra 14y ago
You are right but I did not do that on the purpose of alterning the original meaning, I just copied it straight off the link url which is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_experimentation_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_experimentation_in_the_Un... Then when I noticed it, I thought that even in this form it evocates an unpleasant feeling...
- dalke 14y ago
  You'll see that it says "redirected from ...". If Wikipedia redirects you from X to Y it will still use the URL for X. To get the canonical name for the page, I click on "Talk" and then back to "Article." Human experimentation is extremely common. Why does it give you an unpleasant feeling? I volunteer for a couple experiments while in psychology class in college. I've done human factors studies on people. Both of these are human experiments. In both, the experiments follow ethical practices, like informing the subject that they can quit at any time. When the city tests out different traffic light patterns, perhaps to improve traffic flow, it's also doing experiments on humans. A/B testing of a web site is yet another common form of human testing. These are all acceptable and ethical examples of human experimentation. That's why you need to include "unethical" in your statement.
  - MrBra 14y ago
    My answer is.. implicitness through common sense. "Human Experimentation" commonly evocate something wrong, and guess why? That's exactly because of what you can read in that article.. Or more generally because of the kind of world we live in, which, I am sad to remind you, it's not perfect. So I guess there is nothing wrong in titling something for what's commonly expected to refer to. Nonetheless I've edited the title :)
    - glurgh 14y ago
      I think you might mean 'evoke'.
      - MrBra 14y ago
        yes thanks for correcting me
    - dalke 14y ago
      We need ways to do human experimentation. Without it, medical research would be dead, as would many other fields. For that matter, a chef wouldn't even be able to get others to do a taste test. That's why we've thought long and hard about the ethics of the topic. There are supposed to be policies in place, like an institutional review board, with the goal of protecting human subjects from physical or psychological harm, ensuring privacy, and making sure that the human subjects can make an informed consent. That's not saying the system is perfect. There's the worry that "many for-profit IRB's routinely approve the design and conduct of clinical trials for clients without adequately monitoring the safety of patients", like Coast IRB. Academic researchers working on humans and animals must go through the IRB process. This does help instill a strong sense of caution whenever humans subjects are involved. Here's a recent posting to show how strong that sense might be: http://boundarylayerphysiology.com/2013/02/17/why-im-worried-about-ethical-shenanigans-in-the-citizen-science-movement/ http://boundarylayerphysiology.com/2013/02/17/why-im-worried...
      - MrBra 14y ago
        This is how things should be... But the whole point in posting a link to that wikipedia page is not condemning ethical and risk free human experimentation but the following: are sure that in this exact moment the american government isn't carrying on any other crazy human experimentation? I would spend a minute thinkin about that, instead of playing with words... (not trying to be offensive, but the topic is of such importance that this whole argumentation just feels redundant...) Again, think about what the goverment (togheter with private entities) could be doing RIGHT NOW.

protome 14y ago

unbelievable.. gives chills, we need not to forget these atrocities and spread these reports over and over and again and again.

bostonpete 14y ago

I wonder why the Milgram Experiment made the list but not the Stanford Prison Experiment...

n3rdy 14y ago
The Milgram Experiment does happen to shine a bright light on collectivism (it only takes one person to do the right thing, for everyone else to follow their example), while the Stanford Prison Experiment shines a darker light (or violet i guess?) on collectivism. Maybe it could have been omitted due to a bias, or the editors just didn't think to add it?

DanBC 14y ago

The book[1] "Men who stare at goats" gives an insight into some of the, uh, unusual programs the US military ran. [1] Not the film, which skips a lot of the detail.