Ridiculous History: When Scientists Hid Under Beds to Do Research

[vellavu]

Ridiculous History: When Scientists Hid Under Beds to Do Research

It's quite a conundrum: needing to conduct research on people who don't know you're conducting research on them. But that was the predicament in which researchers Mary Henle and Marian B. Hubbell found themselves in back in the 1930s.

"In order not to introduce artifacts into the conversations, the investigators took special precautions to keep the subjects ignorant of the fact that their remarks were being recorded."
-----"'Egocentricity' in Adult Conversation," Mary Henle & Marian B. Hubbell, The Journal of Social Psychology, Volume 9, Issue 2, May 1938

As part of Henle's psychology graduate work, Henle and Hubbell were trying to determine whether children became less egocentric as they grew older. In order for the researchers to get a real feel for the conversations of college students, they took to any means necessary.

 

[November]

In order for the researchers to get a real feel for the conversations of college students, they took to any means necessary.

Ewww Perverts! I wouldnt NOT want to hide under a collage kids bed. GROSS!

Its Spying wrapped in a "Research" bow. I just cannot get on board with these types of study methods. They are so removed from society yet want to tell us how to live and why we chose to live as we do. It makes me actually sick.

If the authors of the 1938 study wanted to get their results today, their methodology would need to be drastically different to conform to ethical standards.

Modern Science need quite a few lessons in Ethics. I dont know why we glorify these people. They should be held to the same standards as the stalker who follows and tracks its victims. It promotes a similar feeling of helplessness that control and abuse does.

 

[Taake]

Yes, "research", that's what I call it too 😉

 

[November]

@Blaze: Modern science is VERY influenced by ethic, all research involving humans or animals, or the environment, needs to be ran by an ethic board first

Some days I do wish I lived in such denial. I'd be less sick about it all, for sure.

PS when I say modern science - I refer to anything after 19oo up until now. Those non consensual human experiments, flawed data, fake samples, "safe" medical treatments and animal testing still go on today.
 
Whoops! Can science pls make me a spell checker for after I take their completely safe and non cognitive impairing medications?

 

[thrasherpix]

I'd trust a scientific ethics board the same way I'd trust a lawyer ethics board (which even lawyers are known to joke about with contempt). Human beings are not inherently ethical in any objective sense, scientist or otherwise. Individuals can be (though people can be punished for ethical behavior just as they can for unethical, directly or indirectly), but generally speaking the only thing that ultimately checks people is self-preservation.

Any ethics committee is almost certainly going to be limited to what legal and social repercussions (like "can we be sued, or will this cause a backlash against the sponsors?"), but I'll doubt their goodness until I have reason to do otherwise. And going by the history (which often didn't come out until it was too late to do anything about it legally, and I'm sure that will continue to be the case) if any sincere ethics committee (motivated by genuine ethical philosophy rather than pragmatic legal concerns and the like) exist then their power is too weak to be taken seriously, just as the lawyer ethics committees are. And just because a board says they're about ethics doesn't mean they are.

 

[ILLYRIAN]

Mary Henle and Marian B. Hubbell had been tricked into researching for the Hammer House of Horror. They were not researching psychology they were researching Parapsychology, and it wasn't for things going bump under the bed. It was for the bed going bump on the floor.

 

[ILLYRIAN]

QccaQuokka,
my thanks for your thanks, I consider my sense of humour to be increasing in its weirdness. Pointedly, you are glad I'm posting again
yet in this case it is your fault that I am mentioning I'm posting when the subject is beds, I urge you to consider the notion of four poster beds.
PS don't mention this post to ABK, she already thinks I'm weird. Gwennie Poohs and Bluebird know that to be fact. But whatever you do don't tell me, the answer will make you wish I had visited that home from home in LA.

 

[November]

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/255279

Use of hormonal contraception, especially among adolescents, was associated with subsequent use of antidepressants and a first diagnosis of depression, suggesting depression as a potential adverse effect of hormonal contraceptive use.

Conclusions
Use of hormonal contraceptives was associated with subsequent antidepressant use and first diagnosis of depression at a psychiatric hospital among women living in Denmark. Adolescents seemed more vulnerable to this risk than women 20 to 34 years old. Further studies are warranted to examine depression as a potential adverse effect of hormonal contraceptive use.

I'd count this as modern day human experimentation.

 

[thrasherpix]

And then there's this:

Government tested AIDS drugs on foster kids

Government-funded researchers tested AIDS drugs on hundreds of foster children over the past two decades, often without providing them a basic protection afforded in federal law and required by some states, an Associated Press review has found.

The research funded by the National Institutes of Health spanned the country. It was most widespread in the 1990s as foster care agencies sought treatments for their HIV-infected children that weren’t yet available in the marketplace.

The practice ensured that foster children — mostly poor or minority — received care from world-class researchers at government expense, slowing their rate of death and extending their lives. But it also exposed a vulnerable population to the risks of medical research and drugs that were known to have serious side effects in adults and for which the safety for children was unknown.

I remember how fast this story was crushed, though it's coming out now that the legal suits can't be filed. That article also didn't mention that one of the major drug companies was paying/bribing officials to make it happen, guess they want to make sure they can't be sued before that can come out. (It's a problem when the major media is owned by a small group of people who also happen to own, or be friends to those who own, the other major corporations.)

It also downplays how badly some of those kids suffered. Of course the argument is made that they at least got help they wouldn't otherwise, but if it was so well meaning, then why was it done against the law on the most vulnerable of society, and why hide it?