A recent inquiry argues that the famous Stanford prison study was faulty and scientifically invalid.
It in an example of how missing moralizing in science destroys scientific inquiry.
The prison study is unique. It created a huge backlash on ethics etc.
The unintended consequence of the ethics distraction was two fold:
1) deter from any kind of replication
2) create the impression that the science is solid, if not for the annoying / out of context ethics "issues"
3) there was an implied "mission" to reform prisons. Which - again - messed up proper scientific inquiry.
Great example on how moralizing leads to bad scientific progress.
PS. I'm not in position to decide if the study was indeed faulty. I honestly don't know. I would need very serious study of the details and the various parties version of events to have a proper opinion!
It in an example of how missing moralizing in science destroys scientific inquiry.
The prison study is unique. It created a huge backlash on ethics etc.
The unintended consequence of the ethics distraction was two fold:
1) deter from any kind of replication
2) create the impression that the science is solid, if not for the annoying / out of context ethics "issues"
3) there was an implied "mission" to reform prisons. Which - again - messed up proper scientific inquiry.
Great example on how moralizing leads to bad scientific progress.
PS. I'm not in position to decide if the study was indeed faulty. I honestly don't know. I would need very serious study of the details and the various parties version of events to have a proper opinion!
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3 comments:
שלום חצקל, מה שלומך? מתי מגיע לבקר בארץ?
יצחק
jazi - hope you're doing well. thought of you the other day and figured I'd come see if there were any recent blog posts...
I agree that there is an aversion to scientific conclusions that do not fit moral sensibilities. The universe is chaotic, unfair, and so vast as to be unknowable to any one mind. But it doesn't stop us from trying to overlay our own values and ways of thinking onto it.
As the saying goes "history repeats itself" - so shouldn't a well-read historian be able to predict the future? Hardly. History is shaped by millions of small events - but when studying it, we tend to focus on easily understood narratives that involve a limited number of actors, and have a moral explanation. As a result our historians have very little predictive power.
Economists do a pretty good job of thinking freely, but that is why everyone hates them.
In sociology/psychology (as you wrote), this problem is probably at its worst. But even where the factually correct sociological conclusion matches our moral intuition, the reluctance to investigate amoral or immoral conclusions i think undermines the credibility of the relevant scientific communities as a whole.
Thanks for your comment.
It is difficult to disentangle motivation from knowledge......
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