5 Unethical Experiments Done in the Name of Science

We all know that since the dawn of time man has wanted nothing more than to get inside another person’s mind and see what kind of stuff they are thinking about. If you don’t feel this desire you’re probably not a psychologist and therefore are in serious danger of being experimented on by the government/ mad scientists and just about anyone who decides they should run an experiment. Just so you can prepare yourself here is a list of unethical experiments that could be run on you:

Thanks to sites that publish interesting lists everybody seems to know about the Stanford Prison experiment. By now anyone you ask will tell you that this was a horrible study where university students were placed in one of two conflicting groups in order to replicate the conditions inside a prison. The experiment was so bad that it had to be stopped weeks before it was supposed to end. What few people know is that the same experiment was done with twelve year old kids that didn’t even know they were in an experiment, and it was done THREE TIMES!

A group of scientists led by Carolyn Wood Sherif gathered several 11 and 12 year old boys and took them on a summer camping trip, without telling anyone that this was actually an experiment. The scientists had them divided into two groups, making sure to break apart any friendships that the boys had established previously. Once on the campgrounds the scientists encouraged the boys to call each other names and pull pranks on the other group. But don’t worry they also had planned some group-building activities at the end of the whole experiment, such as cutting the water supply and let the kids figure out how to avoid thirst.

In both of the first and second experiments the boys rebelled against the experimenters, probably realizing they were mad scientists. Of course these two experiments were not published originally; Sherif only publicized the results from the third test where the boys apparently resolved their conflicts at the end of camp. This prompted the scientists to declare this a successful experiment in conflict resolution; although the study did not monitor the boys over long periods of times to see if a summer spent in a camp where they were constantly insulted did any lasting psychological damage.