[HN Gopher] Philip Zimbardo, psychologist behind the 'Stanford P...
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       Philip Zimbardo, psychologist behind the 'Stanford Prison
       Experiment' dies at 91
        
       Author : Jerry2
       Score  : 23 points
       Date   : 2024-10-21 21:37 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (news.stanford.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (news.stanford.edu)
        
       | worstspotgain wrote:
       | _Discovering Psychology_ on PBS was a great series.
        
       | tptacek wrote:
       | At a quick skim, this doesn't seem to mention all the controversy
       | over the validity of that experiment:
       | 
       | https://gen.medium.com/the-lifespan-of-a-lie-d869212b1f62
        
         | booleandilemma wrote:
         | Regardless of how valid it is, it makes for some great movies.
        
           | worstspotgain wrote:
           | The namesake 2015 movie was almost as much of a pain to watch
           | as being in the experiment itself would have been.
        
         | UniverseHacker wrote:
         | It does mention that it is controversial and was criticized for
         | its experimental design. I think that is sufficient for what is
         | essentially a eulogy for a deceased colleague.
         | 
         | I'm not sure what other commenters on here expect, but it would
         | be extremely inappropriate to use this announcement as a venue
         | to systematically criticize his research... I'm pretty sure
         | that has been done already in a more appropriate forum.
        
           | threatofrain wrote:
           | Also his work is largely regarded as a historical cautionary
           | tale and has been poured over by infinity textbooks so
           | there's really nothing more to say about it.
        
             | DoughnutHole wrote:
             | Except it is simultaneously cited by many people as
             | demonstrating some intrinsic aspects of human nature.
             | 
             | Anyone who has done their research know the experiment is
             | bollocks. There's countless others out there touting it as
             | informative.
        
         | mc32 wrote:
         | At least flawed business case studies get cycled out once a new
         | case study becomes de rigueur. Soft science tend to use flawed
         | studies long after their flaws are exposed. Few people would
         | use Welch's management style as one to follow but a number of
         | people still think there are Unit731s inside everyone waiting
         | for orders.
        
       | readthenotes1 wrote:
       | Too ironic "To this day, it is used as a case study in psychology
       | classes to highlight both the psychology of evil as well as the
       | ethics of doing psychological research with human subjects."
       | 
       | should read
       | 
       | "To this day, the thoroughly debunked session is used as a case
       | study in psychology classes to highlight both the psychology of
       | 'publish or perish' as well as the fundamental flaws in the
       | science psychology pretends to have"
       | 
       | But it doesn't, because that would require the field admitting it
       | is deeply flawed
        
         | insane_dreamer wrote:
         | > highlight ... the ... ethics of doing psychological research
         | with human subjects
         | 
         | this part is true regardless of the experiment's flaws
        
       | JohnMakin wrote:
       | Kind of sad that this piece published by stanford, a supposed
       | beacon of academic excellence and rigor, does not mention at all
       | the issues with this now debunked study.
        
         | dexwiz wrote:
         | Are they? Seems like a lot of bunk science from them has been
         | revealed recently. Who knows how much more is still yet to be
         | uncovered. Not to mention some famous parents.
        
       | gjsman-1000 wrote:
       | Reminder that psychology is in a reproducibility crisis; with
       | ~30%-50% of studies being unable to be reproduced.
       | 
       | https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/psycholo...
       | 
       | In which case, it's fairly safe to say... you're not _that much_
       | worse off by following your gut and flipping a coin.
        
         | newaccount74 wrote:
         | Are other fields really better than psychology in that respect?
         | 
         | I failed to reproduce published work everytime I tried. In one
         | case I was only able to reproduce results by using carefully
         | selected starting parameters I received privately from the
         | author; in another case the author just told me that the
         | algorithm was very unstable and required a lot of tweaking (not
         | mentioned in the paper) to work, and another author didn't tell
         | me about the boundary conditions used in the paper that were
         | left out because they were too busy. Those were papers from
         | physics & computer graphics.
         | 
         | The cynic inside me assumes that non-reproducibility is pretty
         | much the default for most published papers.
        
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