When I decided to come to the University of Michigan, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Within a month of sending in the first check, I received an email which has heavily influenced my career and interests here; an email inviting me to apply to UROP. UROP (Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program) is where my interest, love, and respect for research blossomed. During my freshman year I worked in a neurogenetics lab which taught me a lot about asking the right questions and then how to design a good experiment to answer those questions while eliminating the risk of confounds. This type of research, though turning out to be different than my own interests, laid the foundation for thinking critically and designing an ethically sound experiment. 

 

Since my time in the neurogenetics lab, I have begun working in a lab much more in alignment with my own interests in Psychology. Where I had been working with DNA in tubes, I now have the opportunity to work with human participants. This shift into research with participants meant I had to learn more about what is ethical, as well as moral, when conducting experiments. One of the first things that helped teach me about these rules was the Stanford Prison Experiment. 

 

Everyone knows that this experiment was traumatizing and was even shut down early, but often people stop at that and forgo further effort to understand the underlying flaws in the experimental design which led to the traumatic study. 

 

And it's not just a terrible experiment because of the traumatizing effects, but also because of flaws in the validity of the experimental design. Briefly, these two categories of flaws can be labeled as moral issues and ethical issues. Morals can be understood as an individuals' sense of right and wrong, while ethics are scientific standards of research meant to ensure proper practices and set-up. Both are important in the consideration of experimental design and in critiquing and learning from those designs. 

At most universities today there exists an Internal Review Board (IRB) which assesses whether an experiment is both ethical and moral, as well as the benefits of conducting such a experiment. This was created in response to the horrific, unethical, and immoral Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in researchers withheld a proven form of treatment, penicillin, so that they could observe the natural course of syphilis in African American males. 

 

This study went on for 40 years. 

 

40. 

 

How this study ever lasted so long is beyond me, but I take comfort knowing that at least some good came out of it; the IRB. However, I think that even more can come from studies of the past, further advances in the world of research.

 

By examining the Stanford Prison Experiment, I hope to illustrate both the failings of that experiment, as well as what researchers could have done better. To organize my thoughts and the many categories I hope to delve into, I have created links below for each of the different categories of flaws this experiment suffered from.