Top Ten Most Unethical Psychological Experiments [Blog #2]

We talked about ethical ways to conduct an experiment, so I decided to look for a few examples of unethical experiments. On the cite linked below, I found ten severely unethical psychological experiments. All experiments on this list are relatively well-known. For example, the 'Monster Study' (where some orphans participate in positive speech therapy and others are in negative therapy) and the facial expression experiment conducted by Carney Landis (where participants had to view pornography, smell ammonia, put their hand in a bucket of frogs, and even behead a rat; if they chose not to behead the rat, Landis did it for them).

David Reimer

The number one most unethical experiment in my opinion was the one by John Money. A boy was circumcised at eight months, but the doctor used the wrong tool and burned his penis off. His parents went to John Money for guidance. John saw this as a good opportunity to prove his theory that environment, and not biology, determined gender identity (but did not tell the parents about this theory). So he suggested that their child have gender reassignment surgery.
His name was changed to Brenda and his parents decided not to tell him about the surgery. As she got older, Brenda acted like a stereotypical boy, but had a lot of questions because she didn't understand why she thought and acted the way she did. On top of these frustrations, her brother was severely depressed, her mother suicidal, and her father an alcoholic.

When Brenda was 14, her parents told her about the surgery, and she decided to go through gender reassignment again and go back to being David. John Money observed David from the first surgery and after the second, but was insistent that his theory was right and David had no psychological damage from this experiment. David committed suicide in 2004 (when he was 38). Many say this is because of the sugeries and serious struggle with gender identity. In other words, if John Money would not have deceived David's parents or would have helped David with his gender identity rather than just insisting that his theory was correct, David would probably never have died.

http://listverse.com/2008/09/07/top-10-unethical-psychological-experiments/

Also on Youtube is a TLC documentary where David tells his side of the story. I'm pretty sure there are four parts (I watched them all), and they're really interesting. Here is a link to the first part:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GhbVFjIaN0

Shocked! [Blog #1]

This is my first AP class, so I'm a little nervous about it but I'm pretty sure I can handle it. I get that the work load will be more than what I'm used to and I am aware that this is a college level course, but I'm excited for the challenge. I love learning about how the mind works; it's so fascinating to me that we all have similarly-functioning brains, but no two minds are alike. I have always felt a need to understand certain things and the mind's inner workings is toward the top of that list.

Anyway, when I was reading the section in Chapter 1 about critical thinking, it was talking about how critical thinking has lead to really surprising findings, and an example was that electroconvulsive therapy is actually a really effective way to treat severe depression. My first thought was something along the lines of Oh my gosh that sounds like mid-evil torture...I wonder if they still do that! 

So I did some research on electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and how it works. I found that it is also a treatment for acute mania and certain types of schizophrenia. About three mornings per week, a patient is given a muscle relaxer and anesthesia. Then the doctor attaches little electrodes to the patient's head and it delivers a shock that causes something like a mini seizure. The shocks are usually administered six to twelve times in one sitting.  They do this for about a month. Usually once treatment is over and the patient wakes up, they have no idea what happened right before the treatment.

There's a lot of controversy concerning this treatment (shocker!--no pun intended). Some patients have permanent memory loss and confusion, and many relapse after treatment, even with anti-depressants. But on the other hand, some patients see 80% improvement after ECT. Personally, I don't really think this is a really good idea unless you've exhausted ALL other options.

http://www.nmha.org/go/information/get-info/treatment/electroconvulsive-therapy-ect