i watched what had been marvelous
cooperative wonderful thoughtful
children
turn into nasty
vicious discriminating
third graders welcome to watch mojo and
today we're counting down our picks for
the top 10 controversial science
experiments
experimenting that's all get me out of
here this case was called a medical
triumph but in truth the case was a
failure i'm alone and lost in the mall
for this list we're looking at
experiments that generated debate as a
result of their methodologies
results or the risks involved to
participants
in other words they must have provoked
actual argument rather than universal
condemnation
we'll be excluding reviews of other
studies that didn't involve new
experiments
what's the craziest scientific
experiment you've ever heard of
tell us in the comments below number 10.
little albert conducted by famed
behaviorist
john b watson and his graduate student
rosalie raynor this experiment is
controversial due to its methodology and
ethical shortcomings
watson wanted to use classical
conditioning to give an 11 month old
child a phobia of rats and other furry
objects
they let the child referred to as albert
play with a rat
then whacked a metal bar with a hammer
behind him the loud noise reportedly
instilled in the child of fear of furry
objects in general
it was a landmark experiment in
behaviorism a school of thought that
dominated psychology for decades
however looking back reviewers have
criticized the experiment for using only
a single subject
and its dubious ethical standards heck
they made the kid afraid of bunny
rabbits and santa claus
we've established that uh we will try to
make it won't we so children you'll be
looking forward to your presence we'll
try
very hard number nine the large hadron
collider experiments
they're scaring a child and then there's
ripping a hole in the fabric of
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space-time
fortunately the large hadron collider
completed in 2008
hasn't actually done the latter but
there were fears it would
making its construction controversial
indeed especially among the public
located near geneva switzerland this
gigantic particle collider smashes atoms
together to plumb the secrets of the
universe
designed and built by thousands of
engineers scientists and mathematicians
from across
our tiny planet with the goal of helping
other scientists
learn about things of incredibly small
size by smashing them together
however before it was activated many
worried that it would create stable
microscopic black holes
tartar titans i have enjoyed our time
together but i've got a very bright
future ahead of me
similar concerns had surrounded new
york's relativistic heavy ion collider
before its activation in the year 2000.
fortunately safety reviews have
concluded that any such black holes
would evaporate
or fly off into space they also noted
that high-energy collisions occur
naturally without catastrophic
consequences
uh well so far so good number eight
the daryl bem precognition study in 2011
respected psychologist daryl bem
announced some rather bold findings in
the apa's journal of personality and
social psychology
he reported that people could recall
certain words better when they were
given time to repeat them
the twist he claimed this worked even
when they were only allowed to practice
the words
after testing this amounted to a
scientific argument for precognition
or extrasensory perception the results
could be seen as challenging how the
human brain perceives time
needless to say the study created an
uproar similar experiments were unable
to replicate bem's results
it also sparked debate in the scientific
community over the peer view process
accepted methodologies in experimental
psychology and
difficulties in publishing replications
and non-significant results
number seven loftus's lost in the mall
study i'm alone and lost in the mall
memory is a fickle thing over time our
recollection of specific events can
change or just fade altogether
well that's the thing i have this
condition condition
it's my memory amnesia no no no it's
different from that i have no short-term
memory
i know who i am i know all about myself
i just since my injury i can't make
new memories everything fades but have
you ever had a memory that wasn't
actually your own
you'll probably answer no at least not
that you know of
in the mid 90s a team led by american
cognitive psychologist elizabeth loftus
set out to prove just how easy it is to
implant a childhood memory in someone
of an event they never experienced the
false memory they chose was being lost
in a mall
they were lost for an extended period of
time that they were
frightened they were crying and they
were ultimately rescued by an elderly
person and then brought
back together with their family the
findings were considered groundbreaking
casting an unprecedented level of doubt
on the human memory
adding to the controversy it was also
used to discredit recovered memories
repressed in survivors of abuse and
other traumatic experiences
through suggestion we're finding that
maybe as many as a
as a quarter of our subjects will
develop
a complete or or a partial memory of
this experience that never really
happened to them
number six limits challenge to free will
and you can't mess with free will
uh-huh can i ask why
yes you can that's the beauty of it
the concept of free will is one that's
been debated as long as anyone can
remember
in the 1980s however it seemed as if
neuroscientist benjamin libit had
finally delivered a definitive answer
libit's landmark experiment studied the
human brain and found that it registered
activity before test subjects made a
conscious choice
all i have to do is watch the spinning
dot and click a button whenever i feel
like it
then report to the scientist at what
time i felt the urge to click
from this it was suggested that our
choices are unconscious
and thus not truly our own this would be
a controversial conclusion even with
ironclad methodology
in other words his experiments seemed to
show that the conscious decision
didn't cause the movement the brain
activity bringing about movement started
before the individual
willed anything to happen since then
however limits experiment has had both
supporters
and detractors with critics arguing over
how to interpret the brain activity that
preceded action
number five the elderly related words
provoke slow walking experiment
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the idea of social priming seems to make
intuitive sense
cue someone to think about something for
example a professor
and it could affect their behavior such
as their performance on a general
knowledge test
space time
gravity
finish that for me however what john
barge and colleagues claim to have
discovered in 1996 was nonetheless
startling
when subjects were primed with the
stereotype of an elderly person
they reportedly walked more slowly
afterwards
as if they themselves had become old
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that's really me isn't it i've got to
stay calm
this became hugely controversial in 2012
when researchers failed to replicate
bars finding
and suggested that experimenters had
unconsciously biased the results
bars reacted with a scathing personal
attack and
the whole field of social priming has
since been described as a quote train
wreck
number four jane elliott's blue eyes
brown eyes experiment
the day after martin luther king jr's
assassination in 1968
school teacher jane elliott decided to
try an experiment to teach her all white
third graders about discrimination
the children were divided into a brown
eyed and a blue-eyed group
with the former deemed superior and
given certain privileges the brown eyed
people
get five extra minutes of recess
you blue-eyed people are not allowed to
be
on the playground equipment at any time
subsequently the brown eyed children
began talking down to their blue-eyed
peers
who became shy and performed poorly on
tests
after several days their positions were
reversed blue-eyed people
are smarter than brown-eyed people
they are cleaner than brown-eyed people
they are more civilized than brown-eyed
people the experiment received
considerable backlash
with one letter writer deeming it quote
cruel to white children
however it also gave elliott a national
platform as a diversity educator
today it's largely remembered positively
but its efficacy in fostering lasting
racial sensitivity has been questioned
as has the decision to try it out on
children i watched
what had been marvelous cooperative
wonderful thoughtful children turn into
nasty vicious
discriminating little third graders
number three david reimer's involuntary
gender reassignment
this experiment became even more
controversial over time
david reimer was born biologically male
in 1965
after a botched circumcision his parents
raised him as a female under the
guidance of psychologist john money
money believed that gender identity was
learned strongly favoring
nurture over nature he thought that
while genes were important
as far as gender was concerned a baby's
essentially neutral for the first two
years of life
he believed during these critical two
years the baby's
upbringing how it is nurtured would
determine whether it feels masculine
or feminine since reimer had a twin
brother it was seen as an ideal case
study
for decades money's claims influenced
doctors performing child sexual
reassignments
however by his early teens reimer was
actually severely depressed
and underwent surgery to reverse his
reassignment i tried to fit in
i tried with with the makeup and it
turned out to be a disaster you mean you
got the you know
the red the red circles on the cheeks
and uh look
i look like a clown basically when he
spoke out decades later
it sparked a huge debate about money's
extreme methods and
nature versus nurture sadly reimer and
his brother later took their own lives
the experiment has been roundly
criticized by both money's colleagues
and intersex activists above all
this is a cautionary tale this is what
can happen when science pursues a
beautiful theory
with scant regard for the human cost
number two stanley milgram's obedience
to authority shock experiments
history is rife with seemingly ordinary
people
participating in horrific acts because
they were just following orders it's
invoked
pretty much routinely to explain
everything from abuse to abu ghraib
corruption in enron or everyday
terrorist atrocities around the world
in the early 1960s psychologist stanley
milgram put together a study
in which an authority figure instructed
volunteers to deliver
increasingly intense electrical shocks
to a stranger
experimenter that's all get me out of
here i told you i had hard trouble my
heart's starting to bother me now
get me out of here please my heart's
starting to bother me i'll refuse to go
in let me know
the electricity wasn't real but the test
subjects with their fingers on the
button didn't know that
and wouldn't you know it most of them
followed orders even
delivering potentially lethal levels of
electricity
they were however extremely distressed
by the ruse raising ethical concerns
well i figured 200 the voters were given
were quite a bit i wanted to stop but he
kept insisting not to stop
i mean the felon there is hollering he
says i don't want to do it i want to get
out of here i want to get out of here
why didn't you stop anyway i i did stop
but he kept going keep going
people continue to argue over his
methodology and
interpretation of the results today
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number one philip zimbardo's stanford
prison experiment
is power inherently corrupting in the
early 1970s
that's what dr phillip zimbardo set out
to answer specifically as it applies to
the correctional system
he would convert the basement of the
university's psychology department
into a subterranean jail student
volunteers were divided into the roles
of guards and prisoners
and were then instructed to play out
those roles in a simulated prison
the experiment also aimed to address
questions of group identity
power structures and the effects of
being dehumanized
it was intended to last 7 to 14 days but
the plug was pulled after just
six with abuse rampant and multiple
prisoners backing out
what made the experience most depressing
for me was the fact that we were
continually called upon to act in a way
that just
it's contrary to what i really feel
inside it seems like a pretty
clear answer to the core question no
well there have been claims that the
guards were
coached to behave a certain way and that
the experiment was biased by
implied demands at this rate we're going
to be here all
goddamn night
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