The Placebo Effect Part II: There’s always a but….

Posted on September 2, 2007
Filed Under Science |

Although the experiments of Dr. Wager appear to be well thought out and performed, the question has to be asked, how far is too far to answer an experimental question? And are the experiments ethical? To answer this question it is helpful to look back at the Milgram experiments-experiments done by Dr. Stanley Milgram at Yale University in social psychology.

Dr. Milgram set up an experiment in which individuals responding to an advertisement to participate in a study for $4.50 for one hour’s work (a lot of money I guess in 1961) would be placed in a “teacher or disciplinary” role where they would administer a series of incremental electric shocks to the individual designated as a “learner” when the learner answered questions posed by the teacher incorrectly, all under the supervision of a presumed authority figure wearing a white coat. The goal of the study at least explained to the individual in the teacher role was to look into the role of punishment in learning. However, the true nature of the study was to determine the willingness of people (in this case the teacher) to obey an authority figure (the white coat). The learner was really an actor who was not actually receiving electric shocks unknown to the teacher. Milgram found that 65% of individuals in the teacher role were willing to give serious levels of electric shocks all because the white coated individual told them they needed to continue with the experiment. This was considered a great study, but also considered a very controversial study.

So all this has been said to get to this point, studies such as the Milgram experiment and the Wager experiment although elegantly achieved and with great social and scientific implications suffer from an ethical concern. The ethical concern being deception, participants were deceived as were the participants in the Milgram experiment to the true nature of the study. Informed consent, which was apparently obtained in the Wager experiment leads to ask the question what kind of consent could truly be obtained given the deception of the true nature of the study? In the Milgram experiment it appears, as there is great video footage of the experiment, that consent was given on the spot by the white coat, but again, what kind of consent was given there. When does the quest to advance research, particularly with respect to the social, medical health and welfare of the public at large go to far. This issue is not just applicable to the above experiments but is quite relevant to the issues of abortion, euthanasia and stem cell research, where do we begin and end. I think that a case by case basis of such research needs to be reviewed, although all research may be possible, the question to continue such research needs to be reviewed for ethical and dare I say moral concerns.

Related: The Placebo Effect part I: The real deal?

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