[David B]

A despicable thing to do, I think, but interesting for all that.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7152762.stm

Originally Posted by link

"We had the same favourite book and the same favourite film, Wings of Desire,"

David B

[philian]

Personally, I would be out for blood if it were me. And I certainly wouldn't help that doctor continue his research.

[Don Alhambra]

That's the kind of research that gives us psychologists a bad name. There's a reason that ethics committees and institutional review boards (IRBs) exist, and it's to stop things like this from happening. The researchers had absolutely no right to deprive the twins of knowledge of one another's existence, in my opinion - at least after they turned 18, if not before!

[Pyrogenesis]

Luckily, at least Milgram and Zimbardo got their stuff done before the ethics committees ran them over. :P

[Patrick Harrigan]

Lots of ethical grey areas here. 'Twins raised separately' studies are compelling. These research subjects are the rock stars of social psychology. They should have the opportunity to refuse scrutiny by researchers, or to market their cooperation to the highest bidder.

The twins were also not informed that their biological mother had spent part of her life in psychiatric care. I, for one, wouldn't want to know.

[Goldie]

I've always found twins interesting and there is a lot of documentation on twins who were raised seperately. It's VERY interesting.
But, to do this purposefully, in the name of science... that's the "Mad Doctor" stuff of movies. How cruel!
Seems to me they could take legal action???

My best friend's oldest daughters are twins. I have been close to them since they were small children. They are in their late 20's now. They look VERY identical...but their personalities are VERY different.

I was a twin. But, I absorbed my twin in the womb. Then...she started growing tissue inside of me and some of it had too be removed. (See Stephen King's "The Dark Half")
I get to joke that it wasn't me that did it, but my absorbed, evil twin!

[Quizalufagus]

Would the twins be privy to knowledge to each other if the study weren't a factor? It's typically extremely hard for an adopted child to get information about his or her biological family, no? I'm not so sure if the two really do have a right to know about each other. If the researcher actually caused the two to be adopted by different couples then that's certainly a gray area, though.

[Patrick Harrigan]

I think it's getting easier for adoptees to connect with siblings raised separately. State statutes are becoming more flexible and private organizations have set up networks for adoptees to opt-in.

[Kim o the Concrete Jungle]

Originally Posted by Pyrogenesis

Luckily, at least Milgram and Zimbardo got their stuff done before the ethics committees ran them over. :P

Unlike the guy in the article, Zimbardo admits that what he did was wrong. He certainly wasn't expecting the kind of extreme results his prison experiment produced.

[Quizalufagus]

I'm not sure how surprising Zimbardo's results were given how coercive the environment was. It was initially very difficult to leave the study, and I think that Zimbardo's suggestions to the "guards" had a major influence on what went on. Most people don't realize what an active role Zimbardo took in making the situation more prison-like--effectively Zimbardo set up a real prison rather than a simulated prison. I'm not sure the study would be replicated if it were done again.

[Pyrogenesis]

Milgram's results were even more surprising. In fact, he made an informal quiz among his colleagues about what results they would expect, and they were wildly off-base.

[Don Alhambra]

Heh. I just saw this story. This is what happens when you don't tell kids that they were twins...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/st...239344,00.html

[Godless Dave]

I was under the impression that separating twins (and triplets etc.) for adoption had been illegal in the US for several decades now. Is that not that case in the UK? And am I wrong about the US?

[David B]

Originally Posted by Godless Dave

I was under the impression that separating twins (and triplets etc.) for adoption had been illegal in the US for several decades now. Is that not that case in the UK? And am I wrong about the US?

Dunno.

It does provide interesting data when these things have happened, but it really should be illegal.

IMV

David B

[lippard]

Originally Posted by Pyrogenesis

Milgram's results were even more surprising. In fact, he made an informal quiz among his colleagues about what results they would expect, and they were wildly off-base.

Milgram had a lot of subsequent lesser-known experiments that are also quite interesting, including the one that led to the "six degrees of separation" statistic (try to get a note from one test subject to an arbitrarily selected person in the world, how many steps does it take, on average) and some experiments with what you could call human puppets, which Milgram called "cyranoids" after Cyrano de Bergerac. The latter involved having people wired up with earphones and instructed to simply repeat whatever they are told to say. He would have white people wired up, and told what to say by black people, and vice versa; likewise with adults and children. He apparently used cyranoids for some obedience to authority experiments, as well.

I read about these experiments in Omni magazine in the eighties, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot about them online. Wikipedia's entry on cyranoids is pretty light on content.