The Price of Research: Dehumanization
Nazi Experimentations, Milligram Experiment, Stanford Prison Experiment, etc. That first word caught you off guard didn’t it? Research within psychology and counseling studies has not always benefitted those involved or the field as a whole. Research is necessary to understand the human race and the sociocultural factors that influence their societies. However, until the latter half of the 21st century, research experiments caused life-long and sometimes fatal consequences to those who were involved. These experiments are the reason why human rights made ethics when it comes to our field of psychology and counseling.
The most famous example of unethical practice and harmful research are the Nazi experiments that were done with prisoners in the concentration camps. Nazi Germany was actively looking out for scientists to experiment with prisoners in order to further their knowledge of eugenics, racial ideology, and sterilization. The prisoners were considered inferior due to their religion, sexuality, and ethnicity, due to this inferior status they were not considered human. The research experiment dehumanized the prisoners because there was no informed consent or voluntary participation of the experiment. “The Nuremberg Code was created in the aftermath of the discover of the camp experiments and subsequent trials to address abuses committed by medical professionals during the Holocaust” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2006). Though this is the worst example of how human lives have been dehumanized due to scientific research, the final story will come close to it.
The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted by Dr. Philip Zimbardo in the early 1970s. This experiment was more about power balance and imbalance between the roles of prison guards and prisoners. A true social psychology experiment, all of the participants had a hard time dealing with the psychological torment from the guards in the study. Some of the prisoners started to rebel in the study, because of setting of the experiment was so realistic. The point of the study at the time was that this caused psychological harm to the participants on both sides and Dr. Zimbardo did not allow them to withdraw from the experiment before he officially designed it to end. This is why participants in any study are allowed to withdraw participation without losing credits or other incentives for participation as of today’s ethical standards.
Lastly, the experiment that I felt was the most horrible and horrendous is one that may or may have not even actually happened. The Russian Sleep Experiment was supposedly conducted by Soviet Russian in the 1940s with five political prisoners in exchange for their “false” release from prison. The prisoners were locked in gas-like chamber and were FORCED to stay awake for fifteen days through the use of a sleeping preventive stimulant. After about 8 or 9 days, few of the prisoners survived and some of them had resorted to self-cannibalism to survive. The researchers saw the effects of sleep deprivation on the prisoners as it had deformed them into monster-like creatures. There are two big issues here in this experiment: deception (as prisoners were told they’d be freed after the experiment) and dehumanization (as the sleep deprivation caused by the sleep inhibiting stimulation caused the participants to lose their humanity by deformation). The researchers even admitted that they did not want to accept responsibility for what the experiment did to the human beings involved.
If this last experiment does not tug at your empathic ability inside you and make you see the humanity in all people, I’m not sure what will? All I know is research ethics and codes have gotten better over the past 50 years and as a future practitioner, I hope to never allow my clients to be or feel dehumanized.
What Is The Russian Sleep Experiment? — YouTube
References:
Mr. H Reviews. (2018, October 14). What is The Russian Sleep Experiment? [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO7VsBfbTsg
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (2006, August 30). Nazi medical experiments. HolocaustEncyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-medical-experiments
