The Monster Study

Creeping into the top five unethical experiments is the Monster Study - the study where scientists systematically bullied little children. Was this science or were they simply exacting revenge for being bullied at school? Which of the experiments do you think is worst?

	1939
	Do children stutter innately, or can we make them into stutterers?
	Take some normal kids and criticise their every move.
	Kids with no confidence stutter more.
	Children left with psychological problems for the rest of their lives.
	4/5

More information
In perhaps the most controversial study of child language acquisition, psychologist Wendell Johnson, of the University of Iowa, used a population of orphaned children in 1939 to study the effects of reinforcement.

Johnson separated normal-ability children into two groups, one receiving positive reinforcement to their speech, and the other negative. The positive group were encouraged and praised for their speech, whilst the negative were criticised for every mistake made, and labelled as stutterers. Children who were negatively reinforced showed negative psychological effects, such as a deflated sense of self, and many were so damaged that they retained speech problems throughout their lives.

The use of orphaned children in this way was thought so shocking that Johnson’s results were originally hidden, for fear of this experiment damaging his reputation. They were eventually released however and in 2001, 62 years after the experiment, the University of Iowa publicly apologised for the study.

Image: Scott Adams

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