ethics and science

This week we read “the measure of restraint” which explores themes of the complex ethical decision making in the face of uncertain consequences. For an overview, the measure of restraint is a narrative written by Chet Raymo to portray the cons of nuclear radiation and the horrible ways it affects normal people living their day to day life.

This theme reminded me of the Stanford Bine experiment my teacher talked about in Psychology. Philip Zimbardo in 1971 aimed to investigate the psychological effects of power within the context of a prison experiment. Though the experiment was “successful” and helped scientists make necessary conclusions, it crossed the line in various ways affecting the participants in negative ways. Zimbardo created a fake prison in Stanford University to test how easily the power of the situation and the roles we use affect how we act. Eventually, at day 2, the experiment showed that power did corrupt. The guards acted with aggression towards the prisoners, despite the whole thing being a stimulation. The effects of this experiment stayed with the prisoners for the rest of their lives. Those that conducted the expirement failed to inform the participants and get their full consent, and violated many regulations put in place to prevent these outcomes from happening. This situation just reminded me of the narrative raymo presents how people were a lot more oblivious in comparison to the scientists, leading to their health being affected immensely, often resulting in death. In both cases, ethical boundaries were crossed due to researchers failing to inform participants and protect their wellbeing.