Stanford Prison Experiment

This week you will discuss either the Immunization study or the Stanford Prison study. You will tell your fellow classmates which of the studies you felt led to the most harm and what you think could have been done by the scientists, the media, and the public to avoid or fix the harms caused. Be as specific as possible.

When I read the two studies this week, I found one of them stood out as beyond comprehension as to the harm it has done and continues to do throughout the world. When Leithead wrote “The Stanford prison experiment was supposed to last two weeks but was ended abruptly just six days later, after a string of mental breakdowns, an outbreak of sadism and a hunger strike” (Leithead, 2011), I knew I would be writing about the Immunization

There was no basis for the study, the sample size of participants was too small to generate a true conclusion. 10 out of the 12 co-authors of the study retracted their findings the next day (Rao and Andrade, 2011). The main author, Andrew Wakefield had received payments from families engaged in a lawsuit against companies that produce vaccines, follow-up studies, proved there was no link between MMR vaccination and autism. Within two years, there was a complete retraction of the Wakefield paper, disclosure of errors and contrary findings had proven the study to be unethical and tainted to deliver results that were

Everyday there are crazy new stories that someone somewhere believes with all their might, just as there is another person who wholeheartedly disagrees. There are people who insist the earth is flat, others that it is round, many believe in a magic pill to lose weight, then the many religions of the world, create an impossibility for everyone to be right. Therefore, we must rely on our scientists to save us from ourselves. Only they would have the credibility to accurately report on an exhaustive study, which would once and for all, decide if vaccinations cause autism. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t, thanks discredited Wakefield paper, the world may never