Clunky title, but it's an odd subject.
Layperson understanding of science is riddled with go-to reference to studies and experiments that A) literally never happened and are totally made up or B) are so massively misunderstood or misrepresented as to not have happened in any way they are thought of or C) were one-off anomalies that were never replicated but have passed into the popular culture where they get spoken of as truisms, basically old wives' tales with a scientific paint job to give them an air of "Your precious science says this" by idiots and the proudly wrong.
Some prime examples...
Probably the most classic and most damaging the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, arguably ground zero for the modern "Humans are all bastards and will turn into monsters if given any power" take on life... was a hoax. Yeah. And even the hoax version didn't really produce any actual measurable useful data. It was just "Yeah people are bastards, just like you always thought, here's some proof you can pretend to point at" thing.
https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/174491...gy-replication
https://www.nine.com.au/entertainmen...lved%20in%20it.
https://www.wired.com/story/beware-t...trial-complex/
The other big one that springs to mind is the whole "If you put a frog in cold water and very slowly raise the heat the frog will let itself be boiled alive" thing, a reference that gets used a homily in any discussion about slow change.
Yes in 1869 renowned German psychologist Friedrich Goltz did put a frog in a pot of water and slowly bring it to a boil and the frog did not jump out.
1. He was trying to determine if the frog had a soul.
2. And I cannot, cannot, cannot stress this part enough... he took the frog's brain out first. Yeah. It was a dead frog. Kind of a major factor that gets lost in the pop culture version. He did the experiment again with a live frog, and brace yourself for a shocking twist, when the water got hot enough the frog jumped out.
The last big one that springs to mind is, and you've probably heard this one if you've ever had to take any kind of leadership course, is the whole thing where they took some monkeys and put a banana at the top of the ladder but if any monkey actually went for they banana they would turn a fire hose on ALL the monkeys so eventually the monkeys would start beating the crap of any monkey that tried to climb to the banana and they started swapping the monkeys out one by one and eventually there was no original monkey left but they would still beat the crap out of any monkey and have no idea why, always presented as some heavy-handed metaphor for not just "doing it how we've always done it" but this one... yeah it never happened. Like in any context that I can find. Best as anyone can tell it just appeared in a book in the 90s, wholly made up, and got passed as a true experiment that actually happened around ever since.
https://www.throwcase.com/2014/12/21...ry-is-rubbish/
Layperson understanding of science is riddled with go-to reference to studies and experiments that A) literally never happened and are totally made up or B) are so massively misunderstood or misrepresented as to not have happened in any way they are thought of or C) were one-off anomalies that were never replicated but have passed into the popular culture where they get spoken of as truisms, basically old wives' tales with a scientific paint job to give them an air of "Your precious science says this" by idiots and the proudly wrong.
Some prime examples...
Probably the most classic and most damaging the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, arguably ground zero for the modern "Humans are all bastards and will turn into monsters if given any power" take on life... was a hoax. Yeah. And even the hoax version didn't really produce any actual measurable useful data. It was just "Yeah people are bastards, just like you always thought, here's some proof you can pretend to point at" thing.
https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/174491...gy-replication
https://www.nine.com.au/entertainmen...lved%20in%20it.
https://www.wired.com/story/beware-t...trial-complex/
The other big one that springs to mind is the whole "If you put a frog in cold water and very slowly raise the heat the frog will let itself be boiled alive" thing, a reference that gets used a homily in any discussion about slow change.
Yes in 1869 renowned German psychologist Friedrich Goltz did put a frog in a pot of water and slowly bring it to a boil and the frog did not jump out.
1. He was trying to determine if the frog had a soul.
2. And I cannot, cannot, cannot stress this part enough... he took the frog's brain out first. Yeah. It was a dead frog. Kind of a major factor that gets lost in the pop culture version. He did the experiment again with a live frog, and brace yourself for a shocking twist, when the water got hot enough the frog jumped out.
The last big one that springs to mind is, and you've probably heard this one if you've ever had to take any kind of leadership course, is the whole thing where they took some monkeys and put a banana at the top of the ladder but if any monkey actually went for they banana they would turn a fire hose on ALL the monkeys so eventually the monkeys would start beating the crap of any monkey that tried to climb to the banana and they started swapping the monkeys out one by one and eventually there was no original monkey left but they would still beat the crap out of any monkey and have no idea why, always presented as some heavy-handed metaphor for not just "doing it how we've always done it" but this one... yeah it never happened. Like in any context that I can find. Best as anyone can tell it just appeared in a book in the 90s, wholly made up, and got passed as a true experiment that actually happened around ever since.
https://www.throwcase.com/2014/12/21...ry-is-rubbish/
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/aM7KVSd
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