The Stanford Prison Study debunked

 This post follows the same theme as last week’s: fraudulent science.

You are probably familiar with the famous Stanford Prison Study conducted in 1971 by Phillip Zimbardo. Students were assigned roles as either “inmates” or “guards.” in a mock prison. Soon after the experiment began, the guards began mistreating and even torturing the prisoners who passively took the abuse. What this study supposedly demonstrated was that innocent people, when thrown into a situation where they have power over others, will begin to abuse that power.

This study has been widely documented in books, films, and textbooks. Zimbardo was even consulted in a 2004 hearing on the Abu Ghraib prisoner torture. Now, after 50 years, his study has finally been debunked. Among other things, the study’s critics tracked down many of the “inmates,” including one who had screamed ‘I’m burning up inside” and found out that his pain was a performance. As the student recounted, “I have a great job. I get to yell and scream and act all hysterical. I get to act like a prisoner. I was being a good employee. It was a great time.” The “guards,” who were coached to be cruel, reported similar experiences. One said he pretended to be a sadist for kicks. “I took it as a kind of improv exercise. I believed that I was doing what the researchers wanted me to do… I’d never been to the South but I used a southern accent.” In other words, the students weren’t unleashing their ingrained sadism. They were acting.

So now you can rest easy. You probably do not harbor a monster inside of you waiting to emerge in the right context.

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What information can you trust?

The world of scientific research is competitive: grant money and livelihoods depend on getting research published and journals select articles that make splashy news. At the moment, a greater number of post doctorates are competing for fewer jobs and grant resources. What this has led to, in the words of one researcher, is an “epidemic of fraud.” The “fraud” in this case consists of such deceptions as leaving out contradictory data, cutting corners, or even making up data.

Example: You may have heard of “mindless eating,” the idea that the unconscious decisions we make about food can have profound effects on our diet and weight. The man responsible is Brian Wansink, a Cornell University professor, who became quite well known for his experiments such as the one showing that serving bowl size affects food consumption. He has influenced consumer behavior and even national policy. But he was forced to resign after thirteen of his papers were retracted because of data irregularities and gross statistical errors. In the words of Cornell, he committed “academic misconduct in his research and scholarship, including misreporting research data.”

In the field of psychology, one researcher started a “reproducibility project:” he selected one hundred published psychological experiments and tried to reproduce the findings but was only able to reproduce fewer than half of them. In the field of genomics, Stanford’s John Ioannidis (very trustworthy) found that only a tiny fraction of papers on that topic stood the test of time. For more examples, you can check out the blog, Retraction Watch, which strives to post every single academic retraction and keeps a top ten list of the most highly cited retracted papers. When I looked at it, it had already listed thirty-three retracted papers on the coronavirus.

Now, for myself, I select only those studies that support my own biases, which are always correct, of course.

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.

Crazy bills for coronavirus tests

Two friends, Jimmy and Pam, were going on a kayaking trip with other friends. For peace of mind, they decided to get tested for the coronavirus prior to their trip. They both got drive-through tests at Austin Emergency Center in Austin, Texas. Jimmy paid $199 cash just to avoid insurance hassles. Pam, who was using insurance, was charged $6,408 for her test. (Hers was later negotiated down to $1,128, but she was still responsible for $928 of that. After a television show told her story, her bill was dropped entirely.)

Another man who was tested at the same place got a bill for $5,649, of which his insurance plan paid $4,914. He’d been assured he’d be tested for only the coronavirus, but his bill showed he’d also been screened for Legionnaires’ disease, herpes, enterovirus, and others. (He also got out of that bill.)

During the pandemic, there’s been a wide variation in the amount providers bill for the same basic diagnostic test, with some charging $27 and others $2,315, for example—even if they’re conducted at the same location. The differences reflect different insurers’ market clout. A large insurer can demand lower prices, while small insurers have less negotiating power.

So, not only are tests notoriously unreliable and may take weeks for results, the charges attached to them are ridiculous. The discrepancies arise from the fact that the government does not regulate health care prices. What a mess.

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.

Mammogram stats

Every year in the US, hundreds of thousands of women are diagnosed with an early stage of breast cancer. But most early breast cancers are actually precancerous tumors that may or may not progress to true cancer. Thus, three out of four who are diagnosed with breast cancer suffer the complications of surgery, radiation therapy, hormone therapy, and chemotherapy with no benefit. Moreover, about one in four mammograms result in false positives, requiring multiple follow-up treatments and doctor visits, only to learn that they had no cancer after all.

No recent study has ever shown that mammograms have prolonged the lives of American women. Although mammograms save some lives, given the advances in breast cancer treatments, mammograms haven’t had an impact on overall mortality.

Here are the recent stats: For every 1,000 women screened every two years, most will have a false-positive mammogram during the next ten years, 146 will have an unnecessary biopsy, 7 will have a fatal case of breast cancer prevented, and 19 will be diagnosed with a cancer that never would have killed them. Among the 19 per 1000 who are over-diagnosed, 99 percent will have surgery, 70 percent radiation therapy, 70 percent hormone therapy, and 25 percent chemotherapy—all without benefit.

Scientists have no way of knowing who will benefit by screening. You might reasonably choose to have mammograms on the off chance that you might be one of the seven who has her life saved by screening, but also recognizing that you might be one of the nineteen who will undergo unnecessary treatment. Or, like me, you could skip the whole business. (I think I had one or two mammograms about 30 years ago.)

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.

Safely opening gyms in Norway

Norway, especially Oslo, has plenty of Covid-19 cases. (Oslo’s population is about 681,000. As of July 18, they had 9,029 cases and 255 deaths.) Nevertheless, they have opened their gyms as a result of a scientific study in which scientists conducted a randomized trial to test whether people who work out at gyms with modest restrictions are at greater risk of infection than those who do not.

The research included five gyms in Oslo with 3,764 members ages 18 to 64 who had no underlying medical conditions. Half were invited to go back to their gyms and work out. The other half were not allowed to return to their gyms. Those who returned to the gyms were required to wash their hands and to maintain social distancing: three feet apart for floor exercises, and six feet apart in high-intensity classes. They could use their lockers, but not the saunas or showers. They were not asked to wear masks. During the two weeks of the study, 79.5 percent of the members used their gyms at least once; 38.4 percent went more than six times.

Over the course of the two-week trials, there were 207 new coronavirus cases in Oslo, but no one using the gym contracted the disease. Skeptics are questioning the results, thinking that no one was infected in the gyms because there were very few COVID-19 cases in the city when the study was done—not because working up a sweat on the treadmill or lifting weights in the midst of a pandemic is safe. But hey:  1,896 people worked out at the gyms and none got infected! I’m a glass half full person.

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.