Essay On Stanford Prison Study Vs Immunization Study

Discussion Assignment Unit 3 – ENGL 1102
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.
The immunization study  that took place in 1998  and the Stanford Prison study  that was planned for 2 weeks and was aborted after 6 days in 1971  led to negative consequences and impacted the participants of these studies and other people. I will discuss the immunization study in this discussion assignment because I believe it caused more harm than the Stanford Prison study in terms of its impact on a wider

First medical ethicists should have created more rigid rules for researchers to follow. These rules should have set clear guidelines on what is permissible and what isn’t permissible in terms of research design, in addition to rules pertaining to the consent process which ensures that parents are aware of the purpose of the study and the relevant risks and benefits on the children who participated in this study. There also should be rules pertaining to the size of the sample, the way data is collected, analyzed, reported, and interpreted. There should have been a research ethics committee that reviews any research proposal involving experiments on human. Second, the researchers should have observed strict rules related to social and ethical responsibility. Third, the editors of the Lancet should have critically analyzed the method used, the conclusions emitted and how these findings might have impacted the public. Fourth, the 10 out of 12 authors shouldn’t have waited till 2004 to retract their conclusions. Fifth, the Lancet shouldn’t have waited till February 2010 to completely retract the paper in a small anonymous paragraph. Sixth, the Lancet shouldn’t have absolved the researchers in 2004 and then held them guilty in 2010 for ethical infringement and scientific falsification. Luckily, they were finally found guilty in 2011. Seventh, the media could have shed more light on this issue through numerous articles that would have exposed in simple words without using the medical jargon the erroneous claims of the study and how they were refuted by other researchers. It is worth noting that Brian Deer was the journalist on the Wakefield case. Eighth, the public could have used its critical thinking skills to avoid the trap of the media and parents could have sought medical advice before boycotting the