The Ethical Use Of Deception In The 1900's

Throughout history, deception appears in dozens of experiments ranging from psychology to physics. Researchers use deception to obtain results that can reflect the true self of the participants. By withholding or changing certain aspects of the experiment, the researcher gathers information that would otherwise not be available. In the 1900’s deception occurred mostly in this form of experiments. Deception comes in many forms including concealing the true intentions of an experiment, intentionally misleading participants to a conclusion, reserving information and many more. Though one can argue deception leads to important conclusions in science, in many cases, deception is used in unethical ways. Cases become ethically questionable when

Some of the most important psychology experiments studied revolve around deception, one example being the Milgram Experiment. In 1963 Stanley Milgram sought out to discover the effects authority has on individuals. He intended to find out if the claims made by Nazi guards could be true. The individuals stated that their actions directly reflected the demands of their superiors. To do so, Milgram conducted an experiment involving a learner and a teacher. The teacher asked the learner different questions and would administer a shock if the learner answered incorrectly. The learner, however, was involved in the experiment and purposefully answered wrong thus causing the teacher to deliver what he believed to be a shock. The conductor asked the teacher to continue to ask questions and give shocks while increasing the voltage. The learner received no real harm but acted as he did. With the increased voltage each round, the learner would respond as if he was feeling the shock. The majority of the participants continued to a deathly amount of voltage. Some of the participants asked to stop the procedure or asked about the status of the learner but still finished the experiment. Only one- third of the teachers refused to finish the experiment due to the learner’s well-being. The use of deception caused the mental position of the participants to decrease, granted the participants were eventually briefed on the

In recent years the use of deception arose in neuroscience experiments, specifically in drug use. The use of “ghostwriting” plagues modern day pharmaceuticals. Shane Ellison, a former pharmaceutical chemist, defines ghostwriting as, “the practice of hiring Ph.D. s to crank out drug reports that hype benefits while hiding negative side effects.” The doctors receive money and praise in exchange for their work and their names on the reports. Although there are several other examples of ethical concerns, the act of ghost writing causes many concerns. Ghost writing takes away credibility and creates a false reality involving the drug. In 2001, the drug company Merck released a new painkiller known as Vioxx. The drug gained extreme popularity due partially to the medical journals that praised it. The journals contained misleading results from various studies that claimed the drug with positive outcome Numerous authors worked on the journals although they had little to no knowledge on the subject. In fact, one of the authors Marvin Konstam revealed that, “he didn't know too much about a 2001 journal article on Vioxx, despite the fact that he was listed as the article's lead author” (Edwards 2009). However, the company removed Vioxx in 2004 since the drug, “the drug doubled the risks of heart attack, stroke, and death” (Tirado 2015). The drug reportedly caused almost 40,000 heart attacks or