The Stanford Prison Experiment had major ethical issues, but it did result in Zimbardo testifying to congress that what happened at Abu Ghraib prison was not a “bad apples” situation, but the inevitable result of putting a bunch of soldiers in charge of a prison with no real rules.

A quote from his book The Lucifer Effect (I haven’t read it, I got this from Wikipedia when I looked him up to see if I could get a quote from him talking to congress, which I couldn’t.):

“Good people can be induced, seduced, and initiated into behaving in evil ways. They can also be led to act in irrational, stupid, self-destructive, antisocial, and mindless ways when they are immersed in ‘total situations’ that impact human nature in ways that challenge our sense of the stability and consistency of individual personality, of character, and of morality.”

I often use his “experiment” as an example of bad science. He had plenty of good experiments, but that one ain’t one of them.

They knew it having problems by day 2, he didn’t call off the experiment until day 5. It didn’t follow a ton of best practices, even for the time. The only silver lining is the wealthy white college kids got to roleplay getting arrested in front of their families, which while not good science, is a pretty funny prank.

Please, look up the experiment. Also read Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy. If it doesn’t change your views on the U.S. prison system, then nothing will.

Was just reading about the failures of his “experiment” yesterday. Someone said he lied about the conditions, invalidating the results. I haven’t looked into that claim. What timing.

If anyone wants a great video about the experiment, I recommend you watch this Vsauce video