love to be a psychologist in the 1970s and put together a poorly designed and probably illegal experiment, where i round up a bunch of undergrads and pay them to stab each other in the balls, the results of which lead me to publish my extremely unscientific and contrived conclusions about the hidden darkness in the heart of man

i am looking DIRECTLY at Philip Zimbardo here

literally i hate the stanford prison experiment so much. even calling it an "experiment" is laughable. there was no control group. no data was recorded. everyone involved was a white american middle class male from the same city and it was a sample size of only 25 people. the guards were coached in intimidation and control tactics used by real prison guards prior to the experiment. Zimbardo himself was super involved and actively coaxed the guards into more extreme behavior.

and yet. and YET. i have to hear about this stupid fucking experiment in every god damn psych and sociology class like its this fundamental pillar of human behavior and not just a crank professor traumatizing a bunch of college students in a converted basement

the milgram experiment isnt much better by the way but this still attracts the majority of my ire