The fallibility of psychologists and their subject!!!! Psychology is something akin to a prostitute….its willing to sleep with anyone who is willing to pay for it and experiment and perfect and hone its art for with those who can`t. The lessons learnt with those who can not is used for the benefit of those who can pay for it!!!!!!

Great article indeed.

I’m not sure that I agree with splashy’s political commercial about classes. It depends not on classes or groups, but individuals. There are good people and bad in all walks of life. The current day attitude to view people collectively is regressive, and tribal in it’s outlook. We don’t join a group to become a whole with the group, we are a whole as a person; and often groups keep us from achieving creative and inventive things; because groups have a leveling effect, pulling the top down, and the bottom up, until all becomes mediocre. Class-ism is a form of racism without the genetics. Those people who would like to work, live free, and think for themselves usually succeed with out a group or class. When they do that they are pulled back down by peer pressure, and malcontents. “The task of man is to set himself free from men.” … Ayn Rand

This is what I thought of when I read this as well.

While looking back on this and other experiments, we can be very judgemental of them because we have “evolved” but I think that what everyone is forgetting is that we are not born knowing everything. We learn from others teaching us, the past teaching us or from us learning for oursleves. As far as the discussion regarding this not being a learned phobia, I would have to disagree. There are a lot of comments in here that discuss being bitten by a dog as a child and not having a phobia. But I think that the point of the experiment was to go a step futher to see if phobias could be trained into a baby that has not yet been exposed to the world at large the way a 9 or a 13 year old would. Don’t get me wrong, I do not condone what happened here. I just can’t help but wonder where the research was gong to go. But I can clearly see this experiment being picked up in Nazi concentration camps.

If they CAN train a baby to like and not like certain things, you could essentially be creating your own “army” so to speak. To grow up without the love or the cute little things in life, could be to grow up without the “normal” love. Someone with a cold heart, a perfect soldier for whatever the cause. (not that all soldiers are cold hearted, please don’t mistake that)

And about the “positive stimulus”, I agree that this is horrific but that is because that is the way that we are trained to think. There are other cultures that still, to this day, use these types of positive reinforcements.

Also,
[quote]splashy said: “This is a prime case of how the upper class can feel free to use the lower classes for whatever they want. Notice that it’s a child of a “wetnurse” who would be considered lower class from a professional scientist. This has gone on for a very long time, hurting those that are in the lower classes by the cavalier attitudes of the upper class to the pain and suffering they induce…”[/quote]

Splashy,
I was particularly interested in your point of view. I did want to say that the mother willingly let her child go through with the experiments, she was not forced to. And it was probably to her benifit as she could stop in and see her son throughout the day while she was at work. There was no pain caused to the child other than the temporary mental aspect. Someone else stated that the child was hit in the head with the bar, but they misread the statement and I wanted to make sure that you did not as well.

All in all, this was a good read with many interesting points of views and commentary to go with it. Good luck on the book!

Homer: that’s why i drew bunnies on all the electrical outlets.

marge: maggie’s not afraid of bunnies!

homer: she will be…

My younger brother Wyatt was attacked also, by a pit bull. He had stitches, but something in the dogs saliva caused a serious infection in his face. He went through hell as a kid…always had ear infections and different kinds of immunity problems.

My other brother Braxton was attacked by a wolf-mix (who was on a chain, Brax approached him). I wasn’t there for that and I don’t know how bad it really was… He had four or five stitches and I think he was over it in a couple days.

To this day, Braxton and I don’t have irrational fear toward dogs. Wyatt has a dog, but I think he’s more leery than we are. My only point is that, obviously, this experiment is flawed.

I think the reason this test was tolerated is simply evolution…when we look back, society did a lot of astounding things that we, in today’s mentality, would look at as inferior and incompetent. Society, like an individual human life, has embarrassing moments of lapse of common sense…while this makes me feel nauseous, I’m thankful that it happened and we’re past that point.

I do wonder what happened to the baby, though. I’ll bet he still has a fear of bunnies.