Pit of despair

This reminds me of a bit of painful personal history.

When moving back from Canada to the Netherlands we took our dogs that we had acquired while in Canada back with us. Sarah, a three year old Irish wolfhound and Lisa, a 2 year old labrador / husky mix.

They went by plane, in crates specifically designed for the purpose.

On arrival the wolfhound had completely lost it, didn't recognize any of us and was totally out of it for at least two weeks, after which she slowly recovered. That was just 8 hours in a crate, not even close to the 'pit of despair' shown in the article, and anybody that willfully places an animal in such conditions just to see what damage will occur ought to be shot.

If I had had any idea something like that could have happened I would have gladly taken a boat with her, no matter how much longer that would have taken. It was incredibly sad to see her in that state, eventually she completely recovered though.

The other dog didn't show anything strange at all and took the whole thing in stride.

A warning for those of a sensitive nature, that's some disturbing reading about animal experiments, mostly psychological torture of young primates.

This ... words fail me. I'm not against reasonable experimentation in animals (for drug research and related) but this seems just like some sick psycho's idea of research. The article says the experiments were controversial but check out Harlow's biography, he got two awards after conducting these experiments. My view of psychiatry (clueless people trying random drugs to cure things they don't fully understand) has sunk to a new low. To me this is no different than Mengele's experiments. Do we take pity on him because he was depressed.

Jeez, this article ruined a perfectly good morning for me.

It really sounds like Harry Harlow was a sociopath (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy). I know a handful of academic science-types (some of which do experiments with animals) and I can't imagine any of them condoning so cruel a study. Ugh.

That is unbelievable. The scientist in question exhibited a profound lack of empathy; he probably would have been an interesting subject for experimentation himself.

What incredibly creepy experiments. Makes you glad we have ethics committees these days.

"Much of Harlow's scientific career was spent studying maternal bonding, what he described as the "nature of love"."

Apparently he was not very successful with his research - did he try to research that because he had no feelings to begin with?

Probably horrors like that and worse happen every day in a lot of research institutions. Some of the research is probably important and interesting. Still I have a hard time imagining how anybody can come up with and conduct such experiments.

Unlike other commenters I actually do see some useful results from this study. At what cost though? I can understand the argument for animal testing but something seems just that little extra bit off; when you're trying to study depression you end up having to inflict emotional pain, which is as literally torture as you can get. I've seen enough of the Internet not to be shocked often but this managed.

I have long held that the worst way to die (IMO) would be to fall down a tube of gradually decreasing width, head first of course. It's appalling that someone actually did this to animals.

Why didn't he just setup experiments where he forced monkeys through a fine mesh screen to prove that their psychological disposition is less than satisfactory when their physical state is reduced to a puddle of goo. Lots of great science to unearth there.

Of course, like mice, perhaps he just hated monkeys for the sake of it: http://www.theonion.com/articles/worlds-scientists-admit-the...

The interesting thing for me was the effects, not the ethics of the research itself. It is interesting that the torturous aspects of this were primarily mental not physical and still disgust people. Contrast with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unnecessary_Fuss (linked from that article) and you'll get what I consider a true idea of torture. That is not to say there aren't ethical concerns etc., but most of the horrible actions were committed by the monkeys themselves and were presumably unexpected, in contrast with something like in Unnecessary Fuss where there was intentional infliction of harm.

So is the internet a new age "pit of despair"? Is there enough social interaction for children these days or do they replace it with WOW and other "almost" social situations?

Torturing monkeys to prove points about depression?

Depression sucks, and the worst versions of it could certainly be compared to torture in terms of the misery inflicted on the suffer, but I find it questionable that one could link externally-inflicted torture and depression in such a way that these experiments would have any value.