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Comment by dghf | Hacker News Reader

Is convincing people they committed a crime really ethical? My self-image as a pretty peaceable, pretty honest person is fairly important to me: if I suddenly "remembered" a time when I stole from or attacked someone (with a weapon, no less) I'd be certainly upset, possibly traumatised.

Can anyone really give meaningful consent for an exercise like this? They paid the participants $50, but presumably they couldn't tell them exactly what was going on, or it wouldn't have worked.

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There are a lot of guidelines around the use of deception in research. See section 8.07 of the American Psychological Association's Code of Conduct, for example: http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/?item=11#807

In this case, I don't have access to the full text of the paper, but the "supplementary materials" are freely available, including the scripts that were used for the interviews and debriefing process. Some choice quotes:

"We predicted that in a significant proportion of participants, we could convince them that childhood events happened when in fact they did not. There is no reason for you to feel any more susceptible to such processes than anyone else (if applicable). This is a completely normal, common occurrence." ... "If at this point you would like to withdraw your data from the study, you are able to do so without penalty." ... "If you feel that you suffered any distress as a result of this study, please let us know as we can arrange to have a counsellor speak to you. No-one will have access to your identity or specific information you provided except for the study coders."

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/suppl/2015/01/14/095679761456...

Well, if the research can prove and point out to the general public that this kind of false memory already widely affects serious matters such as criminal investigation it is probably okay.

As a society we seem to weight positive harm much more heavily than negative consequences averted. It might not be the best way of looking at things but it seems to be a deeply ingrained aspect of human nature.

Well in this case it is weighing up potential benefits for everyone forever vs some negative for a few people. How we respond to that depends on our individual ethical dispositions

What if we could cure cancer and heart disease by physically debilitating a few dozen people? Would that also be okay?

Of course. Debilitating a few dozen people is nothing compared to the harm caused by cancer and heart disease, and if we had a choice between the two it would be wrong to pick the greater evil.

Is the premise of the question that choosing inaction adverts culpability, in a situation where either outcome is abhorrent? But inaction has only the appearance of innocence: if you really have the choice of which outcome will occur, you cannot absolve yourself of responsibility by going with a default. The fact that the greater evil is the status quo doesn't make it a more ethical choice.

>> "Of course. Debilitating a few dozen people is nothing compared to the harm caused by cancer and heart disease, and if we had a choice between the two it would be wrong to pick the greater evil."

You say that like it's fact but it's your opinion based on your ethics. There's also information we don't know. Are these people volunteering or being selected against their will? Either way it would also be fine to argue that the rights of those people are so important that society can't debilitate them even if it solves cancer and heart disease. Everybody has to die of something so why ruin these peoples lives when the people saved by not getting heart disease/cancer die from something else anyway?

From the standpoint of maximising human survival it is the right call

"Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person."

http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

IMO I suppose as long as you brief them afterward and reassure them, maybe even counsel them, then the individual ethics come back in line.

But this is a pretty important study I'd say, almost on par with the Stanford prison experiment for "pop" awareness.

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