Re: Henson on the Nazi meme

From: Scott Chase (osteopilus@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon 28 Mar 2005 - 22:49:00 GMT

  • Next message: Scott Chase: "Re: Henson on the Nazi meme"

    --- Keith Henson <hkhenson@rogers.com> wrote:

    > At 04:06 AM 28/03/05 -0800, Scott Chase wrote:
    >
    > >--- Keith Henson <hkhenson@rogers.com> wrote:
    >
    > snip
    >
    > > > Another thought would be to try this on current
    > > > school 10th grade students,
    > > > especially if a bit of study indicated it didn't
    > > > hurt the Cubberly
    > > > kids. Would the results be different today?
    > I.e.,
    > > > was there something
    > > > different about these kids born in the middle of
    > the
    > > > baby boom era?
    > > >
    > >I think I asked in a previous post about the
    > ethical
    > >considrations of such an experiment. If you were a
    > >researcher at a university in a psychology
    > department,
    > >would this be the sort of research that would pass
    > >ethics review? If you said you were going to go to
    > a
    > >high school and subject a class to such a
    > manipulation
    > >techniques would they ask: "You're going to do
    > what!?"
    > >Would a school board, high school prinicipal or
    > local
    > >PTA object to such a thing?
    >
    > I read the post where you expressed the concerns
    > about an ethics review.
    >
    > That why I specified "especially if a bit of study
    > indicated it didn't hurt
    > the Cubberly kids."
    >
    > My expectation (without having done a study of the
    > first group) would be
    > that might make kids who had this experience more
    > resistant to being sucked
    > into harmful social movements, sort of a vaccine.
    >
    > But who knows? It might have increased the
    > incidence of baldness or
    > ingrown toenails instead.
    >
    This is a serious question I asked. My recollection is that you'd have to submit a resarch proposal to someone in your department and based upon the outline of that proposal they would determine if it passed muster ethically. Subjecting high school participants to such a hardcore sceneraio just seems over the top to me, but I could be wrong. Plus I'd assume it would need to be run through the proper channels if you were to perform this experiment in a school district. Most of these have a school board, principals, teachers and parents who might voice concerns about the research design. I could imagine parents getting in a huff about their kids being subjected to such research. Sounds like lots of red tape and headaches, but I could be wrong.

    OTOH if a history teacher were to subject their students to a similar situation on their own would
    *they* be able to float this stuff by their school administration and school board or whathever channels would be necessitated? If they just decided to do something like you mentioned without consulting anyone above them in the bureacratic food chain, what would the repercussions be in terms of their continued employment?

                    
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