Speehless!
During my morning "news cruise" through the electronic headlines, I ran across this story subtitled, "1930s experiment tried to cause speech issues by baiting, belittling orphans." MSNBC Story here. In short, Dr. Wendell Johnson, a speech researcher from the University of Iowa, developed a study to support his theory that stuttering was a learned behavior. Of note, Dr. Johnson had, himself, grown up with a pathological stutter, steering his thoughts and passion toward discovering the genesis and treatment for stuttering. He enlisted the help of colleagues in conducting an experiment, using orphans from Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home as subjects, to attempt to induce stuttering in normal-speaking children and remediate stuttering in those children who did, indeed, stutter. The experiment consisted of telling a group of normal-speaking orphans that they showed signs of stuttering and that they should use all of their will-power to avoid developing stuttering speech. The other group, those children that actually did stutter, were told that their speech was fine, to not listen to anyone who told them that they stuttered, and that, eventually, they would outgrow their speaking difficulties.
The results of the study did not corroborate Dr. Johnson's theory of learned stuttering. Those non-stuttering children did not develop stuttering, and those that did stutter did not improve. However, those non-stuttering orphans that were told that they did stutter - or were on the verge of developing a stutter - showed direct psychological impact of the experiment methodology by developing all of the associated tics, self-consciousness and fear of speaking that children with a stutter demonstrated. In essence, the researchers imparted to this group of children a long-term psychological burden from which few, if any, entirely recovered.
My first thoughts as I read the story were, 1) it's bad enough to use orphans as unsuspecting subjects in a psychological experiment, but 2) an experiment designed to cause psychological turmoil in an already traumatized child is, to me, unthinkable. Remaining somewhat skeptical of the facts as represented in the MSNBC version - I Googled "Dr. Johnson, University of Iowa, Stuttering" and hit on a NY Times article that more fully described the context of the study, the motivation of Dr. Wendell Johnson, and the unintended long-term consequences of the experiment. NY Times story here.
The writer of the Times article, while not necessarily sympathetic to the researchers, does address the fact that the primary investigator working directly with the orphans did, subsequent to the study, go back to the orphanage and work with those children who had been falsely told that they stuttered - hoping to unburden them. Apparently, this strategy didn't work very well - as those children continued to exhibit traits of extreme self-consciousness. In fact, the impact of the study was so long-term that three of the former orphans pursued litigation against the State of Iowa and recently won a settlement - as noted in the MSNBC story. From the historical perspective, here's a Scott County, Iowa page that provides an interesting history of the Iowa Soldier's Orphan's Home - click the 'History of Home' link for DETAILS.
The story, and study, is disturbing on a number of levels. First, it egregiously violates a universal foundational principle of humanity - no person should be treated as a means to an end. Each person is to be considered an end in themselves. While one might successfully argue back and forth between the Kantian deontological Categorical Imperative and the social context of Aristotelian ethics - or even Utilitarianism - clearly, when a defenseless agent is acted upon without consent as a means to an end without benefit to the subject - an ethical line has been crossed.
Second, why orphans? Well, for one, the University of Iowa had some kind of relationship with the Iowa Soldier's Orphan's home at the time. Why would a large research university have any kind of relationship with an orphanage, other than to donate time teaching the youth quartered there? That in itself ought to be worrisome. But more specifically troubling is that, secondly, orphans, as a class, had no voice at that point in history. In fact, notwithstanding state departments of child and family services of the present - they still remain a class apart - voiceless. The voiceless classes bear the brunt of all social experimentation. Skeptical? Consider the plight of the men subjected to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service in Macon County, Alabama - descriptive link HERE. This study occurred six years prior to Dr. Johnson's research - aimed at a voiceless population - African Americans.
So, not only did the study breach a fundamental principle of humanity, it breached it in a manner that is still evident in society today - a hierarchical class structure - a structure that leaves certain classes deprived of advocacy. I am not a utopianist, nor a Socialist per se. Classes will inevitably exist within free-market societies - and there may be some utility to that - I'm not an economist or sociologist so I can't quote theory on it.
The results of the study did not corroborate Dr. Johnson's theory of learned stuttering. Those non-stuttering children did not develop stuttering, and those that did stutter did not improve. However, those non-stuttering orphans that were told that they did stutter - or were on the verge of developing a stutter - showed direct psychological impact of the experiment methodology by developing all of the associated tics, self-consciousness and fear of speaking that children with a stutter demonstrated. In essence, the researchers imparted to this group of children a long-term psychological burden from which few, if any, entirely recovered.
My first thoughts as I read the story were, 1) it's bad enough to use orphans as unsuspecting subjects in a psychological experiment, but 2) an experiment designed to cause psychological turmoil in an already traumatized child is, to me, unthinkable. Remaining somewhat skeptical of the facts as represented in the MSNBC version - I Googled "Dr. Johnson, University of Iowa, Stuttering" and hit on a NY Times article that more fully described the context of the study, the motivation of Dr. Wendell Johnson, and the unintended long-term consequences of the experiment. NY Times story here.
The writer of the Times article, while not necessarily sympathetic to the researchers, does address the fact that the primary investigator working directly with the orphans did, subsequent to the study, go back to the orphanage and work with those children who had been falsely told that they stuttered - hoping to unburden them. Apparently, this strategy didn't work very well - as those children continued to exhibit traits of extreme self-consciousness. In fact, the impact of the study was so long-term that three of the former orphans pursued litigation against the State of Iowa and recently won a settlement - as noted in the MSNBC story. From the historical perspective, here's a Scott County, Iowa page that provides an interesting history of the Iowa Soldier's Orphan's Home - click the 'History of Home' link for DETAILS.
The story, and study, is disturbing on a number of levels. First, it egregiously violates a universal foundational principle of humanity - no person should be treated as a means to an end. Each person is to be considered an end in themselves. While one might successfully argue back and forth between the Kantian deontological Categorical Imperative and the social context of Aristotelian ethics - or even Utilitarianism - clearly, when a defenseless agent is acted upon without consent as a means to an end without benefit to the subject - an ethical line has been crossed.
Second, why orphans? Well, for one, the University of Iowa had some kind of relationship with the Iowa Soldier's Orphan's home at the time. Why would a large research university have any kind of relationship with an orphanage, other than to donate time teaching the youth quartered there? That in itself ought to be worrisome. But more specifically troubling is that, secondly, orphans, as a class, had no voice at that point in history. In fact, notwithstanding state departments of child and family services of the present - they still remain a class apart - voiceless. The voiceless classes bear the brunt of all social experimentation. Skeptical? Consider the plight of the men subjected to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service in Macon County, Alabama - descriptive link HERE. This study occurred six years prior to Dr. Johnson's research - aimed at a voiceless population - African Americans.
So, not only did the study breach a fundamental principle of humanity, it breached it in a manner that is still evident in society today - a hierarchical class structure - a structure that leaves certain classes deprived of advocacy. I am not a utopianist, nor a Socialist per se. Classes will inevitably exist within free-market societies - and there may be some utility to that - I'm not an economist or sociologist so I can't quote theory on it.
What I do know, though, is that experimentation - regardless of intended wonderful outcomes and benefits to humankind - cannot be conducted on voiceless populations without consent. And while I'm sure that no research university or other organization would authorize this type of experimentation today under current research subject ethics. However, there is a current, popular, theme often cited by those wishing for an earlier time, that these 1930's ethics violations appear to debunk:
The "Good old days of family values and personal responsibility," - the simpler more wholesome times - on closer inspection, weren't all that good - and the values displayed then are a little questionable - particularly if you happened to be an orphan through no fault of your own.
posted by Scott Scofield | 9:30 AM
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