Blog 6: The Young Professional's Survival Guide & Why Things Go Wrong

One of the chapter's that we read this week from the Young Professional's Survival Guide focused on the topic of "Why Things Go Wrong". Related to ethics in the workplace, there are common pitfalls one can avoid in order to try to keep things from going wrong. Oftentimes ethics can be a slippery slope and avoiding these pitfalls can help keep a professional on the "right" track.

In the chapter, the authors introduced several dangers that lead professionals to cross the boundary into unethical actions. Some of these dangers included incrementalism, rationalization, and pressure from outside sources. I found several of the psychological experiments used as examples of dangers to be quite interesting and it lead me to consider the overlap of ethics in academic science and the workplace.

The two experiments that were used as examples and that stood out to me in this study were Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment and Milligram's electric shock study. The Stanford Prison experiment is a quite contentious study in terms of both methods and findings. Years after the study was published it came out that not only was there a lack of concrete data supporting the researcher's main conclusions, they also falsified data. The lead researcher Zimbardo, publicized several findings before the data was even fully analyzed. There have been several exposes and follow up's debunking this study including this Medium expose and this Vox article. Additionally, Milligram's famous electric shock study has garnered criticism from the field of psychology for being unethical. Many have come to question Milligram's conclusions, this Atlantic article provides an interesting perspective on how researchers are "rethinking" his studies and findings. While I am not sure the author intended for this, both of these studies are good examples of ethical dangers in science and academia.

Overall in the chapter, the authors provide a good background on what dangers young professionals should avoid in the workplace to avoid the slippery slope of unethical behavior. The examples themselves are useful to understand ethical dangers in science as well as the workforce.

Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 21, 2021 at 8:59 AM

    Great points! It was so interesting that you pointed out that the author is using studies that are widely regarded as unethically done and questionably analyzed, in her book on morals. I wonder what her response to this feedback would be.

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  2. John Q. PublicOctober 22, 2021 at 10:53 AM

    Question: If an experiment was considered ethical in its day, should it be cancelled when judged by present day standards? I think Milligram's main conclusions were quite "shocking" and have withstood the test of time. Will go read the Atlantic article. And the Zimbardo criticism.

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  3. John Q. PublicOctober 22, 2021 at 11:04 AM

    I read the Atlantic piece What I understood was they replicated the study in 2007? and found about the same numbers, that Milligram meticulously documented the work and folks can still listen to the real original recordings, and that some people want to provide a more nuanced interpretation but the main conclusion still holds.

    Hence, I am just not getting why Milligram is not a good citation for obedience, unless I am missing something. Enjoyed the article by the way.

    The Prison experiment seems to have real issues. I always felt like it was one of the first reality TV shows, where the camera changes how people behave, even as we all pretend it doesn't. It makes for good TV.

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