Researchers tend to use the scientific method as an investigative tool. However, some scientists go too far with their research. The following cases are examples of the latter.

The Monster Study

This experiment infamously known as “the monster study” was an experiment that was co-conducted by Dr. Wendell Johnson and the University of Iowa’s Psychology Department back in the winter of 1939. The purpose of the study was to test out Johnson’s hypothesis on the possible cause of stuttering in children. A then 23-year-old pathologist by the name of Mary Tudor had driven 50 miles to the Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home in Davenport with five other graduate students in order to carry out the experiment. 22 children (10 stutterers and 12 children with normal speech) were selected out of a total of 256 orphans. In the experiment, Tudor told the normal-speaking children that they were showing signs of stuttering. The normal-speaking children were having serious speech problems by the end of the study and their grades suffered as a result.

Although the children suffered long-term psychological damage well into their adulthood as a result, the experiment confirmed Johnson’s hypothesis and he became a prominent speech pathologist. However, Johnson demanded that the results be hidden because of comparisons to the inhumane experiments at the various Nazi concentration camps at the end of World War II,

Project MK Ultra

Project MK Ultra was a project undertaken by the CIA that tested the effects of LSD as a way of mind control on unsuspecting civilians such as prostitutes, mental patients, and prisoners. The project was started on April 13, 1953 under the supervision of Sidney Gottlieb and it continued until it was cancelled in the late 1960s due to ever-decreasing funds. The project consisted of 149 individual experiments, the most notorious included a mental patient from Kentucky being subjected to LSD for 174 consecutive days. There was at least one death while others went mad as a result of the experiment. Former US State Department Foreign Service employee John Marks used the Freedom of Information Act to release the results of Project MK Ultra in the early 1970s. However, the full effect of the study are unknown as most of the results were destroyed.

Bobo doll experiment

The Bobo the Clown was an experiment that was supervised by Albert Bandura in order to test whether or not aggression in children is learned by imitation. 36 boys and 36 girls between the ages of 3 and 6 were chosen from the Stanford University Nursery School were chosen from the experiment. 24 children were shown an aggressive model while another 24 were shown a non-aggressive model. The children who were shown the aggressive model took out their aggression on “Bobo” clown doll with some using a hammer while others threw it in the air while shouting “boom” and “pow”, thus proving Bandura’s hypothesis in the process.