No (although there is not a consensus among scientists or lawyers).

First, unethical research should, to the best of our ability, be banned.

Second, persons who do unethical research have an agenda (eg, Nazi doctors like Mengele, Rüdin, others used data to bolster their a priori assumptions re: race and the superiority of "Aryans"--they were not interested in proving or not proving the null hypothesis).

Third, how generalizeable is data on tortured incarcerated persecuted hopeless concentration camp prisoners to the general population? It is not.

So unethical research by biased "researchers" on a persecuted subgroup is wrong and confounded by selection bias.

Lewis A Opler, MD, PhD

Article Psychiatric Genocide: Nazi Attempts to Eradicate Schizophrenia

Article The Jewish psychiatric hospital, Zofiówka, in Otwock, Poland

No (although there is not a consensus among scientists or lawyers).

First, unethical research should, to the best of our ability, be banned.

Second, persons who do unethical research have an agenda (eg, Nazi doctors like Mengele, Rüdin, others used data to bolster their a priori assumptions re: race and the superiority of "Aryans"--they were not interested in proving or not proving the null hypothesis).

Third, how generalizeable is data on tortured incarcerated persecuted hopeless concentration camp prisoners to the general population? It is not.

So unethical research by biased "researchers" on a persecuted subgroup is wrong and confounded by selection bias.

Lewis A Opler, MD, PhD

Article Psychiatric Genocide: Nazi Attempts to Eradicate Schizophrenia

Article The Jewish psychiatric hospital, Zofiówka, in Otwock, Poland

I fully agree with Lewis here. He and I have had quite a lot of dialogue over the past few days. To begin with, I was unsure about whether medical data collected under the most brutal circumstances  might help innocents in extreme circumstances, such as civilians who fall overboard at sea.

But consider the partial submersion in icy water of Jewish prisoners in Dachau concentration camp in order to learn (if that is the right word here!) how to maximize survival among downed German aircrew over water. Fit airmen and frightened, starving prisoners have very different physiologies.

Ergo, data on the effects of this wicked deed can hardly be extrapolated to other populations. Paul

With big data going on and Google reaping what it may and every other server doing the same it is bemusing to think of how data is protected. I am not sure the question is appropriate...are we not asking a different question? Besides who is using Mengeles' findings?

I do not understand you point. Please clarify. 

PS As regards Mengeles´findings, there are academics (e.g. in Minnesota) who think it is morally acceptable to use tainted research findings.

An extremely thought provoking question and one, I am guessing, is more to start a debate than get an actual definitive answer, because I suspect there is no one answer. This is not my area, but I understand that there are drugs we use today that were developed by means of very questionable 'research'. Does that mean we should stop using them - probably, but who would be strong enough to resist using them if it meant saving their own life? Equally, some would argue that such questionable research is still being carried on, but now on animals.

You raise important issues Tony. This is not an easy decision. For all that, I find that Lewis´s remarks are convincing. Paul

PS. How one might react if a seriously ill human being desperately needed treatment that had originally been based on data obtained from cruel experiments is an issue of individual conscience. 

Well, interesting but impossible to say yes or no.

health is a good example, and I am a good example. I am supposed to be a bipolar. A certain doctor or professor So is considered to be the first scientist to use lithium as a regulator of this kind of psychiatric disorder. I don't know if bipolar disorder can be found in mouse."model" . But at a certain point of the supposed progress of medical art, there is the necessity of experimenting medicine drugs on human beings.

What is surely condamnable is to choose some people because of religious beliefs  or supposed racial identity. A random sample is surely preferable. Anyway, what we say in French is :

"science sans conscience n'est que ruine de l'âme"

approximately :

science without a clear notion of what we are as human beings is doomed to be a disaster for our soul" (without any religious connotation) 

Vraiment...

Article The Belmont Report: The Triple Crown of Research Ethics

So very much turns on the way in which the information is immoral.  On the one hand, the facts could be utterly horrendous.  On the other hand, the person could proceeded in a morally inappropriate but nonetheless obtained indisputably accurate information. 

Participation in human research must be voluntary and informed consent must be accurate and consent must be ongoing: in other words, subjects can drop out at any point. And it cannot be coercive....that's one place where the slope gets slippery: researchers in need of subjects to get results to apply for grants are under pressure and too often pass this on subtly or not so subtly (subtly: I know you want to drop out, but this protocol is so important to the future of humanity that you'd be doing a disservice for generations to come; not so subtly: if you drop out, I'll personally make sure you never receive treatment again!!!!)

Article Conditional coercion versus rights diagnostics: Two approach...

Regarding the matter of human rights in relation to the right of all to compassionate and high quality, healthcare, another group that suffers disproportionately are the poor.

In the UK, free public healthcare for all was launched in 1948. Clinical need - not ability to pay- became and still is the norm. However, in countries such as the USA, money can mean the difference between life and death. In short, if you cannot afford healthcare, you and even your child might not get life-saving interventions.

I realize I am going off track here. However, when reading in posts above about differential levels of quality in hospitals - e.g. the care or abuse of schizophrenic patients - it struck me that social injustice often falls very heavily on the shoulders of those who in one form or other are stigmatized. Paul 

I am not sure if I fully understand the question.  Is it that (a) the date is immoral or is that (b) the data had been collected in an immoral manner.  If (a) is meant, then it is obvious that the date cannot be used.  By contrast, if (b) is meant, then surely there can be causes was one would be justified in using the data.  For the information that a person has acquired immorally can be ever so crucial to saving a plethora of innocent lives.

Immoral data cannot be expected to be correct or sound, they are expected to be manipulated, if you are immoral in one area of your life why would you be moral in another? I thought it was already long ago agreed on that nazi data cannot be used for any scientific sound purpose. 

I agree that Nazi data should never be used. But the Dachau hypothermia experiments have provided data that has been used.

Chapter The Dachau Hypothermia Study

I agree with you Beatrice. However, the debate still continues. Best wishes Paul

Thank you Lewis. Paul

Here is another paper on the Dachau hypothermia experiments:

Article Ethics in scientific communication: Study of a problem case

Yes I remember at which temperature people died, however later on in non-experimental situations people have survived at lower temperatures; they had probably not starved that much.  Already the starving, keeping awake, continuous  threats of   being killed in KZ must have impacted people's immune system and other physiological as well as psychological responses in such a way that the results cannot be considered valid.

 We never tested sick mice. A horrible comparison. 

I agree TOTALLY with Béatrice!....yet Kendler and Zerbin-Rüdin have used Ernst Rüdin's unethical data on genetics of schizophrenia. Personally I think this attempt to find "good" in Rüdin's work should be expunged from the literature for all the reasons Béatrice and others mention.

Article Ernst Rüdin (1874–1952) and his Genealogic-Demographic Depar...

Just a little information:  A Swedish girl Stella 7 years old fell into icy water the day before Christmas Eve 2010. She was thought to be dead and her body temperature was 13 oC , her heart had stopped beating when she arrived att the hospital but she lives today in Sweden - as the one with the lowest body temperature ever measured. - as opposed to nazi "research"

The classic answer is that evil acts should not be utilized to produce good effects. This is particularly recognized in Kantianism, Natural Law Theory, and other deontological approaches. In general, I would agree with this principle. Otherwise, evil acts would be far too encouraged and rationalized. However, I also believe there may be cases in which the evil of the act is minor enough and the good to be produced great enough to justify such a use. 

Although, with the paradigm case you suggest of the actions of Nazi physicians, that evil is so great, it does not seem likely one would be able to justify use of their research. The good would have to be on an equal scale of preventing widespread death and suffering. 

Thank you Michael for a very thoughtful answer. Paul

All experimental data in life sciences until very recently is in one way or another 'tainted' or unethical. Someone suggested "expunging" that data from literature, but that would include everything - Jenner did not get informed consent for his experimental vaccination or didn't do anything we would recognise for ethical research today - should we expunge that?

I also think that that general attitude might be conceived as disrespectful towards those who lost their lives or health in the process. They paid the ultimate price, even if they didn't want or agree to it, and now we would disregard those results?

I really liked an argument made in a conversation by a German ethicist when I asked him about the discussion of citing those nazi papers and he said it would be best to cite them and then include a short standard note in a footnote on what kind of source this is - so that people remember even in far future - I quite like that approach. We must not forget what kind of sources of knowledge these are, but disregarding all that outright would be as wrong, especially if we would have to carry out new research just because of that with it's own risks and costs.

All that being said there is of course valid question of scientific value and there were obviously strong problems with that pointed out earlier. 

Your argumentation gives me food for thought. Thank you Jakub. Best wishes, Paul

Jacub makes the excellent point that human rights violations are not unique to the Nazis.

Examples include the Tuskegee experiment in the USA in which African-Americans with syphilis were NOT treated so the researchers could follow the course of the illness in the "Negro race."  Not only cruel but FLAWED: there is no such thing as the Negro race; I cannot think of ANY horrific research that is not both cruel/unethical and scientifically useful.

Article Tuskegee's truths: rethinking the Tuskegee syphilis study. [...

Article Man's Most Dangerous Myth: the Fallacy of Race. By M. F. Ash...

We can all agree I hope bad science (as in methodologically unsound) is always unethical. That is a reason I fight my small wars with homeopaths and other pseudo-sciences. 

But it would be too easy to say that all horror experiments were bad science and we don't need them anymore. They were not, at least not all of them. If you look through history of science with modern research ethics lens you will see many cases that not only wouldn't get approval today but would horrify everyone, still they are the classics. I will just give two examples that are very powerful.

• Monster study: experiment on inducing stuttering in children. Carried out in 1939 caused horrendous harm to children in later life, but it overturned the previous paradigm in speech development and opened doors for development of speech therapy we have today.
• Anatomical drawings of pregnancy by William Smellie and William Hunter as well as their other works were used to train innumerable obstetricians, midwives etc. However to obtain the "models" they actually murdered women. Between the two of them they actually murdered more women then Jack the Ripper.

On the other hand many experiments in the past predated modern research ethics, so it is hard to say they were unethical - some possibly were, some, it's not obvious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_Study

http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/5352/

So it is the oppressed and disenfranchised (poor children and women; African-Americans; Jews; others) who get treated as subhuman while, paradoxically, data collected using and even murdering them is used to treat other humans who happen to be the oppressors and/or middle class types like me who try to exist and remain neutral despite class struggle...

THANK YOU FOR TEACHING ME!

Article The History of Russia's Bourgeois and Petit Bourgeois Partie...

I am sure that obstetrics was used to treat many oppressed / unprivileged women and help deliver their children. The same would hold for other areas of science. I don't see how putting class struggle into this debate helps to be honest. 

I think it would be much better to ask how can we adequately acknowledge these past abuses in science as not to hurt the scientific endeavour now and in the future. There is an issue of trust into science and scientists for one thing, then there is an issue of ethical imperative to solve existing knowledge deficits - both in medicine and in other areas of applied sciences - and there is issue of harmed persons and groups that and what is best for the survivors in this regard. It is quite easy to be too simplistic here but anything too complex just won't be followed by academics, journals, editors etc. (if you'd hope to have some guideline for these things)

In any case those are widely discussed topics. Just one of the voices in the debate below. 

http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2015/06/guest-post-is-it-ethical-to-use-data-from-nazi-medical-experiments/

RE: ob-gyn, the cloning of HeLa cells at Johns Hopkins University is well worth studying

Article Lessons from HeLa Cells: The Ethics and Policy of Biospecimens

The initial reaction is moral disgust and no we shouldn't. However the response of some of the holocaust survivors is that if something can be salvaged from such evil then it should. The tragedy is that the death camp 'experiments' were so poorly conducted that there is no valid research data that can be used. To me that is evil in top of evil

More morally difficult are situations are those such as the founder of certain forms of gynaecology operations who practiced in America in the 19th century. A lot of these ops were performed unconsented on slaves. There is no denying that his techniques are still used today and help 1000s of women- we cant unknow it but it was conducted unethically

A lot of research that has been conducted that is unethical  is just bad research so useless. However we do use ' ill gotten' knowledge. I guess we feel more comfortable with using this the greater the historical distance between us and the event ( should you admire the pyramids as they were produced because of slavery??)   

I think Derek that the minimal ethical requirement is the posing of this question? Should I use these data even though they were collected unethically from ill-informed patients, from non-consenting concentration camp prisoners, from so-called "gypsies" against their will? .

Once we raise this question, we also interrogate in the best sense our conscience. I understand the argument about ill-gotten knowledge and its potential uses.

If a daughter or son were dying and the doctor said: Paul, ill-gotten or not, this treatment will save your 4-year old child, I would say Yes. Of course, I would feel very, very uncomfortable about this impossible moral dilemma.

However, as a general principle and not just on ethical grounds - crucial though these are - I say No to admitting seriously unethically obtained research data into medical practice. In that context, I am mindful of Lewis´s convincing arguments in relation to the uses of valid, cross-transferable findings from non-consenting and traumatized prisoners. Paul

Thanks to Paul for initiating this HIGHLY IMPORTANT DISCUSSION....he correctly states that the data collected on starving tortured "subjects" in Dachau and other death camps is NOT GENERALIZABLE!

But I appreciate Derek's point re: how unethical research on unwilling slaves is part of medical knowledge that I myself have unwittingly benefitted from, never thinking to question where the knowledge came from.

And how about HeLa cells, removed from Henrietta Lacks and reproduced in tissue culture without her knowledge and consent, used by me in the research leading to my PhD?

Speaking strictly for myself:

1. If I know information put forward as factual but based on research by unethical researchers and gathered from unwilling slaves or prisoners I will protest/expose/question

2. I will continue to side with those who insist unethical research be either destroyed OR clearly identified as being gathered by persons from unwilling "subjects" and therefore of questionable value

3. I will oppose attempts to extract "useful data" from known unethical data; for example, Zerbin-Rüdin and Kendler's attempts to clean up data from the Nazi Ernst Rüdin's family "studies" of schizophrenia have correctly been criticized by leading psychiatric geneticists (see attached papers)

Article Legacy of German psychiatric genetics: Hindsight is always 20/20

Article Ernst Rüdin (1874–1952) and his genealogic-demographic depar...

Article Auf der Spur des „scientific pursuit”. Franz Josef Kallmann ...

I concur, Lewis. Elegantly and passionately put. What you write moves me in the best possible sense. Paul

Paul

I appreciate your support/perspective and widening of this discussion.

Research must always be questioned. As Niels Bohr said on receiving a Nobel Prize for showing that electrons rotate around a nucleus of protons + neutrons (and I must paraphrase) "but I don't believe my model is true!...it is, for now, the best model for explaining disparate sources of information, but give

Article Does Quantum Theory Redefine Realism? The Neo-Copenhagen View

Article Endosymbiosis and Eukaryotic Cell Evolution

Just a tiny factual point:

"should you admire the pyramids as they were produced because of slavery??"

Actually the pyramid builders were most likely (at least most of them) not slaves.

http://www2.mcdaniel.edu/german/egypt/egypt_files/Private%20Lives%20of%20the%20Pyramid-builders%20by%20Joyce%20Tyldesley.pdf

Bohr is absolutely right to state that research must always be questioned. This position recalls Popper´s famous assertion - now widely accepted in the scientific community - that we should seek to disprove our own hypotheses. Consider the null hypothesis in that regard. This is all about benevolent - not cynical - skepticism. In the so-called objective world of empirical data, this works well. On the other hand, the assessment of values is much trickier.

Of course, we need some universal enunciations - eg, the UN Convention on the Rights of The Child - but we still need to test and sometimes push, even change the boundaries. That said, nihilism is not an option because in that irresponsible terrain of  "anything counts" ethical adjudication is impossible. 

The recent posts on unethical research have taught me a lot. Perhaps more than anything else, the forthright descriptor - unethical - should should at the very least make me pause before I go further. During that hiatus, critical discussion with friends and colleagues is of the utmost importance. Paul

There is a non-trivial difference between (1) data being wrong and (2) data having been obtained in a morally inappropriate manner.  It is logically/conceptually possible for data to be quite accurate although the data had been obtained in a morally inappropriate manner. If person Alpha is employing data which Alpha knows was obtained in a morally inappropriate manner, then in using the data person Alpha should make such a statement about the data   After all, there is the poignant reality that even an evil individual can unwittingly be quite right about a given scenario or state of affairs or assessment of a person or group of individuals.  In countless many ways, Hitler was quite wrong about Jews.  However, he was not wrong about the typical denizen of Nazi Germany.   

If you put things in two different time frame I think there is nothing wrong . At the time of collecting data and result out come is not the same time frame . 

But one must make it clear that the data was collected involuntarily and/or coercively and/or on subjects being starved and/or tortured: this is essential because:

1. It alerts readers to the fact that the researchers were not observing human rights protection as has been required subsequent to WW2

2. It alerts readers to confounders: slaves, prisoners, concentration camp victims are NOT typical research subjects 

Some (including me) do not think this kind of data should ever be used; but I respect others pointing out that some family members of research subjects killed by Nazis hoped that, without condoning the atrocities, some good might come from their loved one's agony and torment.

I have an opinion, but I do not claim to have THE answer.

Lewis A Opler, MD, PhD

Article Nazi research. Max Planck offers historic apology

But Sidhantha, the two events you refer to are intimately connected even if the dates differ. Paul

I fully agree that research should be ethical.  But I understood the question to imply that the unethical research had already taken place.  Of course, unethical research can take very different forms.  And we can certainly imagine that some forms of unethical research essentially entails that the research is entirely lacking in validity.  But I can imagine an instance of unethical research that produces quite valid results.  It is not at all clear why that unethical research should be automatically rejected.  So it is even though we make it manifestly clear that no individual should proceed in that manner again.  Here is a final note: From the fact that we can learn from an instance of morally objectionable behavior, it does not at all follow that we should embrace that behavior.    

You have added an important strand to the discussion, Laurence. Looking at the broader picture, though, is there not an obligation to say "No" to unethically obtained data in order to send the clear message that these findings are tainted?  Even so, there will be individual dilemmas when a sincere conscience should be respected. Paul 

Yes. Truth is truth. Once the information has been (wrongly) generated, there is no point to suppressing that information, except to avoid giving incentive to further immoral data collection. But even there, if the researchers are not the same people as the data collectors, I see no problem. For example, a bunch of people use a poison that is only partially effective on victims (very immoral) and you use statistics to try to identify characteristics of those victims who are and are not affected by that particular poison (not immoral at all, unless the poisoners use your research results to improve their techniques).

No, Data obtained unethically must not used. This can encourage un ethical research in future. 

I agree with Vijitha De Silva.

It has been pointed out earlier in this discussion that some family members of persons who were "guinea pigs" in Nazi experiments have expressed the wish that data from their loved one's suffering be used so that the did not die for nothing.  To them I would express, sadly, that data gathered on "subjects" as they are being tortured and know they will die is of not scientific value in that it CANNOT be generalized to anyone but other tortured imprisoned victims. Most families are horrified to learn that their loved one were used as guinea pig" and I would support them in destroying the data both because it is worthless and because, to quote Vijitha De Silva, "Data obtained unethically must not be used. This can encourage unethical research in the future."

Article Mengele Medicus: Medicine's Nazi Heritage

Many thanks Laurence for sending me the very important text. Paul

this issue has been discussed in many forums at different levels. Term "unethical research" is too good for them. Those were really crimes. It is very hard to generalized these things to the normal people. Using them for current research will give some undue credit to those investigators too. Therefore, must not use them.

Yes. I am addressing illegal research. In the case of Nazi research, Nuremberg did not go far enough in several ways. Here are a few examples:

1.Ernst Rüdin (who with Franz Kallman helped write legislation on "life unworthy of life," got "punished" by spending one year in NYC being "de-Nazified" by Franz Kallman

2.Franz Kallman had emigrated to the US with his "Aryan" wife in the late 1930s, where he became the founding chair of the Dept of Psychiatric Genetics at the New York State Psychiatric Institute which was and still is affiliated with Columbia University Medical Center: he continued his research on genetics of schizophrenia and on "anomalies" which he believed would help identify first degree relatives who were carriers of the schizophrenia gene (NB: there is no schizophrenia gene as conceptualized by Rüdin, Kallman, and Rüdin's mentor Emil Kraeplin).

3. Nuremberg did not take a position on what to do with CRIMINALLY obtained data. This lead to Nazi data being used uncritically by many researchers, as well as ambiguity regarding its storage and use: much of it still remains in the Max Planck Institute (formerly the Kaiser Wilhelm II Research Institute).

Article Strous R, Opler AA, Opler LA. Reflections on “Emil Kraepelin...

Estoy de acuerdo con el planteamiento de Lewis Alan Opler. El fin no justifica los medios. La ética debe recorrer todo el  proceso de investigación  desde el inicio al fin.  La ciencia sin conciencia no es ciencia

Ciencia sin concienca no es ciencia. Sincero, Mariá Victoria Roqué: I agree!

Article The Central Role of Neuroscientists under National Socialism

Wissenschaft ohne Gewissen ist keine Wissenschaft

Science sans conscience n'est pas la science

I concur Beatrice. Paul

in all languages, science without conscience is not science; it is hard enough to do GOOD ethical science; only the unethical stoop to doing unethical research and, in addition to all the other reasons not to use it, I would not trust their results (e.g., Ernst Rudin suppressed data indicating a familial basis for manic depressive illness because it did not fit with his and Kraepelin's view that dementia praecox but not manic depressive illness was totally accounted for by bad genes; Rudin went on to assist Hitler in developing and implementing gas chamber first for persons with dementia praecox/schizophrenia and later for Jews/gypsies/leftists/and others deemed unfit).

Article Ernst Rüdin's Unpublished 1922-1925 Study "Inheritance of Ma...

No, from an ethical standpoint, the data was derived from non-consenting individuals, which brings the whole study design into question. The Nazi experiments were often done in an opportunistic way to bring about quick results, sometimes by scientists under pressure from Nazi or SS authorities (eg, Sigmund Rascher, Karl Gebhardt). The neuroscientists involved in some of these, such as Berthold Ostertag or Georges Schaltenbrand, were often trying to prove themselves to Nazi authorities because of political troubles. This makes all of the data suspect even from a scientific standpoint  -corners were cut for fast results. Also the data in some experiments was designed with killing of the subject as an endpoint - the unnatural death makes description of the disease processes questionable. And patients gassed to death might have had pathological changes from that alone. There may be leeway if there is clearly a life-saving data point, AND if the victims give permission. But in the absence of these caveats, the use of the data should likely be prohibited, except in historical/ethical articles discussing the experiments. The ends don't justify the means. 

Thank you Lewis for enlightening me and others on these crucially important (yet I suspect, often overlooked) documents from frightening times gone past.  Incidentally, I was recently the subject of attempted troll bullying on Facebook for allegedly fixating on the uncivilized era of Holocaust Munich. This brought forth righteous anger on my part, not fear. I reminded these persons that never forgetting the Holocaust is fully in line with official education policy in Germany, which it is. On my recent visit to Munich; I was impressed with the plethora of official monuments decrying the Nazis´ awful crimes. I think the German young of today are in good pedagogic hands. Paul

It is not only Nazi data collection that is relevant here. Any immoral collection of medical data is immoral, even if it is collected for moral purposes. Is it justifiable? This brings us to the question whether immoral actions are sometimes justifiable. In other words, the same old question: do moral ends sometimes justify immoral means. Perhaps. But a justification of immoral collection of medical data requires a lot of imagination. I am not sure that I have it...

Yes, Vojin. There are some examples of cases when it is very hard to judge what is for the best. However, the Nazis are a thoroughly brutal exception. Not only did they murder and torture innocent victims who were unable to defend themselves, they also undertook medical experiments that were very dubious to say the least with regard to scientific veracity. Paul

Las acciones morales  reciben su calificación  tanto por su objeto moral que siempre debe ser bueno como por su fin o intención que debe ser también siempre moral. Son dos elementos inseparables en una única acción, dos caras de la misma moneda. Luego  vienen las circunstancias que agravan o benefician el acto.

The argument of selection bias. Most Nazi experiments on humans do not suffer from selection bias. The argument of selection bias applies to certain experiments in the domain of psychiatry, but clearly less in most other fields of medicine. Moreover, if we use the argument that Nazi experimental findings should be disregarded because of selection bias, the implication is that we are fine with them if there were no selection bias. Such an argument might even indirectly serve as a justification of these highly immoral practices. I am not saying that anybody in this forum had such an intention, but I am emphasizing it in order to warn about the danger of the selection bias argument in this case. The argument seems to me both fallacious and potentially dangerous.

Where is the evidence Vojin that: ´Most Nazi experiments on humans do not suffer from selection bias. ´?

Paul

I agree: the main point must be that Nazi experiments (as well as experiments on other victims of terror/torture) are unethical. But there is a lack of consensus among ethicists and lawyers and others re: using findings from "experiments" if it saves lives. The main argument I am aware of is that the Dachau hypothermia studies provide evidence that can be applied to innocent victims of hypothermia. Berger and others have countered that the data is flawed: I am trying to underscore the lack of generalizability of data obtained from non consenting victims facing danger to life and limb. WHAT WOULD BE A BETTER WAY OF CHARACTERIZING THIS OTHER THAN INCORRECTLY CALLING IT "SELECTION BIAS"?

Article Nazi Science — The Dachau Hypothermia Experiments

Paul, take most fields of medicine: internal medicine, infectious diseases, neurology...Why would we think that people who have been coerced into undergoing experiments in these fields would yield significantly different findings from those who subject themselves voluntarily to them?

@Lewis Alan Opler. Indeed, my point was that we ought to focus on the unethical nature of Nazi experiments. If we focus on selection bias (which undoubtedly takes place in CERTAIN experiments), we might indirectly justify these experiments if we don`t find selection bias. Moreover, Paul`s excellent question was largely about ethics and not about scientific validity

Another important issue: clash of two ethical principles. Data collected in an immoral way, but we can use them in order to cure diseases and save lives. If we use them we help people, but at the same time we encourage unethical practices. Possible solution: to use such data if they have significant value for humans, but at the same time to make sure that we are guided by the principle that the perpetrators of criminal data collection face appropriate legal consequences? Can we live with this, is it a solution?

Vojin. There is a clear and present danger that forcing non-consenting "respondents" into experiments can lead to selection bias. In ethical clinical trials, this issue is accounted for, which is why informed consent is a necessary safeguard. That involves methodological and ethical issues. Permit me to give an example. If, as a statistician, I were to force patients who have coronary heart failure - a field I have previously worked in - to take part in my experiment, they might use, and understandably so, deceit in order to present themselves as not meeting my recruitment criteria. For instance, they lie about respiratory symptoms. Paul

That's a good example, Paul.

Permit me to say Vojin that I fully understand the dilemma here. In that regard, I know that ultimately an informed inspection of conscience is imperative. I have in mind, for example, a parent who might well decide to permit a surgeon to used morally tainted and perhaps unreliable data in order to give a son or daughter the chance of life. Paul

Reflecting again on the ethics of using or not using morally tainted data from Nazi experiments, it is evident that some health professionals would probably allow treatment based on these data on a strict case-by-case basis. Thus, for example, in an emergency situation it might be argued that potentially life saving reatment based  on tainted experimental findings is morally admissible. Lewis has raised this important dilemma and I continue to muddle over it. In those cases where such data are used, if the findings are published, the atrocities that originally made this possible should be made public and condemned. Paul

Hello, Paul,

I have a related question here at RG that might be of interest, in terms of non-consenting participants in experiments.  "What is the Effect of Facebook memes on the brain?"  FB memes are those posters with a photo on them and a few lines of text.  Often they are extremely partisan and biased.  My degrees are in communications and rhetoric, teaching of writing, so we teach students to get away from binary logic (up-down, black-white, I am so right-you are so wrong) like this.

I am not in psychology but I found a few studies that claim that memory retrieval can be affected by large doses of Facebook memes.  And this is happening with no participant consent, of course.  Who would consent to operant conditioning and having one's memory retrieval altered?

I would like to invite your participation in our question because nobody who has posted so far is from a psychology background.

Refs. below..

Gloria

> ARTICLE: Cognition through a social network: The propagation of induced

> forgetting and practice effects. Alin Coman et al.

>

> (1)

> Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol 141(2), May, 2012. pp.

> 321-336.

>

> Keywords:

> attitudes, collective memory, diffusion of information, social networks,

> socially shared retrieval induced forgetting

> Abstract:

> Although a burgeoning literature has shown that practice effects and

> socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting can reshape the memories of

> speakers and listeners involved in a conversation, it has generally

> failed to examine whether such effects can propagate through a sequence

> of conversational interactions. This lacuna is unfortunate, since

> sequences of social interactions are more common than single, isolated ones.

>

> The present research explores how people exposed to attitudinally biased

> selective practice propagate the practice and forgetting effects into

> subsequent conversations with attitudinally similar and dissimilar

> others and, through these conversations, affect subsequent acts of

> remembering. The research establishes that the propagation of

> retrieval-induced forgetting and practice effects is transitive. It also

> determines when attitude influences propagation. These findings are

> discussed in the context of the formation of collective memories.

> (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)

>

> (2)

>

> BOOK: The redefinition of memes: ascribing meaning to an empty cliche

>

> 10.2 How Memes Jump Brains

> Michael R. Lissack

>

> The question of how memes jump from brain to brain has been the topic of

> considerable controversy as the analogy to virus, while being apt, is

> incomplete. In case of virus, there is actual invasion of the protein

> molecules into the body of the infectee, and once inside, the virus

> enters the cells and causes them to make

> more copies of the virus. In the case of memes, however, what enter the

> body are sensations, i.e., patterns of neural excitation. Such patterns

> of neural excitation first take up residence in the brain as memory,

> i.e., changes in the configuration of

> neural arrangement (long-term potentiation, dendritic growth, etc., see

> Chapter 9).

> Such memory then may replicate, form complexes with other memories,

> stimulate the replication of resident memories, stay dormant, replicate,

> and mutate, and in some cases fully convert the brain to its energetic

> replicators as in a religious conversion.

> Patterns of neural excitation may occur that may far exceed the original

> sensory excitation when they interact with existing or induced

> excitations in the brain. For example, the visual cortical excitation

> from seeing a photograph may be greatly

> enhanced if the face in the photograph is that of a loved one, which in

> turn may lead to a specific action, such as picking up the phone. In

> this case, the introduction of a meme (photograph) into the brain caused

> a cascade of neural excitations that were not inherent in the original meme.

>

> FULL TEXT: Emergence: Complexity and Organization. 5.3 (July 2003): p48.

Reminds me of debates re: ethics of subliminal advertising from the 1950s.

Article Public Perceptions of Subliminal Advertising

Chapter Subliminal advertising and its ethical dimensions in the soc...

Dear Gloria

I am not familiar with research on the relationship between neural responses and Facebook memes. Lewis´s remark about subliminal advertising sounds like an interesting lead. Best wishes. Paul

Without doubt, no.