Social Research Methods and Analysis

By Rob Stein Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, October 1, 2010; 1:57 PM http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/01/AR2010100104457.html?hpid=topnews The United States issued an unusual apology Friday to Guatemala for conducting experiments in the 1940s in which doctors infected soldiers, prisoners and mental patients with syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases. The experiments, conducted by a physician who was later involved in the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study in Alabama, involved a total of 696 men and women who were drafted into studies aimed at determining the effectiveness of penicillin. "The sexually transmitted disease inoculation study conducted from 1946-1948 in Guatemala was clearly unethical," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a joint statement. "Although these events occurred more than 64 years ago, we are outraged that such reprehensible research co...

Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiment (2 min) Stanford Prison Experiment (5.5 min) BBC - The Stanford Prison Experiment - 1/3 BBC - The Stanford Prison Experiment - 2/3 The Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted in 1971 by a team of researchers led by Psychology Professor Dr. Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D., at Stanford University. Twenty-four undergraduates were selected out of over 75 to play the roles of both guards and prisoners and live in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Roles were assigned at random. The participants adapted to their roles well beyond what even Zimbardo himself expected, leading the guards to display authoritarian measures. The experiment even affected Zimbardo himself. Five of the prisoners were upset enough by the process to quit the experiment early, and the entire experiment was abruptly stopped after only six days. The experimenta...

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study (5 min) LeNoir: Tuskegee Syphilis Study (46 min) ------------------------ Research Ethics: The Tuskegee Syphilis Study The Tuskegee Syphilis Study is one of the most horrendous examples of research carried out in disregard of basic ethical principles of conduct. The publicity surrounding the study was one of the major influences leading to the codification of protection for human subjects. In 1928, the director of medical services for the Julius Rosenwald Fund, a Chicago-based charity, approached the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) to consider ways to improve the health of African Americans in the South. At the time, the PHS had just finished a study of the prevalence of syphilis among black employees of the Delta Pine and Land Company of Mississippi. About 25% of the sample of over 2000 had tested positive for syphilis. The PHS and the Rosenwald fund collaborated in treating these individuals. Subsequently, the treatment program was expanded to include fiv...

January 27th, 2010 Giant UFO Spheres Detected Around Our Sun Giant UFOs are not the sun, the moom or stars! NASA’s Stereo spacecraft monitoring the Sun began registering huge spherical UFO’s in the vicinity of the Sun around January 18, 2010. According to one observer, the UFOs “appear to be moving as they are in different positions on many [of the NASA Stereo] photos, and are huge possibly at least the size of Earth. If the UFOs were planets or some type of huge asteroid comets, they would already have been pulled into the Sun by the strong gravity the Sun produces as in the case of the recent comet." Dr. Joe Gurman, NASA Stereo Project scientist states the giant solar UFOs are compression artifacts. Moreover, he states, the "’central data recorder’ at DSN, that stores all the playback data from all the missions DSN supports, failed' on January 18, 2010, the date the solar UFO wave began, thus accounting for the images of giant UFOs (see full statement in the article b...

Severn Cullis-Suzuki shares how all adults make a difference. Severn’s speech transcript: Hello, I’m Severn Suzuki speaking for E.C.O. – The Environmental Children’s Organisation. We are a group of twelve and thirteen-year-olds from Canada trying to make a difference: Vanessa Suttie, Morgan Geisler, Michelle Quigg and me. We raised all the money ourselves to come six thousand miles to tell you adults you must change your ways. Coming here today, I have no hidden agenda. I am fighting for my future. Losing my future is not like losing an election or a few points on the stock market. I am here to speak for all generations to come. I am here to speak on behalf of the starving children around the world whose cries go unheard. I am here to speak for the countless animals dying across this planet because they have nowhere left to go. We cannot afford to be not heard. I am afraid to go out in the sun now because of the holes in the ozone. I am afraid to breathe the air b...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9bDZ5-zPtY William Li presents a new way to think about cancer treatment: angiogenesis, targeting the blood vessels that feed a tumor. The crucial first (and best) step: Eating cancer-fighting foods that beat cancer at its own game. (Recorded at TED2010, February 2010 in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 20:02) Great TED Talk on staving cancer early with an antiangiogenesis diet. The video is 20 minutes, but very well worth watching. From Wikipedia, "angiogenesis is a physiological process involving the growth of new blood vessels from pre-existing vessels." Basically, this is what cancer tumors do to try to grow. Since cancer tumors don't have their own blood vessels, the try and steal blood vessels to help them grow. "William Li presents a new way to think about cancer treatment: angiogenesis, targeting the blood vessels that feed a tumor. The crucial first (and best) step: Eating cancer-fighting foods that beat cancer at its own game.'