由 home-healthhaven 
The brain is a mysterious organ, and scientists are always trying to learn more about it to understand us better. Despite knowing that we can never fully uncover all of the brain’s secrets, science hasn’t stopped experimenting to learn who we are. Unfortunately, even well-meaning experiments can go terribly wrong.
**Stanford Prison Experiment (1971)**
Psychologist Philip Zimbardo from Stanford University set out to study how people’s behavior changes based on their environment. He recruited 24 students to play guards and prisoners in a mock prison setup. The plan was to run the experiment for two weeks. However, the “guards,” including Zimbardo himself, became increasingly hostile and abusive, while the “prisoners” grew anxious and stressed. A graduate student eventually persuaded the researchers to end the experiment after just six days. This experiment remains a notorious example of science going off the rails.
**Little Albert (1920)**
John Watson, a psychologist, wanted to find out how fears develop. He used an orphaned baby, known as Little Albert, as his test subject. Initially, Albert played freely with a white rat and other soft, white objects. After two months, whenever Albert touched the rat, Watson made loud noises by striking steel with a hammer. This startled Albert and made him cry. Soon, Albert began to fear not just the rat but anything white and fluffy. Although Watson had planned to reverse Albert’s conditioned fear, he was fired before doing so. He destroyed all records of the experiment, leaving Albert’s fate unknown.
**The Monster Study (1939)**
Dr. Wendell Johnson, a speech pathologist from Iowa, performed an experiment on orphans to explore the cause of stuttering. He believed it was a learned behavior. The orphans were split into two groups: one with stutterers, the other without. The non-stutterers were praised for speaking well, while the stutterers were belittled. After the study, some of