• Question: If there were absolutely no morals or ethics, what experiment would you do to better your understanding of human behaviour and why?

    Asked by anon-285887 on 12 Mar 2021.
    • Photo: Alex Baxendale

      Alex Baxendale answered on 12 Mar 2021:

      I think it would be pretty cool to see just how far we can push the human brain through selective breeding! We can breed plants and pets to have specific qualities, but for obvious reasons it would be very immoral to do that with humans. If we COULD do that with humans it would be interesting to see if we could change the abilities of the human brain, maybe we could create people with more mental resources? Or reduce the likelihood of brain disease!

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 12 Mar 2021:

      Hi Chloea,

      Gosh, this is a hard one as ethical considerations are so vital for a reason!
      I think there are a lot of things, but I would say, specifically in mental health and schizophrenia, causing environmental things to happen in twin and adoption studies – so things like causing stressors, drug use and even manipulate brain changes with certain medications (like dopamine antagonists or blockers). It would really help understand the basis of the disorder if ethics were not a thing.
      Though this makes me very wary and reminds a bit of the horrifying Nazi’s twin studies. Again ethics are there for a reason!

    • Photo: Dennis Relojo-Howell

      Dennis Relojo-Howell answered on 15 Mar 2021:

      Hi chloea. As a resilience researcher, I’ve been exploring different theoretical models of resilience. And one interesting aspect comes from biological models of resilience. There’s this one study published last year, where researchers hung the mice from their tails at a height of 80cm for 6 minutes (It’s called tail-suspension test). The idea is to find out if this will make mice more stress-resistant (more resilient). Resilience researchers do this to mice because it’s unethical to do a similar test to humans.

      If I will be transported to a hypothetical planet (where I am allowed to throw ethics out of the window), I would probably hang people upside down at a height of 80 feet for 6 minutes everyday to see which brain regions become activated and how can this make people resilient during disaster events such as terrorist attacks or natural disasters. But think of the health implications of this research – would it be worth it? Thankfully – back on planet normal – resilience researchers don’t hang humans upside down for research purposes!

      Hats off to you for coming up with a thought-provoking question like that. It demonstrates critical thinking – which is a good skill to have as a scientist!

      Good luck with your studies!

    • Photo: Harry Piper

      Harry Piper answered on 15 Mar 2021:

      Wow! This is a really cool question! I would stick within my own research of interpersonal violence. If there were no ethics I would insert some super tech without them knowing that could take physiological measures(probably doesn’t exist) and place them in a dangerous situation. The dangerous situation could play out, record the measures and maybe take note of where the participants eyes travelled – which cues were important in identifying threat! This would be really interesting and have a much greater validity than what I currently do, but definitely wouldn’t pass ethics due to dismissing medical decisions (inserting tech into body unknowingly), no consent (it has to be genuine threat) and lots of other reasons! Ethics are really important for this reason!

    • Photo: David McGonigle

      David McGonigle answered on 16 Mar 2021:

      Hi Chloe! Almost definitely invasive electrode recording of the human brain: essentially exposing part of the brain under anaesthesia and inserting electrodes to records from individual or groups of neurons (brain cells). The brain itself has no pain receptors, so you can do these kinds of procedures under local anaesthesia: the person can be awake during it all! As a neuroscientist working only with humans, I’d still want it to involve ‘informed consent’: this means everyone taking part would be informed about the risks and procedures involved. We only currently do these kinds of experiments in patients who would be undergoing brain surgery anyway: exposing the brain has all kinds of risks, so unless there is a medically justifiable reason, we don’t do it. But both morals and ethics underpin so much of what we do as scientists that it’s often hard to answer a question like this. Often experiments, like the Milgram obedience experiments (the ones where people thought they were giving each other electric shocks), are only judged to be ‘unethical’ when we look back at them in the future. Ethics evolve, just like science!

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