[MichaelSalib]

If everyone thought it was harmless, why wasn't it conducted on college students, the usual specimen of choice for harmless experiments? Was it just a coincidence that the researchers decided to experiment on the most powerless and defenseless subjects they could find?

[akiselev]

This is MIT, not Mengele's Auschwitz. Radioactive tracers are injected into the blood streams of millions of people every year for PET and CT scans, of all ages, which is far more harmful than radioactive tracers in food.

[PavlovsCat]

This is MIT, not Mengele's Auschwitz.

That doesn't answer the question at all. It kinda just assumes that the question isn't really interesting because of course MIT isn't like Auschwitz, even in the instance where it kinda is.

[akiselev]

For it to be Mengele's Auschwitz they'd need to perform horribly unethical experiments AND not give a rat's ass about consent.

The latter happened here, not the former.

[PavlovsCat]

The lack of consent, or the lack of even the ability to say no, is kind of what makes it unethical.

And hey, it's not like anyone even brought that up other than in defense of MIT, to dismiss the question "why would they do X and not Y".

[MichaelSalib]

Right, it was MIT, so why not use the faculty lounge breakfast cereal? Or the student center's? I mean, it was totally absolutely harmless, right?

[akiselev]

You do know how scientific studies are run, right? I can't speak to why they chose to do the tests on developmentally disabled children (possibly wanted to test effects of radiation on growing metabolism or something, without risk of stunting the development of normal children, which is still unethical) but all of your suggestions sound like the perfect storm of uncontrollable factors and useless data.

[MichaelSalib]

As an MIT alum who (1) has run experiments, (2) has had experiments performed on me by MIT researchers and (3) has actually studied this particular case in a Scientific Ethics class at MIT, I know a lot of things. Plus my brother is developmentally disabled.

The "scientists" in question didn't think anyone would consent so they chose to experiment on people without seeking consent. They knew that normal adults would ask too many questions so they used cognitively impaired children. They did this because they didn't think of developmentally disabled people as fully human.

Look, MIT has already decided that this was a horribly unethical thing to do. Its professors practically scream that in classes. And it paid off the victims with $2million. MIT thinks this is unethical. So why are you disagreeing?

[akiselev]

All three (four?) of your points are irrelevant since you literally suggested using publicly accessible breakfast cereal as a replacement for the equivalent of a controlled experiment.

Using developmentally disabled children for research BECAUSE they can't consent is a horrendous breach of basic human rights and not once did I disagree with you that it was unethical. I appreciate your argument but so far I've only been going after your rhetoric, which could be a lot more informative since you claim you studied this case.

[MichaelSalib]

you literally suggested using publicly accessible breakfast cereal as a replacement for the equivalent of a controlled experiment.

Perhaps I was unclear. I think they should have done the controlled experiment with university staff or students as subjects. If the experiment was really completely harmless, there's no reason not to. If they wanted to study the effects on growing children, they should have used ordinary schoolchildren whose parents consented.

As science, this was complete crap totally apart from the awful ethics. Many developmentally disabled people suffer from chromosomal abnormalities that lead to non-trivial physiological differences between them and the rest of the population, including metabolic and cardiac differences. That makes it extremely difficult to infer anything about effects on the general population from studies done on a small group of developmentally disabled people and that's why people with chromosomal abnormalities are often excluded from most research protocols. I think that you'd know all of this if you were familiar with science.

[raverbashing]

Funny, I remember some (worse) experiments done with Marines positioned near atomic bomb detonations

The glowing oatmeal seems mild

[Daniel_Newby]

Probably they wanted subjects who would uncomplainingly eat a boring experimental diet.

And suggesting that MIT students be used for radioactivity experiments is silly: they would eat their own radioactive stuff to screw with the scientists.