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GELFAND’S WORLD - Is the City of Los Angeles engaging in unethical human experimentation? I've been trying to ask, and they've been trying not to tell me.
There have been numerous psychological experiments that were later found to be unethical. Perhaps the most famous was carried out by Stanley Milgram in the early 1960s. Most college students have heard the story. The subjects were told that they were part of a study in teaching and that this would involve them administering electric shocks to people as those people answered questions incorrectly. Those who were to administer the shocks were, of course, the subjects of the study. Those who were to receive the shocks were actors who had been instructed to mimic pain and then greater pain as the experiment went on.
The question that Milgram was asking was whether ordinary Americans would act like Nazis if told to commit acts of sadism against innocent subjects. Those subjects who raised objections to delivering ever stronger electric shocks were sternly told that the experiment must go on. As the recordings show, some of the subjects went along with the experimenters and delivered what they thought were painful shocks to the victims.
In the post WWII period when this experiment was carried out, there were two main results. The first was that people were properly horrified to learn that pretty much any old person -- a naive American college student as one example -- could be capable of acting like a Nazi concentration camp guard.
The second lesson that people drew was that the experiment sometimes turned out to be damaging to the naive college students (and others) who were the unwitting dupes of the experimenters. People who were ordered to deliver the electric shocks -- and did so -- sometimes felt guilt and shame over what they thought they had done. We are even told that some of the subjects of this and similar experiments needed therapy to deal with their feelings.
The major result of the Milgram experiment was that the profession of experimental psychology came under the control of a new set of rules that were, to a considerable extent, based on the lessons of the Nuremberg war crimes trials. The research and medical departments operating under the federal authority have largely adopted a universal set of rules which regulate human experimentation carried out under federal auspices. (It should be noted that almost all human experimentation carried out under federal auspices is governed by one common set of rules.)
Among other things, the rules require the following:
Any subject of human experimentation must receive a comprehensive explanation of the process and must provide his/her informed consent. The term "informed consent" is not a trivial matter, and the level and scope of the information provided has to be an adequate explanation of what will happen in the experiment.
Before the experiment can be carried out, it must be reviewed and approved by an independent group of people known as an Institutional Review Board (IRB) which includes scientists and lay people. This way, we don't leave the decision as to whether some experiment can be carried out to the scientists themselves. There must be an independent check.
Finally, and critically important, every subject has the choice to opt out of the experiment at any time. The rule applies universally, to prisoners, transplant patients about to undergo surgery, those who are subjects of psychological experimentation, and to those getting the newest experimental treatment for breast cancer.
Let's go back to the idea of psychological experimentation and what constitutes a psychological experiment. Since it will soon become relevant, I will discuss the idea of implicit bias and the sorts of experiments that have been and are being carried out on this topic.
A while back, a couple of researchers decided that we all have what they call "implicit bias." It's a term that assumes that we are driven by unconscious thoughts and feelings, and that most of us in this country have some sort of bias against people of other skin colors and national origins. The theorists took their work a step further -- they hypothesized that if you show people images of other people, particularly people of other ethnicities, and ask them to associate the image with a good word such as "honest" or with a bad word such as "burglar," the length of time you take to associate a good word with a member of minority is an indication of your implicit bias. More bluntly put, white people are expected to take longer to associate benevolent traits with pictures of black people.
It's a bit of a stretch. It depends on the idea of the subconscious or unconscious mind, a formalism that is associated with the work of Sigmund Freud, and which is not necessarily in keeping with modern brain research. But let's assume for the sake of argument that there is a subconscious, that it can be associated with implicit bias, and that -- for whatever reason and through whatever mechanism -- that bias can be sussed out by showing people images and measuring the length of time they take to click a button on their computer keyboards.
So here is what the City of Los Angeles is doing with that theory right now: It is ordering its employees and its unpaid neighborhood council elected board members to take "training" in implicit bias so as to reduce that bias.
In other words, the city believes it has the right to mess with your brain in order to change your unconscious thoughts and images. It does so by insisting that you watch a video and . . . something.
Let me explain the above wording.
How does psychological experimentation usually work? Let's imagine a typical example. The researcher imagines that a certain kind of intervention (counseling, a reading assignment, the experience of watching a video) will affect the thoughts or emotions of the subject. An experiment is designed in which the subject does a questionnaire or other test, then undergoes the intervention, and then is retested to see if there was any change in thought or emotion.
That's a standard kind of psychological experiment.
If the experiment was carried out under some federal grant, it is likely that the researcher had to go through the process of applying to the Institutional Review Board for advance permission. The subjects of the experiment would receive a form which describes the experiment including possible risks, and the subject would have to indicate permission by signing on the line.
And finally, the subject would be told, "You can stop at anytime during the experiment. You can opt out of ever starting the experiment."
That's the standard drill. (I should point out that I have experienced this process as an experimental subject a couple of times, and I have participated in applying for permission to do human experimentation as one of the researchers, so I have a feel for how human experimentation is done.)
So now let's think about what the City of Los Angeles is doing. Going back to an edict by mayor Garcetti and followed up by a legislative act of the City Council, the city insists that neighborhood council board members undergo training in implicit bias. There is a second required training which involves sex and gender identity.
The training apparently consists of watching a video. There are also questions to be answered and apparently the opportunity to take a test which reveals one's implicit bias.
What is most important is that the training video attempts (as one source explained to me) to make you feel guilty about your own biases.
Let's repeat that: The City of Los Angeles requires a group of unpaid elected officials (the ones in the neighborhood councils) to undergo an experience which is directly intended to make them feel bad about themselves. This is, for all practical purposes, an experimental intervention.
The creators of this system may perhaps argue that unlike conventional psychological studies on humans, this process does not include a preliminary questionnaire, nor does it include a formal repeat questionnaire at the end. Since it only includes the experimental intervention, is it really an experiment?
In other words, the makers of the training program have left out one or two elements that would be present in the more standard sorts of psychological research projects.
But this, I would argue, is an irrelevancy. It is the intervention that is the core element of psychological research in the sense that it should always require human protections. It is the intervention step that may or may not entail risk to its subjects. We know that the training program required by the City of Los Angeles explains to people that they have unconscious bias and that there is a strong implication that this is a bad thing. Whether or not the City of Los Angeles or its contractors keep careful records of the results of these interventions, the core element of human experimentation -- the intervention step -- is there.
My argument is simple: If the City of Los Angeles intends to mess with your brain and your thoughts and even intends to affect the workings of your subconscious mind, then it has the obligation to fulfill the requirements for human experimentation. And these requirements include your informed consent and your ability to opt out of the experiment.
And this is most emphatically what the City of Los Angeles is not doing. And I can tell you this because I am one member of a group of neighborhood council board members who have refused to take the "training." I have explained to one deputy mayor and to several staff members of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment that I will not take the training.
I should also point out that I have more than one reason for this refusal, and I believe that any one of the four or five reasons would be strong enough to stand up in court. But while I was thinking about those other reasons, there was something that was bothering me, and I finally realized that the "training" is, in many ways, a kind of human experimentation -- it involves an unproved hypothesis about the structure of the mind and how it could be reworked by an intervention, and it involves the use of that intervention. In brief, the "training" looks to be an unethical use of the procedures of experimental psychology, without the use of informed consent or the subject's right to opt out.
Whether this training procedure is overtly illegal under federal or state law is a different question. For example, does the City of Los Angeles, as a contractor for the federal government (we take money to build roads and repair burned out areas and provide space for customs officers) have the obligation to follow the federal law on human experimentation?
I hope to extend and follow up on this discussion in future columns. I would, however like to offer one additional criticism over the current system. I understand full well that governments have the right (and obligation) to control behavior. We outlaw the running of red lights, armed robbery, and many other things. And one of the things we rightly seek to limit is the abuse of racial bias in hiring and in workplace interactions. It is therefore perfectly reasonable to caution people (even neighborhood council board members) that it is contrary to city policy to discriminate in hiring on the basis of race, religion, national origin, or sexual choice.
But this is different than establishing an ideological standard and requiring neighborhood council board members to undergo indoctrination in that ideology. In this sense, the City of Los Angeles is trying to do exactly -- on the liberal side -- what the Trump administration is trying to do on the conservative side. Neither one is acceptable.
We should be defending freedom of thought in the same way that we defend freedom of speech or the right to keep and bear arms. If this is to remain a free country, then the city government should not be allowed to attempt to intervene so grossly in the way we think our own, private thoughts. The freedom of thought principle is critically important, just as the right to be protected against unethical forced experimentation is critically important. We should protest both to an unthinking city government.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
