ABSTRACT
A Canadian social scientist wanting to study public and police attitudes towards homosexuals who have casual sexual encounters in bathhouses, disguises himself as a homosexual voyeur in order to observe and interview homosexuals. In spite of the scientific importance of Milgram’s work, his experiments involved clear breaches of the experimental subjects’ rights to both informed consent and privacy. The naive subjects were lied to, and the privacy of their consciences was invaded. Initially the criticisms levelled against Milgram by some of his peers in social psychology concerned not the rights of the subjects but their wellbeing. They were utilitarian criticisms. Milgram’s research was scientifically valid, yielding important knowledge, and deception was clearly part of the experimental protocol. Experimental subjects are seen as natural objects rather than as living creatures. If experiments must become more ethical, then ethics must become more experimental.
