The why were these experiments done in the first place? I certainly take your point and know the paper you're talking about.
Is it obvious that humans will generally shock people until they are told not to? Is it obvious that randomly assigned students will take on the roles that they are given?
I don't think it's obvious. I think that is why the studies were done in the first place, and I am generally quite skeptical of the results. There is no way to verify them, thus teaching them is genuinely bad science.
> Is it obvious that humans will generally shock people until they are told not to? Is it obvious that randomly assigned students will take on the roles that they are given?
It's certainly not obvious, so verification is informative, and that likely was the motivation for doing the experiments. However, despite their flaws - they were limited and biased in various ways - it certainly would be far, far worse science to base our teaching solely on one's assumptions/scepticism/opinion about how things should be, instead of taking into account whatever limited data these experiments provided. Sure, it would be better to have more and better data, but since we won't get it, this does provide relevant information.
Agreed, and they aren't isolated in terms of seminal studies that probably won't be replicated. No ethics board is going to allow us to strap down a seal and put it's head underwater, but that's how we learned a lot about mammalian diving physiology.
Is it obvious that humans will generally shock people until they are told not to? Is it obvious that randomly assigned students will take on the roles that they are given?
I don't think it's obvious. I think that is why the studies were done in the first place, and I am generally quite skeptical of the results. There is no way to verify them, thus teaching them is genuinely bad science.