Miguel corrected his earlier post which in which he misinterpreted my summary of Shweder's "counter-narrative themes" as questions. This is something less than a major blunder, and wearing a hair shirt for a day should be sufficient as penance. As Shweder presents his views in a tentative manner, his "themes" are much like questions anyway.
But I do want to argue one point with Miguel. He said: > among the points made in the forum discussion [another on-line group] was the > observation that <snip> it wasn't until much later that biomedical > scientists became outraged about the harm that was done. The Tuskegee > subjects were obviously harmed, In fact, one of the primary points made by Shweder was that in a pre-penicillin era, the only treatment available was lengthy, painful, ineffective, and possibly harmful. It's therefore not obvious that the subjects were harmed, although that seems to be automatically assumed in most descriptions of the study. Shweder goes on to argue that even after penicillin became available, it is still debatable whether giving it to them in the late stages of their disease would have been helpful. He proposes an important empirical test of the claim of harm. If the subjects of Tuskegee were injured by their participation in the study, then, as one indication, we should expect that they should have died at an earlier age than a matched group of individuals who did not participate. Although difficult, this test sounds feasible to me, and I hope someone looks into it. The widely and uncritically accepted claim of harm, however reasonable it may at first appear, could use some hard data in support. As Einstein never said, not everything that can be counted counts. But in my book, many things that can be counted count for a lot. Stephen -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. tel: (819) 822-9600 ext 2470 Department of Psychology fax:(819) 822-9661 Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lennoxville, QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Dept web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy TIPS discussion list for psychology teachers at http://faculty.frostburg.edu/psyc/southerly/tips/index.htm ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: archive@jab.org To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
