Science
L’insaisissable empire des règles
Lectures, 12 octobre 2022. À propos de : DASTON Lorraine, Rules : A Short History of What We Live By, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2022.
Le dernier ouvrage de Lorraine Daston propose une histoire des règles en Occident depuis l’Antiquité – une histoire des manières de penser la règle, mais aussi de l’appliquer. Malgré ce programme écrasant, l’historienne des sciences produit une réflexion pleine de qualités : bien écrite, claire, d’une érudition réjouissante et jamais gratuite, volontiers drôle. Même si le livre n’est pas sans défauts importants. En ligne ici.
L’atelier d’écriture des sciences sociales
Lectures, 4 avril 2022. À propos de : Christian Le Bart et Florian Mazel (dir.), Écrire les sciences sociales, écrire en sciences sociales, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, coll. « Métier de chercheur·e », 2021.
Qu’ils le veuillent ou non, et quelle que soit leur discipline, les chercheurs font le métier d’écrire. La vie de l’esprit se déroule en public. Il faut passer par l’écrit pour formuler ses idées, les trier, les articuler, les tester, les partager. Et les communautés scientifiques sont organisées autour de la production, de la réception et de l’usage de textes. Même dans les sciences dures, comme l’ont montré Bruno Latour et Steve Woolgar à propos de la biologie, les scientifiques sont « des écrivains compulsifs, sinon maniaques ». Ce que désirent les universitaires (un poste, une augmentation, un financement, de la reconnaissance, des disciples), c’est largement par l’écrit qu’ils peuvent l’obtenir. Bref, l’écriture est une affaire sérieuse.
L’article entier est en ligne là. Les conseils de lecture qu’il présente sont en ligne ici.
The SPE Remains Debunked : A Reply to Zimbardo and Haney (2020)
January 24, 2020.
Le Texier (2019) conducted the first in-depth analysis of the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) archives, resulting in seven substantiated findings : (1) several key elements, such as the prison rules and daily schedule, were not created by the guards but were taken from a student experiment conducted 3 months earlier ; (2) the guards were not informed that they were participants, leading them to think they were part of the experimental team and thus impacting their behavior toward the prisoners ; (3) the prisoners could not leave of their own will and were subjected to harsh conditions designed by the experimenters ; (4) the guards not only knew what results Zimbardo wanted to achieve but were told how to achieve them ; (5) the participants were almost never completely immersed in the unrealistic prison situation, as Zimbardo has claimed ; (6) the collection and reporting of the data were incomplete and biased ; and (7) the conclusions of the SPE had been written in advance according to nonacademic aims.
Zimbardo and Haney’s (2020) comment and Zimbardo’s (2018) online response to recent SPE criticisms did not address three of these findings and failed to present any evidence contradicting the other four. Thus, the SPE remains a debunked, invalid study whose results should be disregarded.
- This reply has been rejected by the editor of American Psychologist on the ground that it does not substantially add to the discussion of the topic in the original article, and that its tone is not "sufficiently collegial".
My answer to the editor : "Concerning the fact that my Reply does not add to the discussion, yes indeed : as Zimbardo and Haney do not bring forth new information, I do not see the need to bring forth any myself. The main thing I have to reply to is a major false assertion : ’we respond to several of his major claims’, and ’we have provided longer responses to his and other recent criticisms (see www.prisonexp.org/links/#responses)’. This is simply not true, as my Reply demonstrates (the simple fact that none of Zimbardo’s responses mention the student experiment on which the SPE is based is telling, and this fact should be shared with the readers who might think Zimbardo has successfully responded to my criticisms in his responses)."
The editor unfortunately held her ground and chose to publish Haney and Zimbardo’s comment while rejecting my reply.
- See also on PsyArxiv.
Confessions, secrets et non-dits : l’auto-analyse d’une ethnologue dans la guerre froide
Zilsel, n°6, octobre 2019, pp.418-466.
À propos de : Katherine Verdery, Secrets and Truths : Ethnography in the Archive of the Romanian Secret Police, Budapest, Central European University Press, 2014.
Katherine Verdery, My Life as a Spy : Investigations in a Secret Police File, Durham, Duke University Press, 2018.
« Je suis allée en Transylvanie en 1973, pendant le règne du dictateur communiste Nicolae Ceaușescu, afin de conduire des recherches ethnographiques sur la vie rurale ; je suis retournée en Roumanie pour continuer ces recherches à plusieurs reprises dans les années 1970 et 1980, cumulant plus de trois années sur place. Puis, plusieurs décennies plus tard, j’ai découvert que la police secrète roumaine, la Securitate, avait constitué un énorme dossier de surveillance à mon sujet : 2781 pages. À sa lecture, j’ai appris que j’étais “en réalité” une espionne, un agent de la CIA, une agitatrice hongroise, une amie de dissidents : bref, une ennemie de la Roumanie. » (2018, p. xi)
- Traduction roumaine : Thibault Le Texier, « Mărturisiri, secrete și lucruri nespuse : autoanaliza unei etnoloage în timpul Războiului Rece » (trad. Adrian T. Sirbu), in Corina Iosif, Florica (Bohîlţea) Mihuţ, Daniela Zaharia (eds.), Arhive Şi Cunoaştere, Editura Universirăţii din București, 2020, pp.303-344.
Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment
American Psychologist, vol. 74, no. 7, 2019, pp.823-839.
The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) is one of psychology’s most famous studies. It has been criticized on many grounds, and yet a majority of textbook authors have ignored these criticisms in their discussions of the SPE, thereby misleading both students and the general public about the study’s questionable scientific validity. Data collected from a thorough investigation of the SPE archives and interviews with 15 of the participants in the experiment further question the study’s scientific merit. These data are not only supportive of previous criticisms of the SPE, such as the presence of demand characteristics, but provide new criticisms of the SPE based on heretofore unknown information. These new criticisms include the biased and incomplete collection of data, the extent to which the SPE drew on a prison experiment devised and conducted by students in one of Zimbardo’s classes 3 months earlier, the fact that the guards received precise instructions regarding the treatment of the prisoners, the fact that the guards were not told they were subjects, and the fact that participants were almost never completely immersed by the situation. Possible explanations of the inaccurate textbook portrayal and general misperception of the SPE’s scientific validity over the past 5 decades, in spite of its flaws and shortcomings, are discussed.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/amp0000401
Histoire d’un mensonge : enquête sur l’expérience de Stanford
La Découverte, « Zones », avril 2018
Conduite en 1971 par le professeur Philip Zimbardo, l’« expérience de Stanford sur la prison » a vu vingt-deux étudiants volontaires jouer les rôles de gardiens et de prisonniers au sein d’une fausse prison installée dans l’université Stanford.
L’expérience devait durer deux semaines mais elle fut arrêtée au bout de six jours, résume Zimbardo, car « les gardiens se montrèrent brutaux et souvent sadiques et les prisonniers, après une tentative de rébellion, dociles et accommodants, même si la moitié d’entre eux furent si perturbés psychologiquement qu’ils durent être libérés plus tôt que prévu ».
Devenue presque aussi célèbre que l’expérience de Stanley Milgram sur l’obéissance et souvent citée en exemple de l’influence des situations sur nos comportements, l’expérience de Stanford est pourtant plus proche du cinéma que de la science : ses conclusions ont été écrites à l’avance, son protocole n’avait rien de scientifique, son déroulement a été constamment manipulé et ses résultats ont été interprétés de manière biaisée.
- Plus de détails sur le site de Zones.
- Entretien avec Grégory Salle sur le site de Contretemps.
- Entretien avec Sonya Faure dans Libération.
History of a Lie : Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment
In 1971, the famous Stanford Prison Experiment aimed to show that normal people could behave in pathological ways, becoming hostile and sadistic, under the influence of their environment.
Based on a thorough investigation in the archives of the experiment and on interviews with about half the people who participated in it, this book shows that the Stanford experiment is closer to cinema than science. In particular, it provides strong and numerous evidences that :
- The SPE was modeled after a student experiment : The Toyon Hall experiment.
- The guards knew what results were expected from them.
- The guards were trained and supervised by the experimenters.
- The guards were following a schedule and a set of rules written by the experimenters.
- The experimenters deceived the guards and made them believe they were not subjects.
- The participants responded to demand characteristics.
- The prisoners were conditioned by the experimenters.
- The prisoners were not allowed to leave the experiment at will.
- The mock prison situation was unrealistic and most participants did not forget they were participating in an experiment.
- The data was not collected properly.
- The experiment was inaccurately reported.
- The conclusions were pre-written according to non-academic aims.
- Rationally Speaking podcast, hosted by Julia Galef (podcast & full transcript here).
- You’re Wrong About podcast, hosted by Michael Hobbes and Sarah Marshall (here).
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