Stuttering: A Compelling Example of Ethics, Theory, Research, and Society

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Stuttering A Compelling Example of Ethics,
Theory, Research, and Society

• Barney Beins
• Ithaca College
• Southeastern Conference on the Teaching of
  Psychology
• March 3, 2007

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A Monster?
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A Basic 2x2 Design
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The Results

• Jim Dyer of the San Jose Mercury News broke the
  story in 2001, 60 years after the study was done.
  
• He reported that several of the children
  suffered lasting damage, including those who were
  initially non-stutterers.

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Some important questions

• Is this study ethical?
• Would it pass muster with an IRB?
• How could the researchers justify their action?
• Why did they not publish any of their results?
• No informed consent, no compensatory followup,
  possibility of psychological harm, no debriefing

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Justification?

• Everybody was a behaviorist, so what could be
  learned could be unlearned.
• There was no attempt to extinguish the
  stuttering, although an article in the Village
  Voice implied that the such attempts were
  unsuccessful.
• A small price to pay for science.

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What Happened to the Children?

• One woman whom Dyer interviewed and who was
  featured prominently in the new story claimed
  that her stuttering resulted from her
  participation in the study.
• She didnt begin stuttering for 60 years, until
  either she met her husband or when he died,
  depending on which account you read.

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• Jim Dyer as the world learned of the Nazi
  medical experiments,the professors associates
  warned him to conceal his work on the orphans
  rather than risk comparisons that could ruin his
  career.

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Some Important Considerations

• No publication Nazi research versus poor
  methodologySome of the supposed non-stutterers
  showed some evidence of stuttering, so placement
  in groups may have been troublesome. Maybe it
  wasnt worth publishing.
• Was the suppression of this 1939 research an
  attempt by the mentor to distance himself from
  Mary Tudor and from the specter of the Nazis?

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Results
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The Suppression

• The study has been available in the University
  of Iowa Library, available to patrons who could,
  and did, check it out.
• It may have been that the files with the
  participants names was off limits. The reporter
  used his student status to gain access to it.

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Misinterpretation?

• Some speech researchers claim that Dyer
  misinterpreted the results of the study
• The researchers find little evidence that the
  study had any impact on the childrens speech
• There were problems with the categorization of
  stutters and non-stutters and other
  methodological questions that make the quality of
  the research murky.

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Conclusions

• Social norms are important here.
• The counterarguments have received essentially no
  coverage A good scandal is always better than a
  sober retraction.
• Not only does research raise as many questions as
  it answers, but research leads to stories that
  reflect the people who tell them.

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Conclusions

• Other studies were done using orphans it seemed
  to be the norm at the time.
• Are ethics relative or absolute?

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• Research does not occur in a vacuum, so any time
  you make controversial claims based on research,
  you need to consider
• Who is telling the story
• What the data actually tell you
• Why you shouldnt believe these claims
  uncritically