"What Were You Thinking?" or the Milgram Experiments Revisited?

I caught this episode of Dateline NBC last night (Sunday, 25 April 2010). One segment of “What Were You Thinking” set up a group of actors to fake-shock contestants on a faux reality show titled “What a Pain.” The actors were instructed to raise the voltage level of the electroshock each time contestants answered questions incorrectly until the voltage level reached 450, which was the maximum voltage of the shock machine the actors operated. When the actors flipped the volatage switches, the contestants screamed as if in pain. According to Chris Hansen, the narrator of the segment, the point of this experiment was “to test reality-wannabe contestants” and to determine if they would “deliberately hurt someone else just because they’re told to?”

Those of us who are aware of Stanley Milgram’s experiments in the 60s know that the answer to that question is yes. Those of us who are aware of Milgram’s experiments in the 60s also know that this type of experiment does not meet today’s ethical guidelines for research using human subjects. In fact, Milgram’s experiments (because of the consequences to his shockers) were one of the types of experimentation that led to the establishment of ethical guidelines.

So, I have two questions:

Why can a Dateline NBC reporter conduct experiments that no academic or professional researcher would be able to perform, or would want to perform?

The actors who flipped the switches seemed like educated men and women; didn’t they know about Milgram’s experiments — how did they get through school without reading about the ethical questions raised by his obedience studies?

Many of the comments in Dateline’s online newsvine raise similar questions and show similar outrage; they are definitely worth reading.