Experiments on Children
A recurring theme on the hit TV shows Fringe is Doctor Bishop’s unethical and frightful experiments on children in years past. Occasionally he comments on some of his failed experiments and the people affected by them with a very dry and calloused “The university settled with him – he probably never had to work a day in his life.” Ruth and I watch it religiously for its humour and its twisted reality that’s unique in today’s television environment.
So imagine my surprise when Ruth took a phone call from the University of Toronto (Mississauga) to perform music experiments on my child. Ruth looked so cool about it, so heartless, so Doctor Bishop. It’s okay, Ruth would no doubt say. These are music experiments. They won’t hurt Kaylah.
Doctor Bishop I’m sure would say the exact same thing. Did she research the school to determine if it follows the ethical treatment of children? Will Kaylah be pushed into another dimension? Will she one day find herself wrapped in her alternate universe’s version of her body in a surreal, fantastic manipulation of the space-time continuum?
But that’s what music does, silly, she defends. It broadens your horizons and pushes the boundaries of your consciousness.
So does LSD.
on February 25, 2010 at 7:02:pm
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Joel, I’m not sure how serious you are here but I can assure you — as a psychology researcher — that ALL research conducted at or affiliated with an academic institution is subjected to rigorous ethical evaluation before participants can even be recruited. The stringent ethical requirements that must be met by researchers are in large part a consequence of the inhumane abuse of power by researchers past; while we, as researchers, find the ethics approval process to be tedious and time consuming, I think that you’d be hard-pressed to find a researcher who didn’t also value the ethical developments that have occurred over the last half-decade.