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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In the early 1960s, Stanley Milgram conducted a series offamous experiments proving that average citizens would readily inflictpainful electric shocks on strangers if they were instructed orencouraged to do so by an authority figure. This biography byUniversity of Maryland professor Blass provides a valuable examinationMilgram’s work and his contributions to the field of socialpsychology. Blass discusses Milgram’s education and career choicesfrom the mid-1950s to the ’70s. He talks at length about thescientist’s training and experiences at Queens College and at Harvard,and about his teaching and research appointments at universities suchas Princeton, Yale and the City University of New York. He describesin great—at times exhausting—detail the controversialexperiments Milgram devised and conducted over the years. And heconsiders how Milgram’s research changed the way "we thinkabout…the role of moral principles in social life." Milgram’spersonal life, however, gets the short shrift in thisnarration. References to the psychologist’s use of cocaine, marijuanaand mescaline are brief and undeveloped; mentions of his wife, Sasha,and their children, Michele and Marc, seem somewhat perfunctory. Thisinattention to matters of personality may limit the book’saudience. But, as the first comprehensive biography of Milgram,Blass’s study nonetheless remains an important contribution to thefield of science history. 8 pages of b&w photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Questioning Authority
In the early 1960s, Stanley Milgram conducted a series offamous experiments proving that average citizens would readily inflictpainful electric shocks on strangers if they were instructed orencouraged to do so by an authority figure. This biography byUniversity of Maryland professor Blass provides a valuable examinationMilgram’s work and his contributions to the field of socialpsychology. Blass discusses Milgram’s education and career choicesfrom the mid-1950s to the ’70s. He talks at length about thescientist’s training and experiences at Queens College and at Harvard,and about his teaching and research appointments at universities suchas Princeton, Yale and the City University of New York. He describesin great—at times exhausting—detail the controversialexperiments Milgram devised and conducted over the years. And heconsiders how Milgram’s research changed the way "we thinkabout…the role of moral principles in social life." Milgram’spersonal life, however, gets the short shrift in thisnarration. References to the psychologist’s use of cocaine, marijuanaand mescaline are brief and undeveloped; mentions of his wife, Sasha,and their children, Michele and Marc, seem somewhat perfunctory. Thisinattention to matters of personality may limit the book’saudience. But, as the first comprehensive biography of Milgram,Blass’s study nonetheless remains an important contribution to thefield of science history. 8 pages of b&w photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Questioning Authority
Nearly half a century after they were first conducted, psychologist Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments still rank among the most important studies ever conducted in social psychology. In 1961 as a young professor at Yale, Milgram demonstrated that ordinary people would willingly inflict what they believed were increasingly painful electric shocks on strangers if ordered to do so by someone in a position of authority. Because they occurred and were widely publicized around the time of the trial of Adolph Eichmann, the implementer of the Nazis' Final Solution who insisted he was merely following orders, Milgram's groundbreaking experiments received worldwide attention.
The studies were controversial and remain so, largely because they involved deception (the shocks were fake, and the subjects who received them were actors). But they continue to resonate today because of how strikingly they illustrate individuals' willingness to subjugate their own judgment to that of authority figures.
As University of Maryland psychology professor Thomas Blass makes clear in his highly readable biography The Man Who Shocked the World (Basic, $26), Milgram's far-reaching influence in the world of psychology extends beyond the obedience experiments. It was Milgram, a creative, mercurial, dynamic rebel of protean talents -- he also made films and was involved in television production -- who originated the concept of "six degrees of separation." Before his death in 1984 of a heart attack at age 51, he also advanced the notion of the "familiar stranger" in urban life -- a person recognized because of repeated sightings, say, on the subway, but with whom one never actually interacts.
While Blass's book is not very enlightening on what made Milgram tick, his lucid discussion of the scientist's most important and controversial work and its implications is trenchant and provocative.
A Shot Under Suspicion
In a 1796 experiment that would break today's ethical rules, British physician Edward Jenner inoculated an unsuspecting 8-year-old boy with cowpox extracted from a milkmaid's sores. Once the boy recovered from this mild infection, Jenner exposed him to smallpox, correctly surmising that he would be protected by his previous exposure.
Vaccine -- from vacca, the Latin word for cow -- is the name Jenner gave to his new discovery. Today, vaccines protect against a spectrum of diseases that once claimed millions of lives. Ongoing research fuels the hope that they will one day prevent HIV, Ebola virus and other deadly infections. But like all medical interventions, vaccines are not without risk. In 1986, Congress passed the National Childhood Injury Protection Act to protect vaccine manufacturers from lawsuits.
In The Virus and the Vaccine: The True Story of a Cancer-Causing Monkey Virus, Contaminated Polio Vaccine, and the Millions of Americans Exposed (St. Martin's, $25.95), science writers Debbie Bookchin and Jim Schumacher contend that public health officials ignored suspicions that the polio vaccines, especially the live vaccine developed by Jonas Salk, were contaminated with a cancer-causing virus now known as SV40. Between 1954 and 1963, an estimated 100 millions Americans were inoculated with this vaccine.
In sometimes breathless prose, the authors outline a scientific conspiracy and coverup. They find scientists and public health officials "firmly entrenched in the dogma about SV40" and unwilling to consider the possibility that the contaminated vaccine could be responsible for some existing cancer cases and a ticking time bomb for more.
Yet science is rarely so simple, and scientists are not often so neatly divided. While SV40 is linked to development of some tumors (as are several other viruses), much remains to be unraveled about its exact role and whether human exposure to the virus occurs largely from polio vaccine. At a 2002 meeting on SV40 convened by the National Academy of Sciences, researchers reported that multiple epidemiological studies have failed to link use of the vaccines and increased rates of cancer. The role of SV40 is still being determined.
No doubt the development of the polio vaccines and SV40 is a story worth telling. Bu