“Stanford Magazine” revisits the “Stanford Prison Experiment” conducted by Psychology Professor Phil Zimbardo back in 1971. The experiment is as notorious for what happened to its human subjects as it has been useful in understanding “the central role of power in our lives,” to use Zimbardo’s phrase. The experiment was approved by Stanford’s Human Subjects Research Committee, and in 1973 the American Psychological Association said “the prison study had satisfied the profession’s existing ethical standards.” Such standards, alas, no longer exist today, having been replaced by much more restrictive ones, which err, so to speak, on the side of doing as little harm as possible to people.

You can take the Research Ethics Tutorial required of Canadian professors and students these days.