5 Tragic Scientific Experiments : The Story of Genie

The pursuit of knowledge is an important and noble quest. Unfortunately, the history of scientific inquiry is plagued with numerous examples of experiments that went unbelievably bad - sometimes bordering on the line of absolutely tragic. That's not to say that this is "science's fault". After all, human beings are the ones who conduct the science and unfortunately, we're not that great sometimes, as illustrated by 5 tragic experiments.

This is the first of 5 articles highlighting awfully tragic experiments. 

5. The Wild Child: The Story of Genie 

Let's start with the background story: Genie was born in 1957 and had a horribly abusive family who confined her to a tiny, dark room for her entire youth. For whatever reason, she was ostracized from a young age by her family and was often tied down to a potty that was in her room, unable to walk around. She was also severely underfed and abused both physically and mentally. After a social worker discovered what was going on in 1970, the parents were arrested and Genie was "set free". 

Except she wasn't entirely free. You see, the horrible abuse that she had to endure growing up had dire consequences on her. She had serious trouble with walking and motor skills. Also, no one ever talked to her so she never developed a language and (thanks to being locked in a room for years) the 13 year old Genie was found to have an intelligence equivalent to that of a one year old. Psychologists began to study her and this is where a little bit of indecency may have come into play. 

This was a "perfect" case for psychologists: here they had at their finger tips a child who had basically been raised in the most awful way imaginable and was brought up in isolation from the rest of the world. This was a prime opportunity to test nature vs nurture and also the effects of extreme abuse at a young age. Many people (whether rightly or wrongly) question the integrity of some of the scientists involved in the tests regarding whether or not they were acting in the best interests of Genie. While tests were being done to learn more about her, she lived with different psychologists (they would often fight over who would "get her"). Eventually, when funding for the experiments was cut, she stopped living with the scientists and started to bounce from foster home to foster home (where she was often subject to even more abuse - something that made her deficiencies even worse). 

Basically, it came down to whether the psychologists had interfered (and possibly hindered) her treatment with all of their experiments. What she really needed was love and a good home for once, but she couldn't even get that. Genie was an extremely rare case and it is understandable that some scientists were very excited to learn more about her. Unfortunately, this is still a human being here and considering the fact that she had already undergone so much abuse, the scientists may have made the situation indirectly a little bit worse instead of better.

(By the way, the tests conducted on Genie didn't even do a lot of good for science because the psychologist who had tested her the most did very poor work that lacked empirical evidence - that's an absolute shame in my opinion).

So, what became of Genie? She is still in a foster home today, but is living anonymously. Because she's anonymous, it is hard to say exactly how she is doing right now, especially with the only information coming from personal reports. According to one report, she is still speechless to this day. One psychiatrist who had visited her in the late 1990s gave a very sad report, saying that she was very silent and depressed when he saw her. Unfortunately for Genie, what happened to her in her childhood have left scars that may never be repairable. 

So, what do we take away from this story? Is it one of abuse, of childhood development or is it about the ethical dilemmas that haunt scientific research? Harlan Lee, narrator of the NOVA documentary that covers Genie's story said:

"...So, I think future generations are going to study Genie's case … not only for what it can teach us about human development, but also for what it can teach us about the rewards and the risks of conducting 'the forbidden experiment'."

It's important to not brush cases like this under the rug. Genie's story not only informs us of how to do science, but also teaches us a little bit about ourselves and our values.

Here's the link to the Genie documentary. Watch it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmdycJQi4QA


Reference: http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/genie.htm