Apologies for 2 Derren posts back to back, but The Guilt Trip (the latest instalment of ‘The Experiment’) left me feeling physically sick at its ethical depravity. I’ll explain what happened, then I’ll explain how it contravenes so many of the basic rules of ethical experimentation.
Derren found a nice, compliant, lovely and psychologically robust man called Jody. He told him he’d failed his audition to be part of a mystery show of Derren’s, when in fact he’d been selected for this Guilt Trip show without his knowledge. As a social worker in the youth sector, Derren made up a conference on the topic and invited Jody (the target) to come to enjoy the conference to speak at it. The hotel was completely controlled by Derren, and every single person there was an actor. Secret filming was carried out in all the communal rooms and in the target’s bedroom.
Step 1 of the plan: some classical (Pavlovian) conditioning in guilt. The idea was to induce guilt in Jody, have people squeeze his shoulder when he was feeling guilty and play the hotel doorbell when at the peak of this feeling. They did this a few time in a few different ways, but the biggest guilt inducer was provided by comedian Tim Minchin. Jody is a huge fan of Tim’s, and so the chance to meet him left him star-struck. Mid conversation however, Tim walked away looking offended, then disappeared so Jody couldn’t chat to him and explain. The actors led the target to believe his words had been misheard and he’d called Tim a “c*nt”. Cue the huge guilt of upsetting his idol with his inability to speak to him, shoulder squeezes and the bell and it was mission accomplished.
Act 2 was all about making Jody doubt his memory. So for example, lecturers at the conference would change their clothing by stripping off a layer or switching ties while walking around the back of the audience while they stared at the power point. The target was visibly perplexed when he saw a red tie turn cream, and a plain dress become a burgundy floral one instead. They then tested memory guilt by faking a jewellery robbery from the hotel display case, an actor saying they saw Jody with it the night before, increasing his feelings of guilt by squeezing his shoulder and the doorbell sound was played. He then found the pearls in his room and hid them at first as he felt guilty. After a conversation with a stooge later, he took them to the front desk using the words “I’ve done something terrible”. They’d successfully tricked him into confessing to a crime he hadn’t committed.
Then came the real ‘test’: would the target Jody confess to a murder he hadn’t committed? The murder victim was an American speaker who’d been obnoxious the whole conference. Jody played croquet with him, lost and had to fork out 20 quid. The actors told him the American had been cheating, kicking balls when he wasn’t looking.
The actors, at Derren’s request, then helped to get Jody drunk by supplying endless drinks. While this was happening, Derren created a crime scene outside. An outline of the man was laid, complete with blood pools and arterial spatters on the walls, including animal brains on the croquet mallet and ground where it meant to look as if he’d been bludgeoned to death. While asleep, Jody was hypnotised in his bed while the actors carried him outside and laid him on the ground near the crime scene. He woke up alarmed, came back in and slept. Once up for breakfast, he was asked what he’d been doing as they said they’d heard him slamming doors and things at 5am. He had no recollection.
Then came the murder announcement, and police arrived for interviews. The target was shaking and feeling nauseous waiting to be interviewed, having heard the news and with squeezes and the bell heightening his guilt. He spoke well in the interview, but wasn’t asked pressing enough questions to lead to a confession. Of his own accord, he later walked offsite into the local town and went to the police station. (Incidentally, at the start of the conference they were told not to both visiting the town – there was only a police station and post office there). Having confessed to the murder that he could only conclude he had done, Derren came in, broke down the paper wall of the interview room and explained he was part of a show. He saw the ‘murdered’ man alive and well. The end of the slow concluded with the question from Derren “Do you forgive us?” While the target luckily said yes, this ‘experiment’ sickened me to my core for so many reasons.
To understand everything wrong with it, I need to explain the basic code of ethics people who perform experiments with human participants must abide by. As a research psychologist myself, I have had to comply with all these rules, and have been checked by an ethics committee that I have done so.
(1) Informed consent: the person must be given the full details about the experiment in order that they can make an informed decision about whether or not they wish to take part. Small deceptions can occur if the experimental protocol requires it and where it will not harm the participant e.g. asking someone to perform a memory test on ‘genuine’ missing persons posters, not telling them until the end of the experiment that the posters aren’t real. Or even more often, presenting people with information but not informing them that it’s part of a memory test. I have been happily deceived in both these ways before, and many others. The deception must not be carried out if it’s likely to make the person uneasy when they’re debriefed, and using deception must always be avoided where possible.
(2) Confidentiality and anonymity: the person must not be referred to in any of the research by name, only by an anonymised number or code. Under the Data Protection Act, the file/document that link the person by name to their code must be stored safely. This means that if someone withdraws or demonstrates a problem in their answers can be traced. In publication, no names must be used (initials are permissible for case studies), data must be destroyed after a set number of years have passed, and access must be limited to the researchers only.
(3) Right to withdraw: the participant must be made aware that, without needing to explain themselves, they can leave the study at any time of their choosing, be this before, during, or long after they have taken part.
(4) Protection of participants: the participant must be returned to the state they were in when they began the experiment i.e. not upset, confused and so on. The participant-experimenter relationship must also not change. An example of this being important nowadays is mood induction procedures: if you induce someone into a negative mood as part of a depression study, then you must make sure to cancel this out and restore their mood before allowing them to leave. It goes without saying that the participant should not be distressed in any way.
(5) Debriefing: after the experiment, the study must be explained in full. The experiments must say why they did what they did and what they were looking to find. After-care must also be given where necessary: often this is precautionary, and GP details are sufficient. In sensitive cases, counselling services need to be arranged should someone be upset e.g. a study takes them back to a period of grief.
So, let’s see just how many ways Derren contravenes these basic rules that ANY scientific experiment must obey before it is passed for implementation:
Informed Consent
The target definitely did not have this. He only knew he’d auditioned for a TV show of Derren’s. He did not know its nature, its intent or its purpose. While the ‘experiment’ obviously required that the target didn’t know he was going to be tricked into confessing guilt to something he didn’t do, given the potential psychological consequences this could have, no ethics committee would ever have passed it. The reason ethical guidelines came into being was a lot to do with Milgram’s obedience studies, where many participants gave a fellow participant (who luckily was a stooge) with a weak heart a big enough electric shock to kill him. As the psychological damage of this study caused these rules to be drawn up, then it follows that these rules would not permit a repeat of such distress.
I do of course realise that, in legal terms, Jody must have signed a waiver saying that Derren could do anything he wanted and it was okay if it involved deception. While this is assent, it is not informed consent. These contracts are not accept in experimentation – they are only accepted in the entertainment sector. This is a huge indicator that this was not an experiment.
Confidentiality and Anonymity
If a case study is performed on a participant, they come known by their initials. For example, H.M., who had heavy anterograde amnesia (unable to form new memories) following an operation to aid his intractable epilepsy, was well known in medical an psychological literatures. What you do not do is call someone by name, publicise their face, and show their individual results (without anonymysation obviously). I’m sure that if anyone looked hard enough, given they know where Jody’s from and that he’s a social worker, they’d find him e.g. on facebook, on a work web page or even a blog. I mean, the night of the TV episode his location was publicised on Twitter: he stayed the night at Derren’s house with his girl friend. Nothing about these goings on were confidential or anonymous.
Right to Withdraw
Without giving a reason, a participant can leave an experiment before, during or afterwards. (That’s why you have to keep that sheet that links names and anonymous codes together). Given that Jody did not even know he was part of an ‘experiment’, he obviously had no idea that he could leave it. I mean, who would willingly put themselves through the guilt and horror of believing they’d murdered someone? He also can’t withdraw his ‘data’ afterwards – it’s been on TV so has already been publically shared. There is no going back.
Protection of Participants
While I appreciate that the target was tested for psychological robustness, the fact that tests revealed that he was likely to withstand the anguish of this TV programme does not mean it was justifiable to put him through it. I mean, is it okay to beat someone to a pulp because you’re sure they can recover and won’t have PTSD? In more experimental terms, the risk of harm to the participant (mental or physical) must be no greater than occurs in every day life. Guilt over murder is not an everyday life risk, so this ‘experiment’ clearly exceeds these risks. Also, while forgiveness was granted, this doesn’t necessarily mean that Jody was in the same psychological state at the end of the experiment as he was at the beginning. We were given no indication of follow-up psychiatric tests, or whether things like counselling had been made available. Also, the experimenter-participant relationship did not return to its formal beginnings: you do not stay over at your experimenter’s house following a study unless you stayed over before the experiment even began i.e. were friends (not best practice).
Debriefing
Luckily we saw some of the debriefing on TV. I hope it was a lot more in-depth than what was shown, but for the viewer it was soothing to see Jody smiling and partaking in champagne. However, and I quote from the British Psychological Society’s guidelines (who control ethical experimentation throughout the whole of the UK) that “Debriefing does not provide a justification for unethical aspects of any investigation.” Therefore, explaining something fully afterwards and gaining ‘forgiveness’ is not enough: you were not justified doing an experiment if the participant decides to ‘let you away with it’ come the debriefing. I was utterly disgusted when Derren asked “Do you forgive us?” No experimenter would ever ask this question because no experimenter would need to. It was utterly appalling, regardless of Jody saying yes.
So again I find myself in a Kantian position: while the results were that the target was happy he’d taken part, the intentions leave this ‘experiment’ morally deplorable to me. It also fails to be an experiment on basic scientific grounds too i.e. insufficient sample size, no control group and so on, but I’d be here all day if I criticised this on those grounds too.
So I hear you say, what if Derren hadn’t called the series ‘The Experiment’? Would it be okay then, because that would prevent it having to meet the ethical standards of human research within this country? The answer to me is no: it was unethical on intuitive, basic human rights terms. It doesn’t matter than it contravened BPS rules essentially – what matters is that it contravened the way in which any of us should be treated, according to norms, morals and laws. Signing a waiver for a TV programme does not prevent these issues: it only means that what happened was legally permissible. Whatever way you which to approach it, this ‘experiment’ was not morally permissible in my eyes. I can only help the rest of the series doesn’t rely on these depraved ‘experiments’, saccharinised and sanitised by the label ‘entertainment’.
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