How brave and smart is this girl?

(sardinequeen)- it was me who said narcissistic & attention seeking - i wasnt trying to make an Internet diagnosis of pathological narcisism etc.. or saying she is unstable or insane.
Perhaps I used the wrong words, didn't mean to say imply a clinical condtion at all (how could I know..) just that this is the kind of normal adolescent self- centeredness familiar to almost any parent of teenagers -e.g. not thinking about the potentially devasting impact of this on her BF's parents, their relationship with their DS, the emotional manipulation of her classmates and teachers etc...

It is part of the job of educators to help young people mature, go beyond their normal teenage narcism and think of others.

I dont see why a college-bound senior of whatever ethnic background shouldn't be taught and guided in how to conduct a decent experiment, and to understand and comply with ethical concerns in experimental design.

Whenever local uni students come into my DCs schools to do one day observations we get a letter home and the option to withdraw consent. I would be extremely pissed off if I found out the school had allowed my kids to be the subject of six month long, emotionally manipulative experiment without their and my consent.

SGB, yes alot of social science studies depend on the subjects not knowing (and being misled) about what the study is about, even though they have consented to be part of the experiment. That is why you have Ethics Committees, because such deception is not something to do lightly. It is an especially big deal if the subjects don't know they are being manipulated as part of an experiment at all, and it is a huge deal if they are under 18.

Experiments with human subjects have to break the basic ethical principle of viewing people as autonomous individuals, not as means to an end. So they have to do this very carefully.

I think the school Principal here undermined his professional relationship with parents, teachers and students, I think he failed in his duty of care to the students, and in his duty of care to the girl who did the project in allowing her to put herself in an unethical and potentially emotionally damaging situation with her peers, family and teachers. And he failed as an educator in not teaching the basics of experimental design and ethics.

I don't think the dishonesty is the issue. I think it's the difficulty of measuring whatever results there were. I don't even see it as an experiment; it's more like performance art.

I can't be too impressed with anyone who makes an effort to mislead people, beyond the limits of an April Fool joke. She might even have got some valuable insights from this experiment, but I think it's too dishonest to be worth any praise.

Thank you for the link Vesuvia that is absolutely fascinating.

Dittany they were also lying to fellow in patients, probably building relationships with them (pretty impossible to avoid in an inpatient situation lasting more than a little while), who would potentially have been very upset/angry/let down and saddened by the "loss" when they left, never to return.

I raised these other situations not to say whether any of these are objectively right or wrong things to do - but to point out that lots of other people have done things similar to what this student has done and they are usually lauded as interesting experiments. While this individual gets accused of being unstable and attention seeking - labels which bother me as they are so often used against women that do things that others don't like.

I think that it's (obviously) perfectly OK for people to say they don't like what she did - and I can understand why - but not OK to question her mental health.

SardineQueen wrote - "There was an experiment my dad told me about, where some medical students pretended to have severe psychiatric problems to gain access to psychiatric hospitals as residents and find out what they were really like, how the patients were treated."

I think that was probably the Rosenhan experiment.

I think it was thoughtless at best..
Cruel at worst.

Her Mother was 'in' on the secret but the BF's was not.

What if the paternal GPs had spent money they could ill afford on the couple and the Grandchild.

They may have been happy about it.

Why did the so called experiment exclude her own Mother's reactions?

There was an experiment my dad told me about, where some medical students pretended to have severe psychiatric problems to gain access to psychiatric hospitals as residents and find out what they were really like, how the patients were treated. It sounds like a film storyline but my dad is a doctor and I don't have any reason to think that he made it up!

Anyway it's reasonable to assume that they might have formed relationships with the people they met in there, who would have been terribly upset when they left. Assuming that they would have their friend there with them for quite some time.

People do these things, I don't see why this girl is coming in for such a terribly hard time. I genuinely don't understand.

BTW the interesting thing about the psychiatric experiment (and the reason that my dad told me) was that some of the students had real problems getting out. Because of course when they said "TaDaaaa! I'm actually completely sane and a medical student please let me out", the answer was "Don't be silly you're delusional, take these pills and go and have a nice sit down..."

Do you think that people don't mourn the loss of friends?

I don't think if somebody lied to people who loved them about becoming disabled, disfigured or made homeless it would be equally wrong. This is worse because people were expecting to welcome a new person into the world at the end of the pregnancy.If a relative had a still birth, you would naturally be upset and mourn the loss.

" So was 19-year-old Angel Jalomo, a 2010 Davis High School graduate and Gaby's niece: "I didn't know what to say. I just started crying"

All for a social experiment.

And she can't have been the first bright teenager to have got pregnant at her school. Surely she could have found someone to have a talk to about it.An actual pregnant teenager will have faced so much more than her, as well. She's only touched on the surface of what it is to be pregnant, IMO.

I'm wondering what other stunts teenagers are going to think up to get themselves a college place.

LOL SQ have just thought of Little Britain

Yes I think the report really hasn't given us enough info to go on. What did she say? Why was everyone enthused? What's going to happen now?

I think it is the same issue where someone pretends to be something they're not - eg a wheelchair user - goes out and mixes in the community, forms friendships etc etc and then goes "TaDa!!!!!!" I'm actually perfectly mobile, springs out of the wheelchair and waltzes off,back to a privileged non-disabled lifestyle leaving their new friends aghast and a friend down, with possible feelings of betrayal and resentment. I don't see at all why this experiment is so much "worse" than other things of this type that are done.

In the thing it says that she got a standing ovation when she did her talk in assembly. So she must have said some pretty powerful things. Otherwise she would have got an aghast silence, interspersed with faces, and some anger.

And as for the suggestion that because she is a woman she should put herself last, no, I hope to bring my son up to see other people as human beings with feelings, to be respectful of them and not to deceive others.

Oops cross posted with BoffinMum

Bollocks - SGB I meant to put that SGM mentioned the white middle class thing not you, but must have erased it. Can't understand how I got your initials mixed up though

I do think there's an issue about what effect it will have on her thoguh. I do wonder how it will affect her relationships with her peers and I wonder what support she'll get to deal with the fall out.

I also found this study dodgy, where a university professor pretended to be a student at her own institution for a year.

www.popmatters.com/pm/review/my-freshman-year-by-rebekah-nathan/

I certainly would react he same way to a man deceiving his own ad his girlfriends family in this way. I find that suggestion bizarre.
I think if somebody lied to people who loved them about becoming disabled, disfigured or made homeless it would be equally wrong. I think the programmes you are talking about put people in a new location with people who don't know them, not their own family!
I wouldn't describe her as narcissistic or even particularly attention seeking, just very naive to the feeling of others and the bond that others can feel to a baby in utero.
I think any fight back against discrimination is laudable however the means don't justify the end in this case. IMO.

Yes, yes that's exactly what I'm getting at SGB.

You've put it more succintly.

I don't think this experiment was ethical and I am worried it may have had some long-term effect on this student's psychological or emotional state she is not yet aware of, and it would have been unsettling for the teachers as well. I would not have signed it off as Principal.

I think the difference between pretending to be a drug user or pretending to someone is pregnant is that by that stage in the pregnancy most family members/friends would want the baby and it would be a shock to find out she isnt. It would be sort of like the baby 'died'.

When I was at school a fewof my friends were pregnant and by that stage in their pregnancies they had been bought cots, buggies, clothes etc from friends, relatives and the dads family. I think I would be very upset if my son got someone pregnant and then I found out that far along it wasnt real.