Am I again the last person on the planet to learn about something big? It's all right -- it isn't as if this would be the first time (or one or the first several times) that has happened. Then I become the last blogger in the world to write about it, which is where we are. What I'm on about is the recent wave of debunking articles about the Stanford Prison Experiment. This was the famous/notorious 1971 experiment in which (as the usual account goes) some young male volunteers were arbitrarily assigned the roles of "guard" or "prisoner" in a simulated prison environment. The role playing exercise turned shockingly real, and the "guards" took to torturing their "prisoners." The experiment was supposed to last for two weeks, but it was stopped after only six days for fear of irreversible injuries should it continue. That is the usual account, anyway. It is nowadays often taught in undergraduate level on social psychology, and...