The first ethical issue of Hofling study is lack of protection of the patients. The protection is necessary although it will be stopped by another nurse who was an accomplice of the researcher if the nurse is obeyed, it still very dangerous if accident is going to be happens. Although the participants were fully debriefed, the consequences of their actions could have been harmful.
The second ethical issue of Hofling study is the nurses who are the participants of the study do not have option to withdraw. It is necessary because the nurse will fell stress as they know that over amount of Astroten is harmless to the patients, they might not feel comfortable of doing that. Therefore, they should have the right to withdraw if the experiment makes them upset. As this specific action is unethical, it might cause a psychological harm to the nurses because they have to struggle whether obey or not in such a pressure.
In Milgram’s study of obedience is to find out if ordinary Americans would obey an unjust order to inflict pain on another person. The experimenter is asking the participants to give a shock to the participant next to the room when he gets the answer incorrectly. The more answers being incorrect, the higher shock will be given. The participants do not know that the people beside the room is just pretending being and shock and make the participants feel that they are really shocking someone.
The first ethical issue is use of deception. Milgram deceived their participants about the purpose of the study and the other role of participants. However, without deception the aim of the study could not be achieved and internal validity would have been compromised. In Milgram’s study, none of the participants gave informed consent. Even though in the first three experiments named, participants were aware that they were part of a study, they were not fully informed as to the nature of that study. Also, confederates were involved in the study too, therefore, it is a kind of deception.
The second ethical issue is debriefing allows the researcher to obtain inform consent retrospectively and put right any deception that took place. The deception and aims are explained and participants also have the right to withdraw their results. It is as if the participants never took part in the study in the first place. Milgram fully debriefed his participant and had the opportunity to withdraw their result. However, by this stage they had already been subjected to the stress of the experiment. But it is questionable if debriefing puts right the deception and the guilt of knowing one was prepared to give electric shocks strong enough to kill a person.