Was milgram's study controversial

Milgram's study was controversial for a number of reasons. It broke many ethical guidelines for methodolgy. These include:

Deception - All of the participants in the study were deceived as to the real purpose and measures in place.

Right to withdraw - If the participants hesitated, the experimenter did not reaffirm their right to withdraw. He instead used verbal prods to encourage the participants to continue.

Participant safety - All the participants felt high levels of stress, and one even suffered convulsions. Even after the debriefing, the participants will have to live with the knowledge they would have killed someone.

These have been opposed by the fact that the vast majority of participants said afterwards they were glad to have been involved with the experiment, and none of them experienced any long-term disturbance.

It was also controversial for the result. The result suggests that perfectly normal people can do extremely evil things simply from orders. Mandel has suggested that this appears to lessen the responsibility of those involved. For instance, Adolf Eichman, who was involved in the Holocaust, said in the Neuremberg trials that he was just following orders. Milgram's study would suggest that many NAZIs could just be normal people, even though they acted in a particularly evil fashion.