The name sounds vaguely familiar. I think I read about it somewhere, once, but I don't remember anything about it.
If you're not familiar with it, you probably won't be interested in the details, but here goes. When I was in college, I took every psychology and sociology class I could get my hands on. So you'd learn about the Stanford Prison Experiment in Psych 101 and probably other courses as well. In 1971 a Stanford professor divided male students into "guards" and "inmates" and put them in a building together instructed to perform those roles. The guards got slightly brutal (nothing huge or tragic) and the inmates wanted to get the hell out of there, understandably. But now there's evidence the professor had at least subtly coached them -- perhaps not even deliberately but somehow let them understand what he hoped to see happen in the experiment. So they knew what was expected of them. Other conditions also weren't sufficiently empirical (e.g., no control group) and one "guard" even said he was deliberately imitating something he'd seen in the Paul Newman prison movie "Hud."
But for years it was used as evidence that people who follow authorities' orders to exert power over others (the guards) can turn violent and evil. Well, yeah, just like if a theater director tells you, the actor playing the guard, to act bad and evil, you will act bad and evil. Even if the director doesn't say it that explicitly, but it's still obvious that's the role he wants you to play.
The experiment, as well as, I think, the Stanley Milgram shock experiment, too (which may
not have been empirically flawed; can't remember) were designed to try to explain Nazi and how people commit otherwise uncharacteristic brutality if so ordered. Well, Nazis kind of explain that phenomenon better than this experiment did. It's one thing acting nasty to please your professor and another being OK with herding people into ... well, you know. So why not say, Nazis showed it can happen ... because, well, it happened?
