As one might expect, scientists experimenting with their kids is as old as crazy scientists. Piaget waxed child psychiatric, Salk injected his youngsters with polio and this other guy would tickle his kids wearing a mask (yeah, I don't know.) Nowadays, it's rather more regulated: "These days, scientists using human subjects are expected to seek approval from institutional review boards, which consider federal regulations on risk, coercion of subjects and researcher bias," while some researchers sign parental consent forms...to work on their own kids. Others admit that they think such measures are unnecessary, given the benign nature of the research.

If there is an upswing in at-home experimentation, it may be because financing means that it can be hard to get subject, and new technology makes research somewhat more portable. The experiments cited in the article are pretty benign, and range from "strapping a camera on baby Darius’s head, recording what he looked at", scanning kids' brains, and filming them round the clock to analyze language patterns - not that we imagine those performing vivisections or cancer drug trials on their twins would be particularly eager to talk to the Times.

Of course some "ethicists" find any of this problematic. Says one, “The role of the parent is to protect the child...once that parent becomes an investigator, it sets up an immediate potential conflict of interest. And it potentially takes the parent-child relationship and distorts it in ways that are unpredictable.” Sure enough, one scientist does gloat that his kids "were so determined to please their father that they would lie still,” in an MRI machine. Says another,

When one son, 4, answered questions about color and shape wearing an electrode-studded cap to measure brain waves, 'I wasn’t sure whether he’d be willing to put the cap on, whether he’d be willing to do the task,' Dr. Deak said. He did, although 'he needed more breaks than other kids. He wanted snacks.'...and when Karen Dobkins, a U.C.S.D. psychology professor, enlisted her infant twins, Gabriel and Jacob, she said, 'it was kind of painful, because one of my twin boys basically played the game really well, but my other son, we couldn’t even use his data.' She said that 'made me worry that he had autism.'...Her worries proved unfounded. Still, she said, 'I took only the good data and copied it and put it in both of their baby books.'

But, wow, the strangest case is the one in which the husband wants to do research on a new baby and his scientist wife chooses to draw a line. Since she was “'quite opposed to this idea of experimentation...it had to be done surreptitiously, whenever she would go out or when I would take him out in his little BabyBjorn' — still 'a sore topic between us.'”

All that one is left thinking, after reading this, is not that this is a "new phenomenon" so much as a much more obvious form of the parental madness that most people are prone to in one form or another. Should parents harm kids? Should doctors overstep boundaries? Should people be terrible parents and ruin their kids' lives? Ideally, no. Some of these researchers will obviously take this in a strange direction - but that strangeness will probably already be there in one form or another. Someone who's keeping weird secrets from his wife has, arguably, other problems. As a "phenomenon," it's hard to get too exercised...although that electrode cap would give us nightmares.

Test Subjects Who Call the Scientist Mom or Dad [NY Times]

The study, conducted at the University of Sydney, was based on a sample of 185 students, aged 16 to 25: "78% female students agreed to take part in the extensive survey compared to 22% male." The students answered questions about their sexual histories and their awareness of the STD chlamydia. The female arts students were found to be "younger, more likely to be sexually active and to report having little or no knowledge of chlamydia." The science guys, by contrast, had the least sex, even though many were older.

The explanations ranged from cultural (many of the male science students are foreign) to the stereotypical: as one psychotherapist puts it in the article, "Who are the people at unis that go to the rave parties and the bar? …It's not the nerdy boy science students." The disturbing thing about these findings is of course the fact that the population apparently most at risk — young women — is least educated about sexual health. While it seems premature to fault the universities in question, it does seem that, if a study such as this can pinpoint risk, addressing it should be that much easier. To this extent, such reports one can only help raise consciousness. However, it does seem like anything that can serve to perpetuate generalizations about the "easiness" of certain populations (see: the article's tone) is worrisome. After all, these women admitted to being sexually active, nothing more — why does this immediately become cause for innuendo and cheap jokes? While sexual ignorance should be targeted, sex itself should not be stigmatized — and one hopes this was not the study's intent. By the same token, neither should male virgins be mocked! It's a fine line — especially for young people — between hackneyed, stereotyped generalities and the people who have to live in their shadow.

'Females Studying Arts Sexually Active' [Times of India]