re: #15 Killgore Trout

lol. Of course I always get suspicious when another “scientific study” goes viral on the internet. Like the rest of them, this one looks like another generic marketing study made to look nefarious and spooky. It’s no secret that websites and advertisers look to see what works and what doesn’t. It’s a bit like saying “Johnson & Johnson uses mind control study to make you buy soap!”. Of course, on some level they do but that’s just effective marketing.

It’s not a marketing study, and the main point is that they didn’t obtain consent from the people being studied. It’s a psychology/sociology/behavioral study: PNAS doesn’t publish marketing studies. I’m not sure why you’d think it did.

Do you understand the question of ethics as it relates to informed consent when you’re intentionally adjusting someone’s mood?