
Behavior of young children in a situation simulating entrapment in refrigerators - ColinWright
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/22/4/628.abstract
======
nitrogen
It would be good to add (1958) to the title -- I doubt such an experiment
would fly today, and this presents a fascinating look back in history both at
the state of experimental ethics and the development of modern refrigerator
doors.

The only experience I have with fridges so old is the one that my grandfather
rotated 90 degrees and buried in his yard, to serve as a root cellar. I think
the door may have had an actual lock on it, but can't recall; if so, this
experiment studying door release mechanisms would make much more sense.

Edit to add: It's possible the invention of magnetic weatherstripping has
saved many lives.

~~~
nitrogen
For some reason this post by Ihavenoname is [dead], but it is an interesting
anecdote.

 _Ihavenoname 12 minutes ago | link [dead]

There were a frightening number of children that were trapped in the old
refrigerators. They often used them as hiding places and could not get out
until they were redesined They had latches and even when there were interior
releases it was not obvious to a child how to open it when in the dark and
with limited leverage. Even knowing a study like this would save lives I would
find it hard to see it getting approved by modern ethics committees. It really
says a lot about how our society has changes as anything. The society is much
less Unitarian in its ethics simply sounding suspect is enough to get
rejected._

Ihavenoname: perhaps you accidentally double posted and deleted the wrong
comment, or perhaps your comment five days ago about Google got flagged by an
unhappy Google fan.

~~~
vacri
The answer is: these days you wouldn't need a study. All you'd need to do is
cause a PR ruckus and it would change.

The issue with ethics in this experiment is not "the researchers might be
creepy people", it's that it violates the basic idea that human
experimentation on non-consenting people shouldn't cause harm (which includes
negative emotions like fear, embarassment, etc). Sometimes such
experimentation does get past ethics committees, but it generally has much
more stringent reporting requirements and control, plus it usually has to
answer a useful question and not something trivial. If kids are getting locked
in fridges, this is not something that particularly needs an empirical study,
just change the fridge doors.

~~~
ColinWright

      > ... just change the fridge doors.
    

That's what this research was intended to answer: change the fridge doors to
what?

At the time there was no such thing as magnetic strips. To seal the fridge you
had a rubber seal, and then you had to close the door with significant force.
The handles were effectively levers so an ordinary person could provide enough
force to open them, and fridges were advertised with elephants standing on
them to show how strong they were, and, by implication, how well the door seal
worked.

This research was intended to work out what kind of internal release mechanism
could be provided to allow children, in the dark, to release the door quickly.

So yes, "just change the fridge doors".

Using 1958 technology - how? In what way? To what?

~~~
cabalamat
> Using 1958 technology - how? In what way? To what?

Have a lever on the inside too. So that people could see it, use luminescent
paint. Both technologies existed in 1958.

~~~
pacaro
In a fit of awesomeness, the luminescent paint used by a 50's refrigerator
designer would be radioactive - now preserving your food for even longer...

------
robinhouston
The paper is behind a paywall, but this 2009 Scientopia post has some more
interesting details:
[http://scientopia.org/blogs/scicurious/2009/07/17/friday-
wei...](http://scientopia.org/blogs/scicurious/2009/07/17/friday-weird-
science-refridgerator-mothers-vs-refridgerator-kids/)

It sounds as though the ethical aspects of the experiment were considered
pretty carefully, for example.

------
rotskoff
201 children from 157 families. Ages 2,3,4,5. The "enclosure" was meant to
look like a playhouse; some children were lured into it, but many wandered in
on their own. It was 40x18X25 in. It was outfitted with a number of recording
devices: video camera, infrared, sound.

------
gjm11
HN article title should probably have (1958) appended to it.

Incidentally, see [http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2586/is-it-
impossib...](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2586/is-it-impossible-
to-open-a-refrigerator-door-from-the-inside) for a bit more on the subject.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Interesting, that article claims that magnetic seals were invented well before
1958 but not adopted until 1958 when it was mandated by legislation.

------
afitnerd
"It was also influenced by the educational level of the parents, a higher rate
of success being associated with fewer years of education attained by mother
and father combined."

This seems counterintuitive to me. A LOWER educational level of the parents
correlated to a HIGHER rate of success of escape, it seems.

~~~
K2h
This was the section of the article that caught my attention as well.

My guess is when a child is use to being rescued or cared for after a very
very short time, they learn quickly to do (or try) things themselves and not
rely on parents, care givers, or others.

I struggle with this notion in raising my own child. I want her to learn - be
self sufficient and resourceful, but I don't want her to suffer for it, or not
trust people.

------
maked00
Since it was in the 50's we really have no idea just how statistically
accurate this study is. For example, they may not have had a equal spread of
income levels. Most of the participants may have been poor and there may have
been only one or two high income families involved. Such a small sample would
not give reliable results. However if the study did have an accurate cross
sample of incomes, then perhaps the results indicate that some sort of
education program is in order for children in well to do families.

~~~
robotresearcher
> "Since it was in the 50's"

Plenty of first-class science and engineering was done in the 1950s and
before. The 50s produced hydrogen bombs, supersonic aircraft, and great
advances in chemotherapy and computer science, for example. They were quite
capable of doing an empirical study to a standard we would recognize.

------
lifeisstillgood

      a higher rate of success being associated with fewer years of education attained by mother and father combined.
    

Tell me more - is that statistically significant? Causes? Related to Reading
age?

The bit that worries me is the percentage of children who locked in the fridge
just waited and cried.

~~~
slurgfest
Pure speculation: could be that poor kids were more likely to have dealt with
similar problems or even just to have dealt with similar levels of suffering,
and therefore respond with a little more short-term resilience.

Not like anyone can do follow-ups on this research any more.

~~~
JonnieCache
More idle speculation: self-reliance and/or initiative are inversely
correlated with social class/socioeconomic status/whatever.

------
JonnieCache
Somebody here must be able to get us the pdf...

Or at least have a look at it and give us the lowdown.

------
zuralski
I am very surprised nobody has picked up this line for discussion: " Success
in escaping [..] was also influenced by the educational level of the parents,
a higher rate of success being associated with fewer years of education
attained by mother and father combined. "

There's no attempt at explanation for this in the article itself..

Would it be safe to deduce that the more educated "you" are, the more passive
(or "inactive") you are in the face of danger?

------
qohen
Quick FYI, if it matters: this is from 1958.

------
gregtour
As someone who has lived in Fukushima Prefecture, I am going to dare and ask,
can nuclear energy, fertilizer, and reverse osmosis save our souls? Shutting
down computer, opening window, sitting outside.

------
dminor14
Pretty disgusting, maybe we should drown them and burn them also to see how
they react.

~~~
humbledrone
> _Instead, the scientists designed a very small, rather dense, playhouse. It
> looked just like a normal kid's playhouse, except that it was the exact
> dimensions of the average home fridge. Not only that, the house was equipped
> with an infrared camera on the top, which took videos of the kid while they
> were inside, while at the same time keeping it dark, like it would be in a
> fridge with the door shut. It should also be noted that the scientists
> teamed up with a psychiatrist, a child psychologist, and the parents to
> agree on the length of time the child would be allowed to cry before they
> helped it out. Three minutes._ [1]

Hmm, three minutes of discomfort in a dark playhouse doesn't seem quite as bad
as drowning or being burned alive. Especially when you consider the deaths
that might be avoided as a result of the research.

[1] [http://scientopia.org/blogs/scicurious/2009/07/17/friday-
wei...](http://scientopia.org/blogs/scicurious/2009/07/17/friday-weird-
science-refridgerator-mothers-vs-refridgerator-kids/)

~~~
sp332
Replace "discomfort" with "trauma", _especially_ once they find out that their
parents heard them crying but decided not to come.

~~~
lolcraft
_Please_. As if no emotionally healthy kid ever spent more than three minutes
alone in the dark, after waking from a nightmare for instance. And why the
hell would they find out? A post-study review in which they are told "mommy
and daddy hate your guts"?

~~~
sp332
It's not 3 minutes, it's 3 minutes _after_ they're so emotionally worked up
they're crying. Finding out that your parents heard you but just ignored you
is going to make you trust them less. (How do you define "emotionally
healthy"? I grew up in a really nice home but my brother and I still have
_some_ problems.)

~~~
roel_v
Do you have children? Children cry as an expression of many things, because
they can't express themselves in other ways yet. You make it sound like once
children get to a state of crying, they must have endured a lot already, which
is not true. Allowing children to cry for several minutes at a time before
going to check up on them is a pedagogically sound and normal technique for
teaching children to go to sleep by themselves, for example.

~~~
brittohalloran
(two girls) Being upset in your familiar comfortable bed is a very different
thing than accidentally trapping yourself in a tiny strange dark box and
physically struggling to get out. Very different chemical things happening in
your brain in those two situations.

------
catastrophe
Anyone who can flag this submission, should.

~~~
robotmay
For what?

