The Monster Study is a speech disorder experiment that was performed on the children who lived in the orphanage. This experiment was conducted to find out if stuttering was hereditary or if environment played a key role. Wendell Johnson was the speech therapist who conducted this study to find the cause and cure for stuttering. This study violated many ethical issues because the children suffered psychological harm, informed consent was not given, and the subjects were deceived. Wendell Johnson had a biased opinion in this study because he himself stuttered and was desperate for a cure. In this article, I will discuss the background of this experiment and the ethical violations that were committed in this study. The Monster study began in January 1939, in Davenport, IA, at the University of Iowa. The participants in this study were orphanages whose parents died during the civil war and their mothers could no longer care for them, so they were left in an orphanage. Johnson obtained permission from the University of Iowa to conduct his research at this orphanage. During his research, Johnson decided to recruit one of his students to help him with the experiment, named Mary Tudor. Mary Tudor was a passionate but fearful student, ready to get involved in research. In 2003, Reynolds said Tudor's responsibility in the study was to tell non-stuttering students that they stuttered and to tell those who stuttered that they spoke perfectly. His experiment begins with 22 subjects, none of the subjects were informed of this study. They were also told they would benefit from speech therapy. In 2003, Reynolds said that as part of Tudor's experiment, she had to trick healthy children into stuttering: She also told children who stuttered...... middle of paper .... .. hese children were unfairly targeted by this research because they were institutionalized. I think what Johnson studied was too biased because he was so determined to find a cure that would help him in the long run instead of reviewing the facts. In reality, stuttering can be caused by different factors such as environmental, biological or genetic factors. In the Johnson case, he already had a hypothesis in mind and he was too determined to prove his hypothesis instead of reviewing the facts. Works Cited References Callahan, T. (1998). Washington University School of Medicine. Retrieved from http://depts.washington.edu/bioethx/topics/resrch.html Reynolds, G. (2003). “The monster study” of the stuttering doctor. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.freewebs.com/pattecbhs/Articles/Stuttering%20Monster%20Study.pdf