new york experiment

The Army tested 'germ warfare' on the NYC subway by smashing lightbulbs full of bacteria

On June 6, 1966, a group of US Army scientists made their way into the Seventh and Eighth Avenue lines of the New York City subway. Some carried air sampling machines in boxes and on belts; others carried light bulbs.

The light bulbs were packed with about 175 grams of Bacillus subtilis bacteria, then known as Bacillus globigii — approximately 87 trillion organisms in each. The plan was to shatter them and then use the sampling machines to see how they spread through the subway tunnels and trains.

This test was one of at least 239 experiments conducted by the military in a 20-year "germ warfare testing program" that went on from 1949 to 1969 . These experiments that used bacteria to simulate biological weapons were conducted on civilians without their knowledge or consent. That stands in direct violation of the Nuremberg Code, which stipulates that "voluntary, informed consent" is required for research participants.

And while the people who conducted these experiments did so under the belief that the bacterial species they used were harmless, it has since been revealed that they can cause health problems.

"They're all considered pathogens now," says Leonard Cole, the director of the Terror Medicine and Security Program at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, who documented these experiments in his book " Clouds of Secrecy: The Army's Germ Warfare Tests Over Populated Areas ."

A paper from the National Academy of Sciences analyzing military experiments notes that B. globigii is "now considered a pathogen" and is often a cause of food poisoning. "Infections are rarely known to be fatal," the report said — though fatal cases have occurred.

Clouds in the subways

The New York experiments were some of the most shocking ones that occurred in terms of people exposed, according to Cole.

"During peak hours, these bacteria were dropped," he says. "If you can get trillions of bacteria into a light bulb and throw it on the track as a train pulls into a station, they'll get pulled through the air as the train leaves."

The Army came to that very conclusion, which is documented in a report titled "A Study of the Vulnerability of Subway Passengers in New York City to Covert Attack with Biological Agents."

They wrote that clouds engulfed people as trains pulled away, but that they "brushed their clothing, looked up at the grating apron and walked on." No one was concerned.

Army scientists concluded that it took between four and 13 minutes for train passengers to be exposed to the bacteria. Five minutes after bacteria were released at 23rd Street Station, the bacteria could be detected at every station between 14th Street and 59th, according to the report. Between June 6 and June 10, they calculated that more than a million people were exposed.

Scary results revealed

The germ warfare testing program was revealed by a news report in the early 1970s and then by subsequent Freedom of Information Act Requests. Scientists who'd been involved with the program were called to testify before Congress.

Army scientist Charles Senseney was one of those called to testify in 1975 . He told a Senate subcommittee that city officials had no idea the tests occurred. According to a New York Daily News report that cites his testimony, he said that a more dangerous agent would have "put New York out of commission."

In a 1995 Newsday story (which is not available online), reporter Dennis Duggan contacted the retired Senseney, who declined to tell him anything about it.

"I don't want to get near this," Senseney said to Duggan. "I [testified], because I was told I had to by the people at the Department of Defense ... I better get off the phone."

Cole cites some  declassified documents that discuss the New York tests in his book.

The report's conclusion is chilling: "Test results show that a large portion of the working population in downtown New York City would be exposed to disease if one or more pathogenic agents were disseminated covertly in several subway lines at a period of peak traffic."

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005 – The street corner experiment

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A story type we love here at Anecdote is the story of a scientific experiment. It has the double benefit of giving you a story with a good business point and it’s based on peer reviewed research. An experiment story has authority, especially with people who value evidence and science.

This week’s story is the street corner experiment. It’s based on a study done in the 1960s by psychologists Stanley Milgram, Leonard Bickman, and Lawrence Berkowitz. You might remember Stanley Milgram from his infamous experiment that demonstrated that people will electrocute strangers (they didn’t really kill anyone but the subjects thought they did–wouldn’t pass the ethics committee today) if you are told to do so by someone in authority. You will be pleased to know the street corner experiment is benign by comparison.

The main point of this episode’s story is that people are highly influenced by what other people are doing. Psychologists call it social proof. This is especially true if things are uncertain.

In business we are constantly trying to influence others to do something that seems like the first time. This experiment story illustrates that we should find examples of what other people are doing and make it visible in order to persuade people to action.

Apple did this when they introduced the iPod. They knew it would mostly be in people’s pockets so how could they make it visible to show that lots of people were listening to their music this way? So they included a set of white headphones with each iPod. People started to see white headphones everywhere which gave them social proof to do something similar.

On the show Mark and I discussed how it would have been useful to know what city the experiment was held in. So I had a look at the published paper (citation below) and here is what they said:

“The subjects were 1,424 pedestrians on a busy New York City street who passed along a 50-foot length of sidewalk during thirty 1-minute trials. The study was conducted on two winter afternoons in 1968.”

Some nice details there to add to the story. See For Your Story Bank section below.

If you have any comments on how this story helped you at work or reminded you of another great experiment story, please let us know below.

Milgram, S., Bickman, L, Berkowitz L. (1969), “Note on the Drawing Power of Crowds of Different Size,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 13(1), 79-82

The idea of social proof is one of 6 principles of influence in Robert Cialdini’s seminar book of the same name.

Cialdini, R. B. (1993). Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. New York: Quill Publishers.

And the Milgram study where he ‘electrocutes’ experiment participants:

Milgram, S. “Behavorial Study of Obedience.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67 (1963): 371– 78.

For your story bank

Relevance statement: People are highly motivated to do what other people are doing.

Three psychologists Stanley Milgram, Leonard Bickman, and Lawrence Berkowitz ran a simple experiment to illustrate this.

The researchers asked a single person to stand on a busy street corner in New York City and look into a spot in the sky for 60 seconds. The researchers track who else followed their gaze.

Then put a group of 5 people on the street corner and it quadrupled the number who looked up.

With 15 people standing and staring at a single spot in the sky, 45% more pedestrians stopped to join them.

This is called social proof. We tend to do the same things we observe other people doing.

Podcast Transcript

Welcome back to Anecdotally Speaking, a podcast that helps leaders and sellers find and tell great oral stories. Hi, I’m Shawn Callahan.

And I’m Mark Schenk.

God, what a great week we’ve had. It’s been very busy. It’s great to be back on the show, right?

It is. It’s nice to be sitting down and getting away from the computer and email and doing one of the things I love to do.

Indeed, now one of the things that’s been keeping me busy this week is I’ve been recording the audio book of putting stories to work. And so, it feels like this week has been a very big audio week for me. I’ve had a bit of a croaky voice as well, so I’ve been trying to get through that, but it’s been great fun. I’ve learnt lots of interesting things.

So, you’ve spent two days reading your book into a recording device; what has struck you?

What I’ve really noticed is that reading something out aloud is so different to reading just sitting on the couch, flicking through the pages. It’s a totally different experience. And some sentences that you write are really hard to translate into how you say it.

It just reinforces that whole idea that oral language is different to written language and I tell you what some of those things I said are tongue-twisters.

Yeah, I was helping a CEO prepare a speech and some of the things that were written down I simply couldn’t say, and I had to rewrite because they did not translate into spoken word at all.

And in fact, when I went back and looked at those particular phrases and what I noticed when I read them again I actually didn’t understand them. And so, the act of saying them out loud caused me to question how comprehensible, how understandable those things were.

And so, did you find the same thing with the book?

Shawn:      

I think so. There were some bits, which I looked at and I was using the $20 words instead of the $1 words. And in oral story telling you just don’t use the $20 words. It’s actually more like the 50-cent word, right?

It’s very basic simple language that you use when you’re sharing a story, so I think that that really struck me. And a tip to writers; you really should be reading out your writing aloud and anything that you stumble over or that you find a little hard to say out loud maybe you should rewrite.

I should have done more of that. I did a little bit but there are bits where I really didn’t nail it home.

Mark:      

Ah, second edition.

Shawn:     

Second edition, yeah. Now one of the things that we’re doing with the podcast, just making it easier for people to use, is adding the transcripts from all these conversations into the podcast notes.

So, when people go to the blog post and they see the podcast entries, they’ll be able to jump in and see the transcripts. One of the other things that really struck us when we were talking about this just the other day. In episode 3 we were talking about the story bank and how important that is.

And in fact, I had a nice email from my 20-year old nephew who said to me, ‘Uncle Shawn, I’ve been listening to your podcast. I’ve created a story bank and I’ve got a bunch of stories in there’ and he actually wanted me to remind him of a story I told over Christmas.

Isn’t that great that we’ve got these young people actually wanting to give it a crack in terms of being systematic about their story-telling?

Yeah, and one of the other things that we’re doing to make it easy for people to put these stories into their story bank is that we’re actually putting a written version of these stories into the show notes just like it would go into your story bank—just to make it easy for people to collect these stories and have them in their pockets available for use.

That’s right; you can just cut and paste and pop them into your story bank. And make your own notes; the bits you need to make it memorable for you. So, hopefully that’ll make a big difference.

So, what’s today’s story?

Well today’s story is one of my favourite types of story and that is the story of the scientific experiment and the reason I love the scientific experiment story is you get this double whammy benefit.

On the one hand you get the benefit of the story-telling; on the other hand, you get the benefit of peer-reviewed research that backs up your story. And this particular example is all around this idea that we’re so influenced by what other people are doing, what we can see people doing.

They did this fascinating simple little experiment to show this back in the 1960’s. It was conducted by three psychologists; Stanley Milgram.

Hang on, wasn’t Stanley Milgram the psychologist that was doing research on electrocuting people?

Yeah. Obviously, the standards for ethics were a little lower in the 60’s but yes, he did that. That was a fascinating experiment but it’s not about that one. This was a fairly benign experiment you’ll be pleased to know.

So, there was Stanley Milgram, and there were two other researchers, Leonard Bickman, and Lawrence Berkowitz and it’s called the street corner experiment. And the way it works is that (cast your mind back to the early 60’s) they get a single person and they put them out on a busy street corner.

And they get that person to stare up into the sky at a particular point and maintain that gaze for 60 seconds and then they’re recording to see if anyone else is following their gaze.

With one person on the street corner hardly anyone follows their gaze (hardly even notice really), one or two people look up. But when they put five people on the corner all of a sudden, the numbers quadruple.

You’ve got a whole bunch of people looking up into the sky, just wondering what that guy’s looking at but staring in the same direction. But what’s fascinating is that when they put 15 people on the corner they had something like 45% of the people passing by would stop and join them and look up at the sky.

We are so influenced by what other people are doing; it’s that herd mentality. But there’s good reason for it, right? And that is when you’re a bit uncertain and you don’t really know what’s going on a great strategy is to do what everyone else does.

So, when you walk into a meeting and everyone is sitting down, what do you do? Sit down. Everyone’s standing up you stand up. And so, we’re always looking for those cues. Now, Apple did a really interesting thing when they introduced the iPod.

When they introduced the iPod they knew it was going to be in everyone’s pockets; no one’s going to see it so how do you get that social proof? So, what do you do? White headphones and all of a sudden (because all other headphones are black) these stand out and as soon as you see some white headphones you start going, ‘oh, they’ve got an Apple iPod in their pocket’.

The more headphones you see the bigger the social proof. Anyway, that’s the little story I wanted to share. It’s an example of an experiment and it’s backed up by peer review. By the way, I’ve got the research paper written down—I’ll put that in the show notes and you can go to the actual citation.

And of course, that links into other research about influence; Robert Cialdini is a world authority on the subject of influence. Social proof is one of the key sources of influence, one of the things that influences us, and we see it around us every day.

So, let’s talk about what worked or didn’t in that story.

The thing that I like about it is that it is a very simple story. It’s got these three parts and by the way we love threes in stories, so you’ve got the one person, the five people, the 15 people so it’s a very simple structure for a story, right?

It doesn’t take long to tell, which is always important. You can probably tell that story easily in 90 seconds.

One of the important points, when you tell a story like that, is you set it up. You gave us a relevant statement, so we knew why we were listening to this; the research was examining the extent to which we’re influenced by other people. And so suddenly the audience knows why they’re listening to this story so that was good.

But, you’re right; simple, short—business stories do not have to be sagas.

One of the other things that I like in it too is because there’s a famous researcher and when I mentioned Stanley Milgram you immediately went, ‘ah, isn’t that the guy…’? And I think if you can do anything that connects the audience with a familiarity with your story helps them and brings an authority with it; ‘O.K. so this is a well-known psychologist who had done some amazing work in a range of different areas’.

And there’s another way of doing it and that’s not to say who the researchers were and just say ‘there was some research that showed’ and it’s the details that add the credibility to the story.

I hear people saying all the time, ‘research shows that…’ and my immediate question is ‘what research?’ ‘Who says?’ So that’s another good point, those details.

So, how to make it better?

The first thing that came to mind was where was this? Was it New York, London or L.A.?

I asked myself that question as I was learning the story and I couldn’t find it easily, so I thought I’ll leave it out. But you’re right; I did have this urge to say ‘oh this is Manhattan’ but we were talking about this before. You can’t just throw in the name of the city if you don’t know the name especially when you’re talking about peer-reviewed research.

Exactly, the temptation is to make it up. Our advice is that you shouldn’t’ make it up especially if it’s peer-reviewed research. It’s so easy for somebody to go and find out and then the credibility of what you’re saying is gone completely because that detail isn’t correct. So, please don’t make it up.

Where would we tell this one? What are the places where this would be a useful story to tell?

One of the things organisations all over the world are grappling with is collaboration and so there is lots of activity around communities of practice, works of excellence and these things are hard to get started.

If you remember back in the late 90’s with the ActKM community of practice, we just didn’t have enough people at the start to get that tipping point and so we scheduled members of the committee to post messages and people saw it.

And the more activity they saw and when we got to about 100 members that exploded and we very quickly had 1,000 members and it would take you hours to read the number of posts that were posted each day.

So, it was a big tipping point wasn’t it?

It was a huge tipping point but again it was social proof. People saw that there was activity and that encouraged them to participate as well.

And a story like this would be great anytime you’re trying to get people to try anything new. And you’re trying to say, ‘how do we get people to try this thing?’ Well, we’ve got to show that other people are doing it and we’ve got to create a feeling that there’s something going on.

The flipside to that social proof element is if your network is not working then the worst thing you can do is go out and say to your community is, ‘hey guys, we’re not getting many messages. It’d be great if you posted something’. Because what you’re telling everyone is that it is not working.

And the social proof is saying ‘gee, not many people are posting so maybe I won’t post’.

Exactly right, that is the worst thing you can do because it just proves to people that there is no activity.

How would we summarise this in terms of the key lessons that we covered today?

Well one of them is that experiment and peer-reviewed research is a fantastic source of stories—so useful and that was a good example of that. The importance of the relevance statement so that people understand why they’re listening. Short and simple—less than 90 seconds.

You mentioned the three pars. We love those three so that’s another good thing to have in your mind.

But you wouldn’t construct it? You wouldn’t try to create that if it wasn’t there, right?

Exactly. So, any other thoughts about why that worked?

I think just having those specific details; the researcher’s names, it has that specificity about it rather than the general ‘research says’. We don’t want to do that. What would you give today’s story?

Mark:       

I would give it a 7.

Shawn:       

Yeah, I’d give it a 7 as well. It’s a nice one to have in your back pocket. It would actually serve a purpose but on the day it’s easy to remember. You’d probably forget the names of the researchers, but you might remember Stanley Milgram but that’s part of it, especially if you can associate it with painful electrical experiments he’s done. And maybe we’ll talk about that in another episode.

Well thanks guys, for tuning in to Anecdotally Speaking. It’s been great to have you here. Of course, put your comments on the blog post—we’d love to hear them and if you have any questions for us, we’d love to be able to answer some questions wouldn’t we, Mark?

And if this story triggered any stories of your own we’d love to hear them.

Shawn:      

So, guys, just keep putting your stories to work and we’ll see you next time.

Anecdote International is a global training and consulting company, specialising in utilising storytelling to bring humanity back to the workforce. Anecdote is now unique in having a global network of over 60 partners in 28 countries, with their learning programs translated into 11 languages, and customers who incorporate these programs into their leadership and sales enablement activities.

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Guys – I really admire your dedication to sharing IP – your provision of transcripts is great. Couple of thoughts: maybe just remind people where to find your website for providing feedback comments – it’s not coming high up on Google search rankings. Your suggestion of the Story Bank and keeping it to some trigger words was great. I have started doing that. In fact my wife Jacqui and I discussed your last blog and the Milgram one reminded us of how important the human mind is to achievement. There is a great story of the runner who couldn’t get under the 4min mile – until the day his timekeeper (who was calling out the splits to him) made a mistake and was calling out earlier times. He was so inspired by how he was running that he accelerated even harder and found he broke through. After that achieving the under 4min mile was straightforward. He had been blocked by the invisible barrier of his mind. I will try and source the actual runner. Cheers and thanks again

I loved this story!

It is very powerful to use story to illuminate the point of “group think” and how we all influence each other, there is a very strong message in here that causes me to reflect: how much of what I am doing is “me” and how much is “copying others”? Where is creativity if we are so influenced by one another? There is also the power of positive example, of showing by doing and getting others to show by doing- in this way we kind of “infect” each other positively.

I appreciate your stress on “getting the numbers right”. I have heard people in the storytelling sectors I have visited that it is not always important to get the exact numbers right because it is “the principle ” that matters….but not so if you are talking in business and all the more so in “peer-reviewed research”! I think taking the time to check and make sure you have the exact details conveys a message of professionalism, of trust of reliability.

Thanks also for these transcripts they are really helpful.

Comments are closed.

The US has a history of testing biological weapons on the public – were infected ticks used too?

Reader in International Relations, Royal Holloway University of London

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Michelle Bentley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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The House of Representatives has instructed the Pentagon to disclose whether it used ticks to infect the American public with Lyme disease between 1950 and 1975. The allegation comes from Chris Smith , the Republican representative for New Jersey. A long-standing campaigner on Lyme disease, Smith says the claims are from a new book about the illness and the man who discovered it – a bioweapons scientist called Willy Burgdofer .

There are issues with these allegations – not least that Burgdofer didn’t discover Lyme disease until 1982, almost a decade after it’s claimed the ticks may have been used. Other scientists have dismissed the claims , and there is no proof that they are true.

But the US does have a history of testing biological weapons on the public.

A history of testing

The US biological weapons programme started during World War II. But the first real public test didn’t happen until 1949, when scientists put harmless bacteria in the air conditioning system at the Pentagon to see what a biological weapon might look like.

A year later, the US Navy carried out Operation Sea-Spray . The coast of San Francisco in California was sprayed with two types of bacteria, Bacillus globigii and Serratia marcesens . These bacteria are supposed to be safe, but Bacillus globigii is now listed as a pathogen, causes food poisoning, and can hurt anyone with a weak immune system. As for Serratia marcesens , 11 people were admitted to hospital with serious bacterial infections after the San Francisco test. One of them – Edward Nevin – died three weeks later.

In 1951, tests were also carried out at the Norfolk Naval Supply Center in Virginia – a massive base that equips the US Navy. Fungal spores were dispersed to see how they would infect workers unpacking crates there. Most of the workers were African-American and the scientists wanted to test a theory that they were more susceptible to fungal disease than Caucasians.

In 1997, the National Research Council revealed that the US also used chemicals to test the potential of biological weapons in the 1950s. Zinc cadmium sulphide was dispersed by plane and sprayed over a number of cities, including St Louis in Missouri and Minneapolis in Minnesota. These cites were chosen because they were similar to Soviet targets such as Moscow in terms of terrain, weather and population. The council concluded that no one was hurt and that the level of chemical used was not harmful, but in 2012, sociology professor Lisa Martino-Taylor claimed that there was a spike in cancer rates that could be connected back to the chemicals, which she alleges were radioactive. Nothing has since emerged to back up her claims.

As well as open air testing, the US military also has a record of weaponising infected insects. In 1954, for example, scientists carried out Operation Big Itch . The test was designed to find out if fleas could be loaded into bombs (they could). The tests happened just a few years after the Soviets accused the US of dropping canisters full of insects infected with chorea and the plague in Korea and China during the Korean War. This is something the US military denies as a “disinformation campaign”.

Project 112

There was a massive increase in testing in 1962 when then US Secretary of Defence, Robert McNamara, authorised Project 112 . The project expanded bioweapons testing and pumped new funds into research.

One of the more controversial tests took place in 1966 on the New York subway . Scientists filled light bulbs with Bacillus globigii bacteria and then smashed them open on the tracks. The bacteria travelled for miles around the subway system, being breathed in by thousands of civilians and covering their clothes.

In 2008, the US Government Accountability Office acknowledged that tens of thousands of civilians might have been exposed to biological agents thanks to Project 112 and other tests.

The same report noted that, since 2003, the US defence department has been trying to identify which civilians had been exposed during Project 112 to let them know. The military denies this exposure involved any harmful disease, but many of those who have been identified allege they now suffer from long-term medical conditions .

Whether the ongoing Congressional investigation reveals that there were infected ticks remains to be seen. Either way, it could shed some much-needed light on a secret programme that we still don’t know much about. It may also reveal more about the extent to which the American public was tested on without their knowledge and consent. Because while infected ticks may sound like something out of science fiction, if it were proven to be true, it wouldn’t be the first time the US did something like this.

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'Excuse Me. May I Have Your Seat?'

By Michael Luo

• Sept. 14, 2004

Thirty years ago, they were wide-eyed, first-year graduate students, ordered by their iconoclastic professor, Dr. Stanley Milgram, to venture into the New York City subway to conduct an unusual experiment.

Their assignment: to board a crowded train and ask someone for a seat. Then do it again. And again.

"As a Bronxite, I knew, you don't do this," said Dr. Jacqueline Williams, now an assistant dean at Brooklyn College. Students jokingly asked their professor if he wanted to get them killed.

But Dr. Milgram was interested in exploring the web of unwritten rules that govern behavior underground, including the universally understood and seldom challenged first-come-first-served equity of subway seating. As it turned out, an astonishing percentage of riders -- 68 percent when they were asked directly -- got up willingly.

Quickly, however, the focus turned to the experimenters themselves. The seemingly simple assignment proved to be extremely difficult, even traumatic, for the students to carry out.

"It's something you can't really understand unless you've been there," said Dr. David Carraher, 55, now a senior scientist at a nonprofit group in Cambridge, Mass.

Dr. Kathryn Krogh, 58, a clinical psychologist in Arlington, Va., was more blunt: "I was afraid I was going to throw up."

More than three decades later, the memories are still surprisingly vivid, testimony perhaps to the trauma of their experience and an unintended postscript to a rare study on the delicate subway order.

Two weeks ago, a pair of reporters who set out to replicate the experiment struggled with similar inhibitions. The incredulous reactions they got from riders were the same as well. But they also stumbled upon convincing proof that New Yorkers have mellowed with time. The results were far from scientific, but, remarkably, 13 out of 15 people gave up their seats.

"Uh, O.K., " said one man, holding hands with his girlfriend, before getting up. "I've never heard that one before."

A construction worker sneered to a male reporter, "If you were a woman, then. ..." He got up anyway.

Another woman, who sprang up from her seat, twice asked the reporter, who kept her eyes fixed on the ground, if she was O.K.

Dr. Milgram, who died in 1984 at age 51, got the idea for the experiment from a conversation with his mother-in-law, who complained to him one day that no one had offered her a seat on the subway. "It occurred to me: What would have happened had she asked for a seat?" he said in a 1974 interview in the magazine Psychology Today.

He suggested the experiment to one of his graduate student classes, but the students recoiled. Finally, one student, Ira Goodman, volunteered to try it with a partner. But instead of coming back after 20 trials as he had promised, he returned with only 14. When Dr. Milgram asked him what had happened, he said that it was just too difficult.

Dismissing his students' fears, Dr. Milgram set out to try it himself. But when he approached his first seated passenger, he found himself frozen.

"The words seemed lodged in my trachea and would simply not emerge," he said in the interview.

Retreating, he berated himself: 'What kind of craven coward are you?"

A few unsuccessful tries later, he managed to choke out a request.

"Taking the man's seat, I was overwhelmed by the need to behave in a way that would justify my request," he said. "My head sank between my knees, and I could feel my face blanching. I was not role-playing. I actually felt as if I were going to perish."

From his own discomfort, Dr. Milgram sensed import. He had garnered notoriety several years earlier for a series of experiments in which test subjects were asked to administer what they thought were powerful electric shocks to fellow students. A stunning number did, a revelation in the power of authority. But Dr. Milgram had developed a new interest in the psychology of urban life, especially in invisible social dictates that help maintain order but go largely unnoticed until they are violated.

The following semester, he asked 10 members of his class on experimental social psychology to complete the experiment. The students descended into the subway in teams of two for support, polling an even number of men and women, and within those groups, an even number of people who were under 40 years old and over 40 years old. While one person asked, the other acted as an observer. They were responsible for 14 trials each, and the questions were phrased in four different ways.

In the first version, the experimenter said simply: "Excuse me. May I have your seat?" Here, 41 riders were asked, and 68 percent of the time people gave up their seats or sidled over.

In one variation, the experimenter pretended his or her partner was a stranger and asked loudly: "Excuse me. Do you think it would be all right if I asked someone for a seat?" The partner was to feign confusion. After repeating the question, the experimenter turned to ask the subject. The percentage who agreed dropped to 42 percent.

In another variation, the experimenter, holding a paperback mystery novel, asked: "Excuse me. May I have your seat? I can't read my book standing up." With this request, the percentage fell to 38 percent.

The final method involved the experimenter handing a note with the seat request written on it to the rider. With this approach, the percentage held at about 50 percent.

Those tension-filled subway rides in the spring of 1972 are still easily recalled by many of Dr. Milgram's former students scattered across the country.

"I really did feel sick to my stomach," said Dr. Krogh, remembering her first attempt. "Afterwards, I thought, 'I wonder if that wasn't helpful because the person must have thought: "This person looks sick. She needs the seat.""'

Dr. Carraher remembered leaning over and asking an elderly woman for her seat. The woman snapped: "If I were standing and you were sitting, I think it'd be very reasonable to ask you for your seat, but I'm not going to give you my seat."

The woman's neighbor, a man, was so embarrassed for Dr. Carraher that he immediately offered him his seat instead. Another man lectured him on his manners.

Dr. Maury Silver, 59, now a visiting professor at Yeshiva University, was only auditing the class at the time, so he refused to take part in the experiment. Later, he and another student of Dr. Milgram's, Dr. John Sabini, who went on to become the co-author of a paper on the experiment, were teaching a class together and asked their students to try the subway experiment themselves. Dr. Sabini, however, reminded his partner that he had skipped the experiment the first time around. Dr. Silver, who described himself as "one of the more embarrassable people on earth," resolved to try it at least once.

"I start to ask for the man's seat," he said. "Unfortunately, I turned so white and so faint, he jumps up and puts me in the seat."

Dr. Harold Takooshian, another former student, said he kept feeling there was something unethical in what he was doing, almost deceiving riders, so he developed a card that he would slip to them afterward that explained they had just participated in a psychology experiment. It also made the task slightly easier.

Now a professor at Fordham University, he said the experiment showed him how potentially explosive the cramped confines can be.

"Milgram's idea exposed the extremely strong emotions that lie beneath the surface," he said. "You have all these strangers together. That study showed how much the rules are saving us from chaos."

As for why door blockers, pole huggers and other egregious violators of subway etiquette do not experience the same opprobrium, perhaps another study is in order.

Around the New York Region

A look at life, culture, politics and more in new york, new jersey and connecticut..

The Deadly Lure of Subway Surfing: For more than a century, people have climbed atop a train car in New York City in search of a thrill. Now social media has attracted a new generation of daredevils .

An Elite School and the Criminal It Hired: Saint Ann’s School hired Winston Nguyen as a middle school math teacher knowing he had been imprisoned for fraud. Then someone began soliciting graphic sexual images from its students .

How Congestion Pricing Would Work: If all goes as planned, most drivers will begin paying new tolls on Jan. 5 to reach the heart of Manhattan. See how much it may cost you .

Keeping the Lights on in Little India: Three neighboring South Asian restaurants with string light-filled windows survived for decades in the East Village. Only one remains as Sixth Street’s “Curry Row” moniker fades .

Sunday Routine :  Joyce Short, who has worked with New York Junior Tennis and Learning for decades, takes a popcorn break in between classes  and plays pickleball with friends.