Harvard experiment on teen Kaczynski may have shaped Unabomber crimes: expert

In the years before Ted Kaczynski’s name became synonymous with the title of “Unabomber,” he submitted to an intense psychological experiment that left experts questioning its potential impact on his nearly two-decade career as a notorious criminal.

Kaczynski was just 16 years old when he enrolled at Harvard University in 1958; This was an important turning point in the young man’s life. But it was at a prestigious university that he was selected to participate in a three-year psychological study that may have changed the course of his life.

After investigators revealed that Kaczynski was the mastermind behind a series of bombings that killed three people and injured 23, they focused their attention on experiments conducted by psychologist Henry A. Murray on the impressionable teenager studying at Harvard. accordingly History.com.

“[Kaczynski] The FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit pioneer, Dr. “He was very vulnerable because of his age and everything,” Ann Wolbert Burgess told Fox News Digital. “So I think it’s going to affect him. I think it’s affecting him.”

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At the time, Murray reportedly recruited 22 students to participate in human psyche research, a popular interest during the Cold War. The group of Ivy Leaguers were tasked with writing an extensive essay detailing their personal philosophies, beliefs, and worldviews in the first part of the study.

But the experiment quickly escalated.

After each student turned in their paper, they were hooked up to electrodes and seated in front of bright lights, according to History.com. Murray then reportedly instructed his staff to belittle each student’s ideals and subjected them to interrogations that he described as “violent, extensive and personally abusive.”

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A screenshot shows a high school yearbook photo of Ted Kaczynski from Evergreen, Illinois, in 1958. (WBBM-TV/AFP via Getty Images)

Participants were reportedly not fully briefed by Murray on the nature of the experiment, which was conducted to examine useful interrogation techniques that could be used by national security agents and other law enforcement while in the field.

“It was clearly unethical to do the research and not tell people, especially to do the research where they hooked it up to electrodes,” Burgess said. he said. “I mean, I understand now what they were trying to do to see if heart rate and blood pressure and other things would go up. So they took some precautions — some drastic measures — but apparently that was allowed at Harvard, and the way Murray played it, that was OK.”

Burgess also added that Murray treated his subjects fairly during the experiment, ultimately violating a number of modern ethical standards.

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Ted Kaczynski poses outdoors at the University of California at Berkeley in June 1968. (Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)

“One of the key points is that you can’t do an investigation without compensating the person in some way,” Burgess told Fox News Digital. “You don’t have to pay them, but you can compensate them in some other way, so that should always be part of the exchange.”

However, according to History.com, Murray’s research did not violate any codes of conduct governing psychological research at the time. His study reportedly fell under the Nuremberg Code of research ethics, non-legally binding standards established at the Nuremberg Trials at the end of World War II.

Despite the lack of ethical guardrails, Burgess insists that the overall structure of the experiment harmed the participants.

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Ted Kaczynski is escorted by armed U.S. marshals outside the federal courthouse in Sacramento, California, on January 8, 1998. (Rich Pedroncelli/AFP via Getty Images)

“[Studies] It can’t be harmful,” Burgess said. “You’re not there to injure, and what Murray and his team did was certainly injurious.”

“Calling them names, calling them derogatory names, or telling them their work wasn’t valuable; these were students. At that particular point in their development, their entire existence was academics and knowledge. At this critical time, they were either belittled for it or devalued for it.”

Harvard University did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

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Ted Kaczynski sits and smiles during an interview in the visiting room of the Federal ADX Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, on August 30, 1999. (Stephen J. Dubner/Getty Images)

As investigators tried to unravel Kaczynski’s life, his arrest left Murray’s professional reputation tarnished by details of unorthodox experiments conducted three decades ago. But despite Murray’s death in 1988, his research is reportedly prevalent in modern psychological studies.

Kaczynski was later diagnosed with schizophrenia and pleaded guilty in 1998 to charges stemming from 17 years of bombings. He died in 2023 in his cell at the federal prison medical center in Butner, North Carolina, in what was eventually ruled a suicide. accordingly Associated Press.

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However, the question remained unanswered as to whether Murray’s intense experiments on Kaczynski worsened his mental state to the point that drove him to commit heinous crimes for almost two decades; experts have only speculated about the long-term effects of the study on such a young and fragile mind.

“Did any of this affect him?” said Burgess. “Obviously, the defense attorneys at his trial wanted to argue that this affected his way of thinking, and it may well have.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.