The date is 25 July 1916, and a headline in a Daily Newspaper in Cleveland, reads, “22 Men killed under Lake Erie.  Gas exploded in waterworks tunnel, five miles from shore. Rescuers suffocated.”   

This is a story of a construction accident that summoned a display of extraordinary heroism and spectacular innovation. And strangely, this is also a story about the wrong people doing the right things. 

The year is 1961.  An ad in the New Haven Register, a local newspaper in Connecticut reads, “We will pay you $4 for an hour of your time.  Persons needed for a study of memory. We will pay five hundred New Haven men to help us complete a scientific study of memory and learning.  The study is being done at Yale University.”

As it turns out, this study gives us a clue about how perfectly normal people like you and I can end up brutally beating or killing others. Especially, if we are instructed by “a man in a white coat”.