Discuss one strength and one weakness of Milgram's study

One major issue with Milgram’s study was that it was highly unethical. The participant’s were firstly deceived into thinking they were genuinely harming someone with the electric shocks, which made them exposed to very stressful situations and cause them psychological harm. This was clearly shown from the trembling, crying and stuttering. It was clear they did not want to continue but felt they had no right to withdraw from the study. Although Milgram argued that the experimenters did not at any point say they could not go(only said “please continue”), it was done subtly that the participants felt they had no choice. The unethical situations are problematic for the study because it publicly implies to people that psychologists have put these people to harm for psychological research and then becomes questionable if it was so necessary.
However, there are numerous studies that support the findings of Milgram’s research into obedience. Hofling (1966) conducted a more realistic experiment to Milgram’s study to show that the obedience is consistent. He set up a field experiment on 22 nurses and had a confederate act as a doctor on the phone to these real life nurses. The nurses were told to up the dosage of a patient’s medication to 20mg even though they knew it couldn’t increase above 10mg. Nonetheless, 21 out of 22 nurses obeyed the order and gave the placebo pill to the patient thinking it was a double dose. This increases the reliability of the study by Milgram because it shows consistent results upon replication. It also defends the fact it was a laboratory experiment, in which Milgram argued the artificial environment did not have an impact on obedience levels, which in this case it did not. Milgram’s beliefs of obedience therefore become more credible as he has several pieces of supporting evidence.