Read on Twitter
the larger context of the German pedo story is, unfortunately, far more outrageous https://www.dw.com/en/germany-allowed-pedophiles-to-foster-children/a-53839291
I didn't know about the particular history here in Germany. That being said "experiments" like this occurred all over the Western world https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/the-sexual-revolution-and-children-how-the-left-took-things-too-far-a-702679.html
Whether it was "de-institutionalization" (which put large numbers of mentally ill people out on the street) to things like this, radical reformers received institutional support for things that inflicted significant suffering on others
these experiments, the kooky ideologies behind then, and the manner in which they were endorsed by mainstream institutions, have all been put into the memory hole.
In the US, the anti-psychiatry movement -- based on what now seems to be almost certainly a fraudulent social psychology experiment -- is a less dramatic but nonetheless odious example https://www.npr.org/2019/11/04/776036170/the-great-pretender-seeks-the-truth-about-on-being-sane-in-insane-places
Partly as a consequence of Rosenhan's deception, large numbers of mentally ill people found themselves put on the street to fend for themselves. The ideal was that they would be put into community care. The reality was more that....
...they ended up being dumped on the street. Walk around a major American city and you will probably see the human consequences https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/asylums/special/excerpt.html
In some ways, past is prologue. There are parallels between the excesses of the 1960s and 70s social reformers and their modern-day equivalents https://heterodoxacademy.org/seizing-means-knowledge-production/
the fact that there has been no meaningful accounting for any of these past excesses should give you pause in thinking about the present -- people with 'good' intentions like to play with the lives of others and the legacy of their mistakes is often lost to history
at the same time we also don't live in the 60s and 70s anymore. a lot has changed. one particular thing that has changed is that large institutions do not have the social trust, authority, power, or resources they did in the past.
we live in a far more culturally and institutionally fragmented landscape, shaped by significant privatization (distribution of power to various commercial entities) as well as fragmentation (everyone has their own version of social reality)
finally, power is wielded quite differently. its enforced not necessarily by large institutions but via distributed norms and information networks (social media, computer content regulation programs, etc)
looking back for parallels to the 60s and 70s is more misleading than useful. this is not to be dismissive of what happened, but more to observe that every age's absurdities and tragedies tend to play out differently even if broad similarities may exist.
