On Monday, July 28, 2014 4:42 PM, Douglas Peterson wrote:
Consumer researchers have manipulated pricing, packaging,
product placement, etc and monitored purchasing patterns for
decades, all without informed consent.
I readily admit to not knowing enough about the history of consumer
research to provide a response to what is said above. However,
I would hope that psychologists involved in such research would
follow the APA code of ethics, the common rule (subpart A
to 45 CFR 46), and discuss with appropriate colleagues about
whether their research is ethical and reasonable (to overcome
the tendence of minizing the costs of research and exaggerating
the benefits). I do know of one instance of business school
research that rises to the level of, say, Laud Humphreys' Tearoom
Trade and Milgram's obedience studies. It involves a Columbia U
business school prof (Frank Flynn) who sent out a letter to 240
restaurants
in NYC which complained about an incident of food poisoning.
One account of the study (I believe it was never published) is given
by the NY Times and here is the reference:
Kifner, J. (2001 Sept 8). Scholar sets off gastronomic false alarm.
New York Times, 8.
Here is a link to the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/08/nyregion/scholar-sets-off-gastronomic-false-alarm.html?module=SearchmabReward=relbias%3Aw%2C{%221%22%3A%22RI%3A10%22}
The NYT published reader letters in response to the article which
may be accessed here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/11/opinion/L11EATT.html?module=SearchmabReward=relbias%3Aw%2C{%221%22%3A%22RI%3A10%22}
The second letter is by NYU's School of Social Work professor Mary Ann
Jones who points out that the social sciences have IRBs to reign in
research like this that used active deception (there was no food
poisoning
involved, the researcher wanted to see how the resteranteurs would
respond to a patron's allegation of food poisoning).
NOTE: I realize that this case is a gross ethical violation and the
Facebook
and OkCupid research are not comparable to it but do you really believe
that all cyberresearch studies have minor costs and the issue of consent
is the only ethical problem?
For internal purposes, why should be expect informed consent
for doing what we would have done anyway (shopped for a product - or
used a website).
I think you might want to argue by analogy to institutional research
done,
say, at universities and similar organizations. But there are ethical
considerations here as well. Shouldn't internet companies be held
to the same ethical standards in the analysis of their data?
I accept the argument that once the research was submitted for
publication it should fall under higher scrutiny but under the
conditions
for waiving consent this study could qualify. Under 45 CFR 46.116 [D]
an IRB may waive consent under the following:
1) The research involves no more than minimal risk to the subjects.
2) The waiver or alteration will not adversely affect the rights or
welfare
of the subjects.
3) The research could not practically be carried out without the waiver
or alteration.
4) Whenever appropriate the subjects will be provided with additional
pertinent information after participation.
As someone who has some experience with memory research
(e.g., lexical decision making; list learning, etc.), I could argue
that all of the experiments I had conducted/involved with meet
the four criteria above. But it would be foolish of me or any other
memory researcher to conduct the research without first getting
IRB approval (which still required informed consent and debriefing).
I think most of the verbal learning research literature could
have informed consent waived according to the above criteria
but only a foolish researcher would attempt to do the research
without getting IRB approval first.
Did this study pose no more than minimal risk? No Facebook and
others already manipulate information flow on a number of factors
I can't see that filtering poses any real risk.
Okay. I assume that you will change your position when some
horribly unethical study involving Facebook or other social media
or website data usage comes to light. Before Milgram did his
studies, I think that most psychologists believed that no psychologist
would conduct that type of study -- ditto for the Stanford Prison
Experiment. But some people will leave the barn door open until,
well, you know.
Did waiving the consent adversely affect the rights or welfare?
This is, I presume, where others will argue their point.
Site users have no rights because they accepted the terms and
conditions. You don't have to like it but it is true.
Rights are ensured by the legal sysem; we do not give them up
when we agree to the terms of usage for a website. One could
presumably sue Facebook or whoever if they have the time and
resources but it may be better to wait for a really atrocious ethical
violation to occur -- a violation so obvious that no one needs to
have it
