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=Search&mabReward=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=Search&mabReward=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 explained to them, something like the Flynn dining study
I refer to above or the tearoom trade by Humphreys.
But what about welfare? Interestingly the results of the study
provide the answer to this - the effect sizes are so small that
it seems highly unlikely this was the case. Could the study be
carried out without a waiver? No. Should they have provided
subjects with additional information? Maybe but I can't think
of what they would say. "Dear Facebook user, over the course
of the last week you were a participant that filtered your
newsfeed and diminished negative information you may wish
to call your aunt Selma whose cat died and console your college
roommate's son who broke up with his girlfriend."
Here's an idea: someone should propose a panel discussion
at either the APA or APS meetings of the ethical implications
of the Facebook study and similar internet research. Should
there be ethical regulation of such research? What sort of
ethical violations should be considered unacceptable?
These issues will have to examined at some point.
I think the far greater travesty in this Facebook study of emotion
is that while we were all discussing the IRB and ethical issues
of the research, we legitimized the idea that Facebook posts
reflect actual human emotion. Around my house we call it Famotion
(or fake emotion or Facebook emotion). "I'm so angry the coffee
vendor forgot to add the carmel that I could just scream."
I guess when it comes to crying over spilled milk, that is one
thing you can do on Facebook and the world will listen.
I don't do Facebook and limit my "social media" participation,
so I don't know what the milieu is. However, it is clear that
people *do* believe that Facebook behavior is an indicator
of various things, otherwise (1) the research would not have
gotten done and (2) it would not have gotten published.
It might be crappy research which an IRB might have prevented
from being done but Facebook didn't submit it to an IRB.
Perhaps it should.
-Mike Palij
New York University
m...@nyu.edu
________________________________________
From: Mike Palij
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2014 3:13 PM
The Facebook research study that caused much negative reaction
raised the question of how often Facebook and other websites
conducted such "research" without getting informed consent from
the participants. The answer appears to have been given by the
founder of the website OkCupid, Christian Rudder who writes:
|We noticed recently that people didn't like it when Facebook
|"experimented" with their news feed. Even the FTC is getting
|involved. But guess what, everybody: if you use the Internet,
|you're the subject of hundreds of experiments at any given time,
|on every site. That's how websites work.
He then goes on to describe three experiments conducted at
the OkCupid's website; he provides this information in a blog
entry on the OkCupid website; see:
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/we-experiment-on-human-beings/
The issue of informed consent is never raised. It seems that
the owner of a website can do whatever they want if a user
agrees to the conditions for using the website. The is the
price one pays for the using the website.
Ah, the real world!
-Mike Palij
New York University
m...@nyu.edu
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