5 ms·

It really depends on your ethical framework doesn't it? People lie all the time for good reasons. Are those actions unethical? Further, I am struggling to see w

by dcow 5y ago

It really depends on your ethical framework doesn't it? People lie all the time for good reasons. Are those actions unethical? Further, I am struggling to see who was harmed here or how there was any ill intent. On top of that, the results of this study seem like they would be enlightening. It seems like society should want this experiment to be able to take place. Certainly a western liberal understanding of ethics is more sophisticated than “you didn’t tell them you were observing their behavior bzzzzt unethical”? Put another way, is “right not to be observed (in public)” something we protect? If I write down my observations at a park as I watch humans interact is that unethical simply because I didn’t bring a megaphone and announce my intent? I think the problem is that despite what’s in vogue, I don’t understand how acting in a way that is not illegal even if it impacts somebody else and then observing the results is by default (unquestionably) unethical. Why is that bad? Are there some “case experiments” the research community looks to where humans where harmed that has shaped our modern understanding?

watwut 5y ago
The formal ethics of research on humans requires informed consent of participants. You can take framework of sales or management where lie is just being smart, but it is not applicable here.
- mbesto 5y ago
  > The formal ethics of research on humans requires informed consent of participants. How do you explain research on placebos then?
  - albedoa 5y ago
    Participants are informed about and agree to the chance of a placebo.
- malwarebytess 5y ago
  it's not research on humans as such. it was intended to be research on organizations, websites large enough to be subject to the law.
  - kstrauser 5y ago
    I got one of these letters, and the website in question has $0.00 revenue, and an order of magnitude fewer total users than would invoke the users. The linked story here is about someone who got a letter to their personal blog. The researchers did no (or very poor) screening.
    - malwarebytess 5y ago
      That I agree with. Their collection methodology was clearly inadequate. They should have been more careful who they mailed, even though they did try to be careful it wasn't enough.
- hatsunearu 5y ago
  Deception is allowed, but should be scrutinized carefully to determine if it is necessary. In this case, it was not necessary. The researcher could have easily just said "we want to know if you are compliant with CCPA for the purpose of doing this research, could you tell us your policy please" https://research.oregonstate.edu/irb/research-involving-deception https://research.oregonstate.edu/irb/research-involving-dece... quotes: a) Psychologists do not conduct a study involving deception unless they have determined that the use of deceptive techniques is justified by the study's significant prospective scientific, educational or applied value and that effective nondeceptive alternative procedures are not feasible. b) Psychologists do not deceive prospective participants about research that is reasonably expected to cause physical pain or severe emotional distress. c) Psychologists explain any deception that is an integral feature of the design and conduct of an experiment to participants as early as is feasible, preferably at the conclusion of their participation, but no later than at the conclusion of the data collection, and permit participants to withdraw their data. a) -- Hell no b) -- I can give the benefit of the doubt that they didn't foresee small website owners getting panic attacks from this threat, but their non-empathetic tone in that apology write up is appalling c) -- Hell no The more I think about this the more I'm furious that a supposedly top tier institution like Princeton approved all of this and the "researchers" seems to have 0 fucks to give on ethical experiment design.
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    Are you sure that this is applicable to OP's situation? It appears to be a set of guidelines, not a requirement. And in fact, I'm skeptical that there are requirements, except on a university-by-university basis -- which is to say, the process seems much less formal than people are saying. For example, I would feel comfortable with this study if at the bottom it said "Just kidding, we're actually researchers. Can you explain what was going through your mind when you read this?" even though it's technically deceptive. I'm a former pentester, and deceptions like this were run all day, every day, by a dedicated team. It's often phase one of phishing, since you end up assuming you're talking to a trustworthy source. So I'm wondering why we seem comfortable with that, but not this.
    - 5y ago
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  As a researcher, I find this fascinating. Would you mind citing the requirements that all human research requires consent? I agree with it, and I feel it's my duty to be well-informed on this. So I thought I'd ask you. Everything I can find is only applicable for medical research, and not social research.
  - aspaceman 5y ago
    Most universities require all social science research to go through IRB. https://sociology.unc.edu/graduate-program/graduate-research/irb-guidelines-for-sociology/ https://sociology.unc.edu/graduate-program/graduate-research... I've been seeing this a few times now. Extremely ignorant computer scientists and STEM folks skipping IRB and claiming "theyve never even heard of getting approval for social research". Pretty gross in my view honestly.
seanhunter 5y ago
"People lie all the time for good reasons. Are those actions unethical?" is whataboutism of the worst kind. We're not talking about any other hypothetical case where a person might lie for good reasons. We're talking about this case, and the lie/misrepresentation was at the heart of why it was unethical. Secondly, you say you don't see who was harmed - the person who posted the original blog post was clearly harmed. She had a panic attack she was so stressed about the legal implications of the implied threat. The fact that someone else may perhaps have not found receiving this email stressful doesn't really matter - that was the effect on her and it was harmful on its face. Remember that people have different life circumstances which affect things like this - someone who was short of money may see a legal threat with implied financial consequences such as this as an existential threat. Secondly the people who paid money for legal advice were very clearly also harmed. Their harm has a specific monetary value. Your "put another way" extrapolation is just a complete straw man. Noone here other than you is talking about observing people in the park. This is about a research study which sent an email which some people saw as scammy or threatening in order to gather data about how small websites handle data subject access requests.
- dcow 5y ago
  > We're not talking about any other hypothetical case where a person might lie for good reasons. We're talking about this case, and the lie/misrepresentation was at the heart of why it was unethical. I don’t find this type of benign use of anonymity/misdirection to be an outright lie of the unethical kind. > She had a panic attack she was so stressed about the legal implications of the implied threat. What?! When/where? She said the request stressed her out… come on. If webmasters have panic attacks when encountering spam then perhaps we should outlaw spam (I’d support this). > Your "put another way" extrapolation is just a complete straw man. Noone here other than you is talking about observing people in the park. Please… I 100% do not understand the reason why this experiment should be considered unethical and I’m trying to explain what I see as parallels. It’s not a straw man and I’m not the only one.. read down thread. What I’m looking for is an explanation for why you think that legal normal behavior (even behavior that causes stress) is allowable but legal normal behavior for science is not allowed. I also believe context motive and intent matter, for the record (which I why I believe censorship imposes a net negative on society, example: comedians are “allowed” to use offensive language). I simply find the intent here to be arguably ethical depending on what your goal is for society. For example, if the goal is to never have any individual experience 1 ounce more stress than is absolutely required throughout their life, then this behavior is unethical arguably whether it’s an experiment or not but definitely in the case of the experiment because it’s unnecessary. On the other hand, if your goal as a society is to make sure people’s data privacy rights are protected, it seems strictly ethical to conduct such an exercise to raise awareness and document how well institutions comply with the law.

by dcow 5y ago

watwut 5y ago

The formal ethics of research on humans requires informed consent of participants. You can take framework of sales or management where lie is just being smart, but it is not applicable here.

mbesto 5y ago
> The formal ethics of research on humans requires informed consent of participants. How do you explain research on placebos then?
- albedoa 5y ago
  Participants are informed about and agree to the chance of a placebo.
malwarebytess 5y ago
it's not research on humans as such. it was intended to be research on organizations, websites large enough to be subject to the law.
- kstrauser 5y ago
  I got one of these letters, and the website in question has $0.00 revenue, and an order of magnitude fewer total users than would invoke the users. The linked story here is about someone who got a letter to their personal blog. The researchers did no (or very poor) screening.
  - malwarebytess 5y ago
    That I agree with. Their collection methodology was clearly inadequate. They should have been more careful who they mailed, even though they did try to be careful it wasn't enough.
hatsunearu 5y ago
Deception is allowed, but should be scrutinized carefully to determine if it is necessary. In this case, it was not necessary. The researcher could have easily just said "we want to know if you are compliant with CCPA for the purpose of doing this research, could you tell us your policy please" https://research.oregonstate.edu/irb/research-involving-deception https://research.oregonstate.edu/irb/research-involving-dece... quotes: a) Psychologists do not conduct a study involving deception unless they have determined that the use of deceptive techniques is justified by the study's significant prospective scientific, educational or applied value and that effective nondeceptive alternative procedures are not feasible. b) Psychologists do not deceive prospective participants about research that is reasonably expected to cause physical pain or severe emotional distress. c) Psychologists explain any deception that is an integral feature of the design and conduct of an experiment to participants as early as is feasible, preferably at the conclusion of their participation, but no later than at the conclusion of the data collection, and permit participants to withdraw their data. a) -- Hell no b) -- I can give the benefit of the doubt that they didn't foresee small website owners getting panic attacks from this threat, but their non-empathetic tone in that apology write up is appalling c) -- Hell no The more I think about this the more I'm furious that a supposedly top tier institution like Princeton approved all of this and the "researchers" seems to have 0 fucks to give on ethical experiment design.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  Are you sure that this is applicable to OP's situation? It appears to be a set of guidelines, not a requirement. And in fact, I'm skeptical that there are requirements, except on a university-by-university basis -- which is to say, the process seems much less formal than people are saying. For example, I would feel comfortable with this study if at the bottom it said "Just kidding, we're actually researchers. Can you explain what was going through your mind when you read this?" even though it's technically deceptive. I'm a former pentester, and deceptions like this were run all day, every day, by a dedicated team. It's often phase one of phishing, since you end up assuming you're talking to a trustworthy source. So I'm wondering why we seem comfortable with that, but not this.
  - 5y ago
sillysaurusx 5y ago
As a researcher, I find this fascinating. Would you mind citing the requirements that all human research requires consent? I agree with it, and I feel it's my duty to be well-informed on this. So I thought I'd ask you. Everything I can find is only applicable for medical research, and not social research.
- aspaceman 5y ago
  Most universities require all social science research to go through IRB. https://sociology.unc.edu/graduate-program/graduate-research/irb-guidelines-for-sociology/ https://sociology.unc.edu/graduate-program/graduate-research... I've been seeing this a few times now. Extremely ignorant computer scientists and STEM folks skipping IRB and claiming "theyve never even heard of getting approval for social research". Pretty gross in my view honestly.

seanhunter 5y ago

"People lie all the time for good reasons. Are those actions unethical?" is whataboutism of the worst kind. We're not talking about any other hypothetical case where a person might lie for good reasons. We're talking about this case, and the lie/misrepresentation was at the heart of why it was unethical. Secondly, you say you don't see who was harmed - the person who posted the original blog post was clearly harmed. She had a panic attack she was so stressed about the legal implications of the implied threat. The fact that someone else may perhaps have not found receiving this email stressful doesn't really matter - that was the effect on her and it was harmful on its face. Remember that people have different life circumstances which affect things like this - someone who was short of money may see a legal threat with implied financial consequences such as this as an existential threat. Secondly the people who paid money for legal advice were very clearly also harmed. Their harm has a specific monetary value. Your "put another way" extrapolation is just a complete straw man. Noone here other than you is talking about observing people in the park. This is about a research study which sent an email which some people saw as scammy or threatening in order to gather data about how small websites handle data subject access requests.

dcow 5y ago
> We're not talking about any other hypothetical case where a person might lie for good reasons. We're talking about this case, and the lie/misrepresentation was at the heart of why it was unethical. I don’t find this type of benign use of anonymity/misdirection to be an outright lie of the unethical kind. > She had a panic attack she was so stressed about the legal implications of the implied threat. What?! When/where? She said the request stressed her out… come on. If webmasters have panic attacks when encountering spam then perhaps we should outlaw spam (I’d support this). > Your "put another way" extrapolation is just a complete straw man. Noone here other than you is talking about observing people in the park. Please… I 100% do not understand the reason why this experiment should be considered unethical and I’m trying to explain what I see as parallels. It’s not a straw man and I’m not the only one.. read down thread. What I’m looking for is an explanation for why you think that legal normal behavior (even behavior that causes stress) is allowable but legal normal behavior for science is not allowed. I also believe context motive and intent matter, for the record (which I why I believe censorship imposes a net negative on society, example: comedians are “allowed” to use offensive language). I simply find the intent here to be arguably ethical depending on what your goal is for society. For example, if the goal is to never have any individual experience 1 ounce more stress than is absolutely required throughout their life, then this behavior is unethical arguably whether it’s an experiment or not but definitely in the case of the experiment because it’s unnecessary. On the other hand, if your goal as a society is to make sure people’s data privacy rights are protected, it seems strictly ethical to conduct such an exercise to raise awareness and document how well institutions comply with the law.