> 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 wa

> 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.