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You may not understand it because you are evaluating it by the standards of "psychological research", and others are evaluating it by the standards of "advertis

You may not understand it because you are evaluating it by the standards of "psychological research", and others are evaluating it by the standards of "advertising industry research". "Ethics" aren't a universal Kantian imperative, they're contingent. It's ethical, more or less, for you to talk about about your conversation with your acquaintance, but not if you're an attorney and they're your client, unless they've put it on the record before publicly, etc. Ethical rules usually exist for a normative purpose - eg, to allow people to converse freely with their lawyers. The psychological research community doesn't care about their work actually working or proving something valuable nearly as much as their care about maintaining their status. Conversely, the advertising industry cares very much about proving their capabilities to their clients. So, different ethical regimes.

glesica 12y ago
The psychological research community doesn't care about their work actually working or proving something valuable nearly as much as their care about maintaining their status. I was nodding my head and prepared to take you seriously until this sentence. Turns out you're just another HN reader angry at the academic community because you once had a lazy professor or something.
- fiatmoney 12y ago
  That's a very lazy inference on your part. It's uncontroversial, even within academia, that there is a large amount of statusmongering going on that is orthogonal to "real work". It doesn't imply they don't care at all about the underlying research, but academia is an industry like any other with its own priorities and incentives, and the people who rise to the top are the sort of people who are good at sussing those out. In particular you can view IRBs and the like as a form of entry-restriction by entrenched actors that tries to keep disruptive research from competing.
  - glesica 12y ago
    The fact that there is a great deal of statusmongering says nothing about the relative importance of the "real work" and "statusmongering" in the eyes of people involved. So no, it isn't a lazy inference, the original comment made a mean-spirited and totally unsubstantiated claim and I pointed that out.
- RA_Fisher 12y ago
  The field receives a pretty scathing review in The Cult of Statistical Significance. The summaries offered there are pretty damning: http://www.amazon.com/The-Cult-Statistical-Significance-Economics/dp/0472050079 http://www.amazon.com/The-Cult-Statistical-Significance-Econ...
spinchange 12y ago
Why did Facebook conduct this expressly as psychological research, publishing it in a psychological research journal? It seems to me that the appropriate ethical framework to apply is the research context it was conducted and presented in, not a looser one outsiders wish to see it in. That disparity /conflict of interests is a symptom of the problem here. I'm setting aside the questions of how this experiment even furthers facebook's business interests. My guess is, it doesn't really.

glesica 12y ago

The psychological research community doesn't care about their work actually working or proving something valuable nearly as much as their care about maintaining their status. I was nodding my head and prepared to take you seriously until this sentence. Turns out you're just another HN reader angry at the academic community because you once had a lazy professor or something.

fiatmoney 12y ago
That's a very lazy inference on your part. It's uncontroversial, even within academia, that there is a large amount of statusmongering going on that is orthogonal to "real work". It doesn't imply they don't care at all about the underlying research, but academia is an industry like any other with its own priorities and incentives, and the people who rise to the top are the sort of people who are good at sussing those out. In particular you can view IRBs and the like as a form of entry-restriction by entrenched actors that tries to keep disruptive research from competing.
- glesica 12y ago
  The fact that there is a great deal of statusmongering says nothing about the relative importance of the "real work" and "statusmongering" in the eyes of people involved. So no, it isn't a lazy inference, the original comment made a mean-spirited and totally unsubstantiated claim and I pointed that out.
RA_Fisher 12y ago
The field receives a pretty scathing review in The Cult of Statistical Significance. The summaries offered there are pretty damning: http://www.amazon.com/The-Cult-Statistical-Significance-Economics/dp/0472050079 http://www.amazon.com/The-Cult-Statistical-Significance-Econ...

spinchange 12y ago

Why did Facebook conduct this expressly as psychological research, publishing it in a psychological research journal? It seems to me that the appropriate ethical framework to apply is the research context it was conducted and presented in, not a looser one outsiders wish to see it in. That disparity /conflict of interests is a symptom of the problem here. I'm setting aside the questions of how this experiment even furthers facebook's business interests. My guess is, it doesn't really.