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I don't feel like you make an adequate case for some of your counter-objections. #1 is particularly troubling since you seem to argue it by misrepresenting his

I don't feel like you make an adequate case for some of your counter-objections. #1 is particularly troubling since you seem to argue it by misrepresenting his argument instead of addressing it directly. The alternative is to perform the experiment w/informed consent, not to keep the results of your unethical experiment secret. I think this is actually an issue that is important when considering whether an experiment is 'good' or 'acceptable'. Tuskegee is what I think of when people try to argue that informed consent is unimportant. Even though anyone can tell you that the stakes in this kind of experiment are incredibly small in comparison, there IS a measurable risk of harm when manipulating emotions, so ethics matter here. #2 - you seem to make no effort to address this either. To me, it is particularly troubling if the business and academic sides of FB freely interacted here because each side has an incomplete understanding of the other side's motives and priorities and constraints. The business side is focused on revenue and actionable metrics and legal liability (that's their job), while the research side is naturally going to have different objectives and have a perspective that is more rooted in the practice of good, ethical science. There's real trouble if research ethics & principles end up subjugated to the interests of the business people (which they often do). Seeing you utterly dismiss the first two points with 'Oh good, so the author isn't a complete idiot.' is not exactly a revelatory argumentative triumph. You can do better.

gwern 12y ago
> #1 is particularly troubling since you seem to argue it by misrepresenting his argument instead of addressing it directly. The alternative is to perform the experiment w/informed consent, not to keep the results of your unethical experiment secret. No, the alternative is to go through a long rigmarole which may or may not approve the experiment and enforce conditions which may or may not themselves constitute severe biases of their own (knowing one is in an experiment, even if the subjects have been deceived as to the content, is itself a problem). > #2 - you seem to make no effort to address this either. To me, it is particularly troubling if the business and academic sides of FB freely interacted here because each side has an incomplete understanding of the other side's motives and priorities and constraints. There's nothing to be addressed here. Businesses have always allied with scientists when they find common interests, from astronomers preparing tables for shipping to Gosset inventing a good chunk of modern statistics for optimizing a beer brewery. All he's done is talk vaguely about 'boundaries' and insinuate dark things. > Seeing you utterly dismiss the first two points with 'Oh good, so the author isn't a complete idiot.' is not exactly a revelatory argumentative triumph. You can do better. Those points are fundamentally irrelevant to the overarching claim he makes that it's bad science. I think he's wrong about the more... philosophical aspects of things, but I don't have to show he's wrong - he has to show they materially affect the truth of the results. He has to show that #1 and #2 actually matter, and he hasn't. Instead, he spent an incredible amount of verbiage on vaguely related topics and he flubbed the technical criticisms. I don't give him a pass on that and neither should you.
- yid 12y ago
  > No, the alternative is to go through a long rigmarole which may or may not approve the experiment and enforce conditions which may or may not themselves constitute severe biases of their own (knowing one is in an experiment, even if the subjects have been deceived as to the content, is itself a problem). Having gone through some IRBs, there is a good reason and enough historic precedent to warrant this "long rigamarole". The point is that you can't simply say "but everyone on the Internet does it" and expect people who support traditional research ethics not to say "wait a minute, that shouldn't make it OK".
  - gwern 12y ago
    The circumstances which prompted the formation of IRBs would not have been solved by IRBs: IRBs would not have stopped the military from harming downwinders, would not have stopped Nazis, etc. That's all one needs to know.

gwern 12y ago

> #1 is particularly troubling since you seem to argue it by misrepresenting his argument instead of addressing it directly. The alternative is to perform the experiment w/informed consent, not to keep the results of your unethical experiment secret. No, the alternative is to go through a long rigmarole which may or may not approve the experiment and enforce conditions which may or may not themselves constitute severe biases of their own (knowing one is in an experiment, even if the subjects have been deceived as to the content, is itself a problem). > #2 - you seem to make no effort to address this either. To me, it is particularly troubling if the business and academic sides of FB freely interacted here because each side has an incomplete understanding of the other side's motives and priorities and constraints. There's nothing to be addressed here. Businesses have always allied with scientists when they find common interests, from astronomers preparing tables for shipping to Gosset inventing a good chunk of modern statistics for optimizing a beer brewery. All he's done is talk vaguely about 'boundaries' and insinuate dark things. > Seeing you utterly dismiss the first two points with 'Oh good, so the author isn't a complete idiot.' is not exactly a revelatory argumentative triumph. You can do better. Those points are fundamentally irrelevant to the overarching claim he makes that it's bad science. I think he's wrong about the more... philosophical aspects of things, but I don't have to show he's wrong - he has to show they materially affect the truth of the results. He has to show that #1 and #2 actually matter, and he hasn't. Instead, he spent an incredible amount of verbiage on vaguely related topics and he flubbed the technical criticisms. I don't give him a pass on that and neither should you.

yid 12y ago
> No, the alternative is to go through a long rigmarole which may or may not approve the experiment and enforce conditions which may or may not themselves constitute severe biases of their own (knowing one is in an experiment, even if the subjects have been deceived as to the content, is itself a problem). Having gone through some IRBs, there is a good reason and enough historic precedent to warrant this "long rigamarole". The point is that you can't simply say "but everyone on the Internet does it" and expect people who support traditional research ethics not to say "wait a minute, that shouldn't make it OK".
- gwern 12y ago
  The circumstances which prompted the formation of IRBs would not have been solved by IRBs: IRBs would not have stopped the military from harming downwinders, would not have stopped Nazis, etc. That's all one needs to know.