Michael: thank you very much for sharing these links and materials. Very interesting indeed! Re Thomas Johnson: If I understand correctly, the original question is about a practically useless (and time consuming) request by a Human Subjects Committee. The Committee apparently does not understand the power of search engines. It simply makes no sense to use pseudonyms, if accessible material is quoted literally. We had a related case when I was a member of a faculty e-learning commission at the University of Zurich. A professor wrote an article in the university newsletter, in which she was trying to show that use of electronic media leads to a deterioration of writing style, particularly with students. To that end she used several examples from online forums, including a forum almost exclusively used by University of Zurich students. She used pseudonyms for the posters she quoted, but one student in particular could later be identified by anyone who used her lengthy literal quote in a search. Best --u At 8:12 Uhr -0500 17.10.2010, Michael Zimmer wrote:
And to complicate _this_ a bit more, Elizabeth Buchanan, Montana Miller, John Palfry, and I recently presented to the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP) on "The Internet in Human Subjects Research", highlighting how the current guidance by OHRP has considerable gaps wrt internet based research.
Details here: http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/sachrp/mtgings/mtg07-10/mtg07-10.html http://michaelzimmer.org/2010/07/20/presentation-research-ethics-in-the-2-0-...
For those at IR11, while it's likely too late to register for the pre-conference workshop on "Ethics and Internet Research Commons: Building a sustainable future", we are also holding a roundtable on "Internet Research Ethics Digital Library, Research Center, and Commons" on Thursday at 11:40am-12:40pm.
Please join us!
-michael.
-- Ulf-Dietrich Reips, Ph.D. Ikerbasque Research Professor Departamento de Psicología Universidad de Deusto Apartado 1, 48080 Bilbao, España Secretary & Fax: +34 944 139 085 http://iscience.deusto.es/