OK, Similar hypothetical: A group of people engage in a fetish festival on a public street. Pretty racy and revealing stuff going on. As a researcher, I take pictures and observe the interactions and include them in a best seller called "Weird fetishists and the weird fetishes they engage in weirdly." Years later, this gets back to the participants, and they are tres embarrassed. Have I violated... anything? Certainly not anything legally. I can take pictures of a public festival on public property. Have I invaded their privacy? No. They might not have *expected* to encounter their conservative mother-in-law at the festival, but they knew it was a public happening, and anyone could drop by. If they were concerned about people knowing they had an "unnatural" affinity to balloons and Scotch tape, they would either (a) wear a mask, or (b) do it behind closed doors--both of which are options online as well. Of course, people often would rather their prior public acts could be covered up. But human subject protection is not absolute! Mitigating the harm (e.g., by asking everyone in the festival for their permission to be studied) in many cases is just an unreasonable burden for studying public behavior. The benefit of understanding society--our work has worth--is more important. Alex On 8/11/07, Ed Lamoureux <ell@bumail.bradley.edu> wrote:
Ok So you are studying "abnormal sexual proclivities in everyday American life." You find a REAL juicy blog . . . in which person X writes some pretty darned racy stuff for the entire world to see (if they want) ... but normally, really, only their friends go there.... (but you are right, anyone could).
Down the road, you publish the piece in an online journal. That item is SO important to your argument that you publish a nice long quote from the data.
Some readers come along, google the string, and get led back to your subject and write to them, wondering why they are SO damned abnormal, sexually speaking.
Now . . . I would say that the subject has not been protected. I would say that without their permission, you've exposed their character to personal damage. You've not only used their material without permission and used their material as data for a study, you've also labeled them as abnormal AND drawn people's attention to them as such . . . WITH your university-researcher's authority as an expert, without so much as asking them if they understand what you are up to or it it's ok to use their material.
Gee... I kinda think that's the sort of thing that human subject protection is supposed to stop, isn't it?
Edward Lee Lamoureux, Ph. D. Associate Professor, Multimedia Program and Department of Communication Co-Director, New Media Center 1501 W. Bradley Bradley University Peoria IL 61625 309-677-2378 <http://slane.bradley.edu/com/faculty/lamoureux/website2/index.html> <http://gcc.bradley.edu/mm/> AIM/IM & skype: dredleelam Second Life: Professor Beliveau
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