Great Ethical disasters in Internet Research?
Hi! Thanks for the interesting responses so far to the Great Ethical Disasters thread. Frank raised a very interesting point when he said he'd ' like to have some objectives, some scales linked to the objectives' before assessing if something is ethical. To this I'd say 'yes-exactly- but what kind of objectives would we be talking about? Is something ethical in terms of its OWN research objectives - or are there general objectives which apply to all studies? Do other people who are aware of the Rimm study think it's ethical/unethical - and, if so, why?? I also want to pick up on the debate started by David Silver who seems to be making a distinction between 'unethical research' and ' methodologically flawed' research. Personally i'd argue that while the use of an appropriate research methodology may seem morally neutral in fact the way a research project is designed is crucial to its moral acceptability. If a research method doesnt succeed in answering the question posed then it wastes resources or if it gives incorrect data then bad theory or practice may be established. (Clare Foster in a book called The Ethics of Medical Research on Humans, 2001, argues this very well). In my opinion assessing the validity of data generated by the Internet is an ethical as well as a methodological challenge. Also, in a new research area like the Internet, you could argue that researchers have moral obligations to the research community. If the researcher is careless or lacks expertise, disillusioned arespondents may no longer be willing to participate in research projects. Some commentators have raised the issue of enthusiastic well meaning DIY types who collect data using the new fun toy that is the internet. These people may not know the ethical rules of professional and other bodies so may unwittingly break them. Research instruments may be badly designed and promises made to recipients may not be fulfilled adding to feelings of disillusionment and alarm. It could be argued that researchers who are guilty of negligence are acting in ways that will harm others not just the individuals they are working with but also because they close down opportunities for valuable Internet research to be conducted in the future. We're all starting to be aware that increasingly chat rooms and newsgroups are starting to resent the intrusion of researchers who they feel come in and strip the assets of the group. I personally think that a research method which leaves behind bad feeling among participants is morally suspect! What do other people think about this??? Cheers chris
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I'm perhaps joining the conversation after the rain has ended....and because the weather in Chicago is so hot, the air conditioning prompts me to stay indoors and write long-winded replies... I heartily agree with you, Chris (and others in this thread) that a researcher's methodological decisions are vitally connected to the ethics of the project. Brainstorming here, every phase in the research project entails choices that are simultaneously method and ethics choices, where the well-intended researcher can make decisions that have serious ethical consequences, both to the participants being studied and research colleagues. Some of these decision points: I. The choice about accessing the data. This decision involves, among other things, preserving rights of participants and is a methodological choice. II. The choice of data collection tool is an ethical choice--how to capture the stuff of experience later called "data." Here, the researcher will make choices that necessarily abstract experience. One ethical issue is the extent to which the abstraction is a good representation ("good" meaning many things, of course, ethically speaking). One's discipline helps to dictate but does not completely determine the rules of conduct about how one approaches the participants. For example, the fields of psychology, linguistics, and ethnography each have their own ideas (theories, standard practices, rules of thumb...), but the interdisciplinary nature of Internet Studies allows much blending of approaches/tools/theories. Practically speaking, this means a researcher has license to pick and choose from many traditions, and each choice has ethical consequences. III. Choice of tool to analyze the data: The process of making sense of the stuff later called data is a series of choices which are ethical choices, through and through. As we interpret, people's experiences are thematized, categorized, excerpted, generalized, etc. The result of empirical studies inform future studies, build theory. Put heavily, every choice we make as individual researchers informs future knowledge. Seemingly simple choices are never value free or morally neutral. IV. Writing Conventions: Choices about how the participants are framed, active versus passive researcher voice.....depending on who the researcher is writing for, the report will change. The results may also shift, depending on the purpose/audience. V. More writing/editing decisions: Choices about what is absent/omitted from the research report. What got left out? Omissions have consequences for knowledge production, and the decisions are tied up with both method traditions and ethics (voice of the participants, data that might be unfavorable for the researcher's question/results, the researcher's own experiences that influenced the study from beginning to end) So, as you imply, your request for "great ethical disasters" is complicated by the fact that one could question the ethics of a study at multiple points of the project. Mary Gray's "tangent" thread is an example of how one is compelled to critique the ethics of research based on criteria that doesn't fall into the obvious (more discussed) category of violating rights of participants at the outset of the project. .....I guess this is a long winded way of saying: I think the *disasters* are important, but just as important (the word "insidious" comes to mind) are the seemingly minor transgressions, dismissed because they are *just* methodology choices (not ethically based) or even non-decisions because the researcher's discipline requires adherence to certain procedures (therefore not subject to interrogation/reflection). Annette
participants (3)
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Annette Markham -
C.C. Mann -
Michael Salter