Scholars are exhilarated by the prospect of tapping into the vast troves of personal data collected by Facebook, Google, Amazon and a host of start-ups, which they say could transform social science research.
Once forced to conduct painstaking personal interviews with subjects, scientists can now sit at a screen and instantly play with the digital experiences of millions of Internet users. It’s the frontier of social science — experiments on people who may never even know they are subjects of study, let alone explicitly consent.
“This is a new era,” said Jeffrey T. Hancock, a Cornell University professor of communication and information science. “I liken it a little bit to when chemistry got the microscope.”
But the new era has brought some controversy with it. Professor Hancock was a co-author of the Facebook study in which the social network quietly manipulated the news feeds of nearly 700,000 people to learn how the changes affected their emotions. When the research was published in June, the outrage was immediate.
Now Professor Hancock and other university and corporate researchers are grappling with how to create ethical guidelines for this kind of research. In his first interview since the Facebook study was made public, Professor Hancock said he would help develop such guidelines by leading a series of discussions among academics, corporate researchers and government agencies like the National Science Foundation.
“As part of moving forward on this, we’ve got to engage,” he said. “This is a giant societal conversation that needs to take place.”
The Latest on: Social science research ethics
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The Latest on: Social science research ethics
- Do Know Harm: Considering the Ethics of Online Community Researchon May 7, 2024 at 10:18 am
Strategies for engaging in more ethical research with online communities. Computing technology is integrated into people’s lives, impacting how we work, learn, play, and connect. As a result, ...
- DeLue and Singer receive Behrman Award for the humanitieson May 6, 2024 at 8:47 am
Princeton professors Rachael DeLue and Peter Singer have received the University’s Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities.
- Scientists Possess Inflated Views of Their Own Ethicson May 6, 2024 at 7:56 am
How well do scientists know how effectively they apply research ethics? Probably not so well, but that should come as no surprise.
- AI ethics are ignoring children, say researcherson March 20, 2024 at 3:00 am
Researchers from the Oxford Martin Programme on Ethical Web and Data Architectures (EWADA), University of Oxford, have called for a more considered approach when embedding ethical principles in the ...
- Research Ethicson February 15, 2024 at 12:15 am
At the same time, they have the ethical obligation to uphold intellectual integrity and avoid preventable harms that may arise in the course of research ... of life and social sciences manuscripts ...
- Structured Ethics Appendixon December 29, 2023 at 4:31 pm
Social science researchers engaged in primary ... and thus better impact of research as well. To facilitate this, we propose authors include a structured ethics appendix in working papers and ...
- Centers and Instituteson November 1, 2022 at 9:54 pm
biomedical ethics, vaccine research, and international aspects of AIDS. Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities facilitates and encourages collaborative work among faculty and students in the humanities ...
- Research ethicson April 30, 2021 at 10:08 pm
The University of Helsinki is committed to observing the Guidelines for Good Scientific Practice and Procedures for Handling Misconduct and Fraud in Science ... on Research Integrity TENK National ...
- Our researchon April 12, 2021 at 4:00 am
We support a wide range of research across disciplines to improve health; science that helps us understand human health and disease, from biomedical to clinical, social and population sciences. Below ...
- Master of Science in Social Data Analytics and Researchon March 16, 2021 at 12:07 pm
Social science research design and evaluation. Quantitative and qualitative data discovery and analysis. Social science methodologies, theories and philosophical dimensions, as well as the ethics of ...
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