Tag: Ethics

The Civic Responsibility of Ethnographers

By Robert Dingwall | Published: January 9, 2019

What duty do social scientists have to report illegal activity that they witness as part of their fieldwork? If you answered quickly, you may not have thought about the issue all that deeply.

Posted in Research Ethics | Also tagged Alice Goffman, Criminology, Ethics regulation, Fieldwork, participant observation, Research ethics, Steven Lubet | Leave a comment

Sir Cliff Richard, the BBC and the Ethics of Interviewing

By Robert Dingwall | Published: July 19, 2018

The recent brouhaha involving the BBC and the singer points out something the journalists and qualitative researchers share: the need to develop a common approach to the ethics of interviewing.

Posted in News, Research, Research Ethics | Also tagged interviewing techniques, Journalism, qualitative interview, Research, Social Research | Leave a comment

How Do We Head Off the Collateral Damage of Big Data?

By Hamish Robertson and Joanne Travaglia | Published: December 22, 2017

Hamish Robertson and Joanne Travaglia argue that big data quantification is now not only a mechanism for extracting information but has become an idea with social and political power in its own right. The lack of critique of quantitative methods and their application contributes to the existing and potentially coercive power of digital information systems and their attendant methods, and enhances the potential for collateral damage.

Posted in International Debate, Public Policy | Also tagged Behavioral Mapping, Big Datas | Leave a comment

Sexual Harassment and Universities

By Robert Dingwall | Published: December 22, 2017

Developing an effective response to sexual harassment in the academic industry -- by no means a new phenomenon, notes Robert Dingwall -- requires us to consider questions about institutional memory, occupational cultures, and organizational silos, rather than badly behaved individuals.

Posted in Career, International Debate, News, Research Ethics, Science & Social Science | Also tagged Professional ethics, sexual harassment | Leave a comment

Report Offers Guidelines for Ethics of Technology Design

By Rafael A Calvo and Dorian Peters | Published: December 14, 2017

The big questions posed by our digital future sit at the intersection of technology and ethics. This is complex territory that requires input from experts in many different fields, including the social sciences, if we are to navigate it successfully. A new report makes an effort to give a first draft of that necessary input.

Posted in Interdisciplinarity, International Debate, Public Policy | Also tagged Technology, The Conversation | Leave a comment

Greece’s Honest Statistician Pays Price for Ethics

By Michael Todd | Published: August 3, 2017

In a case that outrages statisticians and partisans of good government, a Greek appeals court has convicted the former president of the Hellenic Statistical Authority of violation of duty for his actions in recalculating national statistics and showing that Greece’s financial situation was much more dire than had been advertised.

Posted in News, Research Ethics | Also tagged American Statistical Association, Andreas Georgiou, ELSTAT, Greece | Leave a comment

Common Rule Reform – A Botched Job

By Robert Dingwall | Published: January 25, 2017

The rush to publish a revised Common Rule for federally funded human research in the United States has created a flawed regulatory regime, says Robert Dingwall., Time to tear the whole edifice down and start over, he suggests.

Posted in International Debate, News, Public Policy, Research Ethics | Also tagged Academic Freedom, Common Rule, Ethics regulation, Institutional Review Boards, Research ethics, Social Media | 2 Responses

Prone to Pressure: How Stakeholders Endanger the Independence of Evaluations and What We Can Do Against it

By Lyn Pleger and Fritz Sager | Published: October 25, 2016

It's self-evident that the independence of any evaluation, and the integrity of its findings, is paramount. Yet there's a a clear threat to the integrity of many evaluations: pressure from the stakeholders who hired the evaluator.

Posted in Research | Also tagged evaluation | Leave a comment

Existing Career Incentives Are Often Bad for Science

By Paul Smaldino | Published: October 4, 2016

A culture of bad science can evolve as a result of institutional incentives that prioritize simple quantitative metrics as measures of success, argues Paul Smaldino. But, he adds, not all is lost as new initiatives such as open data and replication are making a positive difference.

Posted in Career, Higher Education Reform | Also tagged Incentives, Metrics, Publication Concerns | Leave a comment

Common Rule Revision – The Ethics Police Fight Back

By Robert Dingwall | Published: December 17, 2015

Revisions to the U.S. government's regulations on ethical treatment of human research subjects that would exempt some experiments from direct oversight by institutional review boards are facing pushback from paternalistic guardians, says our Robert Dingwall, who don't seem to believe subjects are competent to make decisions on their own.

Posted in International Debate, News, Public Policy, Research Ethics | Also tagged Common Rule, Policy, Public policy, Social Science Research | Leave a comment

Deregulating Social Science Research Ethics – Clipping the Wings of IRBs?

By Robert Dingwall | Published: November 5, 2015

The Federal Register is surely not everybody’s bedtime reading. It is where the US Government formally publishes certain official documents, including advance notice of its intention to make rules that implement Executive policies. For social science researchers, one of the most important of these has long been the so-called Common Rule, introduced in 1981 and […]

Posted in International Debate, News, Public Policy, Research, Research Ethics | Also tagged IRB, Policy, Research, Social Research, Social Science, Social Science Research | Leave a comment

Federal ‘Common Rule’ on Human Study Ethics Changing

By Social Science Space | Published: September 8, 2015

Four years in the making, a proposed version of the federal 'Common Rule' for research on human subjects includes a full suite of social and behavioral science-influenced directives that past versions of the rule lacked.

Posted in International Debate, Public Policy | Tagged Ethics | Leave a comment

Tag: Ethics

The Civic Responsibility of Ethnographers

How Do We Head Off the Collateral Damage of Big Data?

Report Offers Guidelines for Ethics of Technology Design

Greece’s Honest Statistician Pays Price for Ethics

Prone to Pressure: How Stakeholders Endanger the Independence of Evaluations and What We Can Do Against it

Existing Career Incentives Are Often Bad for Science

Federal ‘Common Rule’ on Human Study Ethics Changing

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