{"id":1198,"date":"2014-10-14T18:53:54","date_gmt":"2014-10-14T18:53:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=1198"},"modified":"2016-08-20T21:46:10","modified_gmt":"2016-08-20T21:46:10","slug":"facebook-puts-ethics-of-research-by-private-companies-in-spotlight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/facebook-puts-ethics-of-research-by-private-companies-in-spotlight\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook puts ethics of research by private companies in spotlight"},"content":{"rendered":"

By David Hunter<\/a>, Flinders University<\/em><\/p>\n

International outrage at Facebook\u2019s study on thousands of its users without their consent has raised questions about the ethics of research done by private companies.<\/p>\n

Facebook\u2019s Emotional Manipulation Study<\/a> has led to concerns about how such research is carried out<\/a> since it was published in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences.<\/p>\n

Facebook<\/a> and one of the study authors, Facebook\u2019s Adam Kramer<\/a>, have this week responded to the concerns. But now the PNAS journal has also published an \u201cExpression of Concern<\/a>\u201c.<\/p>\n

PNAS editor-in-chief Inder M Verma acknowledges that \u201cquestions have been raised about the principles of informed consent and opportunity to opt out\u201d and that this is concerning.<\/p>\n

Done by the book<\/h2>\n

But Verma argues that the paper was consistent with Facebook\u2019s policies at the time, and with the regulatory framework within the United States, known as the Common Rule<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This rule requires oversight by a research ethics committee and adherence with common practices regarding informed consent only if a study receives federal funding or is associated with an institution receiving federal funding.<\/p>\n

In regards to informed consent in the Facebook study, which the Expression of Concern acknowledges is problematic, there are now larger problems.<\/p>\n

While the paper presents a fa\u00e7ade of informed consent by agreement to Facebook\u2019s Data Use Policy<\/a>, we have now found out \u2013 thanks to Forbes<\/a> \u2013 that the clauses regarding research were only added to this policy four months after the experiment took place.<\/p>\n

So rather than mere consent, as I termed it in my earlier piece<\/a>, we would be better to describe this study as having no consent at all.<\/p>\n

Ethics approval or not<\/h2>\n

But is the journal correct to think that the experiment \u2013 carried out by researchers from both Facebook and Cornell University \u2013 didn\u2019t need research ethics committee approval?<\/p>\n

The editor-in-chief\u2019s argument is that because this experiment was conducted by Facebook for internal purposes, the university\u2019s Institutional Review Board determined that the project \u201cdidn\u2019t fall under Cornell\u2019s Human Research Protection Program\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u2026 ] as a private company Facebook was under no obligation to conform to the provisions of the Common Rule when it collected the data used by the authors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is reinforced by the statement from Cornell<\/a>, which says that its researchers \u2013 Professor Jeffrey Hancock and then doctoral student Jamie Guillory \u2013 did not participate in data collection and did not have access to user data.<\/p>\n

Their work was limited to initial discussions, analysing the research results and working with colleagues from Facebook to prepare the peer-reviewed paper [\u2026]<\/p>\n

Because the research was conducted independently by Facebook and Professor Hancock had access only to results \u2013 and not to any individual, identifiable data at any time \u2013 Cornell University\u2019s Institutional Review Board concluded that he was not directly engaged in human research [\u2026]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a matter of interpretation \u2013 when is someone involved in human research?<\/p>\n

In this case the academics were involved in the study design and the analysis afterwards. The only thing they didn\u2019t do was collect the data themselves.<\/p>\n

Does that exclude their institution from making sure that they behave ethically? Or does it really just constitute a run around any ethics regulation?<\/p>\n

International concern from regulators<\/h2>\n

A further regulatory question is whether this research needed to be approved in other jurisdictions such as the UK, Ireland and Australia.<\/p>\n

This depends on where the 689,003 Facebook users whose news feeds were manipulated without their knowledge actually live. Regulators in some countries are now pursuing this<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The more interesting question is should the standards of ethical conduct of research and regulation not apply simply because Facebook is a private company?<\/p>\n

This seems a difficult position to defend, particularly in the face of studies like this one, which may have exposed a significant number of people to risks (however minimal) without consent.<\/p>\n

It is worth keeping in mind given that 6.7% of Americans suffer from clinical depression<\/a>. So approximately 46,000 of Facebook\u2019s research base may have been suffering depression at the time of the study, done over a single week in 2012.<\/p>\n

Even a relatively minor alteration in their emotional state prompted by their Facebook news feed manipulation could have had a significant impact on them.<\/p>\n

The history of research ethics has shown us, unfortunately, that if we want research participants to be treated with respect \u2013 and research to be conducted in line with ethical principles \u2013 then we ought to regulate research with review by an independent research ethics committee.<\/p>\n

This latest case suggests that the US ought not make a significant regulatory distinction between private and publicly funded research.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

David Hunter does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.<\/em><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>.
\nRead the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By David Hunter, Flinders University International outrage at Facebook\u2019s study on thousands of its users without their consent has raised questions about the ethics of research done by private companies. Facebook\u2019s Emotional Manipulation Study has led to concerns about how such research is carried out since it was published in the Proceedings of the US […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":6909,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1198"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6910,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198\/revisions\/6910"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}