TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:Re: More for your research From:James Perkins <perkins -at- BILBO -dot- NTC -dot- NOKIA -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 10 Aug 1995 09:20:42 +0300
On Wed, 9 Aug 1995, John Gear wrote about Paul Sawyer:
> Experimenting on people without their informed consent is wrong and violates
> basic standards of decency and professional ethics, not to mention ethical
> guidelines for research that, no doubt, your institution claims to observe.
As a qualified psychologist, I think some comment is warranted:
EXPERIMENTING without consent is wrong, yes, but observing without
consent is not. For a start, we observe without consent every day as we
go about our normal lives. As Paul Sawyer describes his behaviour on this
group, he did not conduct a real experiment, where there was a control group
and an experimental group. He simply made a small intervention and sat back to
watch what happened. It is irritating, true, but is this really unethical?
If everything that irritates us was considered unethical, we wouldn't
have much in this world that wasn't unethical to _somebody_.
Occasionally the testing of psychological theory requires participants
who are naive to the real meaning of the study. If participants always
knew what was going on, or that there was a study being performed, they
would be much less likely to behave in a natural way.
The fact that he "debriefed" us afterwards is showing at least some level
of courtesy. He could have let it go and we would be none the wiser.
In psychology departments, the ethics committee is less likely to approve
a study if its procedures endanger the participants more than they
would be endangered in "common daily living." I find, and I think most
ethics committees would find, that verbal comments on the Internet are a
long way from "injecting unconsenting subjects with radionuclides or
letting syphillis ravage their bodies while pretending to treat them", as
John Gear put it. It does not, in fact, endanger the participants at
all; if they don't like it, they can just delete the message. No harm
done, just a minor irritation.
James Perkins Phone: +358 0 5112 3648
Nokia Telecommunications Fax: +358 0 5112 3876
P.O. Box 33 Email: james -dot- perkins -at- ntc -dot- nokia -dot- com
02601 Espoo FINLAND Internal: Hiomo 5/4
