Misjudgements will drive social trials underground: A Facebook study that manipulated news feeds was not definitively unethical and offered valuable insight into social behaviour, says Michelle N. Meyer.
Former Petrie-Flom Academic Fellow Michelle N. Meyer has joined with a group of other scholars to defend the recently publicized social contagion experiment conducted by Facebook, arguing that the experiment "was controversial, but it was not an egregious breach of either ethics or law." From the full statement:
Some bioethicists have said that Facebook’s recent study of user behaviour is “scandalous”, “violates accepted research ethics” and “should never have been performed”.
I write with 5 co-authors, on behalf of 27 other ethicists, to disagree with these sweeping condemnations (see go.nature.com/XI7szI).
We are making this stand because the vitriolic criticism of this study could have a chilling effect on valuable research. Worse, it perpetuates the presumption that research is dangerous. [...]
Read the full piece here.
See the full list of co-authors and signatories of the statement here.