By Arthur Caplan
Art Caplan has a new opinion piece on NBCNews about a recently published study in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, where a Facebook scientist teamed up with two academics to subtly tweak the news feeds of nearly 700,000 Facebook users.
From the piece:
“The question of whether or not an experiment is ethical hinges upon the question of “informed consent.” Generally, this means that a subject in a study needs to have basic information about the study he’s participating in, understand the nature of the experiment and its risks and benefits, and have the ability to withhold his consent without fear of harm or retribution.
The authors of the study argue that they obtained subject consent: Their manipulation of Facebook users’ emotions was “… consistent with Facebook’s Data Use Policy, to which all users agree prior to creating an account on Facebook, constituting informed consent for this research.” This is nonsense; it’s not informed consent. It is an old Silicon Valley trick for systematically eliminating the legal rights of its customers.”
Read the full article.
