Concrete example: I am in the process of trying to hire people right now. I'm not sure what the exact best way to do that is, so I vary how I interview over time and see how well it seems to work. I record what happens in a spreadsheet, and then later on I look at the 'data' to make some judgments.
Am I experimenting on my interviewees? Am I potentially harming them?
Well certainly if I ask question A in one interview, and question A' in another, and question A' is harder and I don't pass that person, then one might be tempted to argue that maybe that person would've done better on question A; therefore, I've harmed someone by 'experimenting' and making it harder for them to get a job. Rejecting someone can certainly make them depressed.
In principle this is no different from A/B testing an interview process, using real live humans no less.
So do I personally have an ethical obligation to disclose to everyone I interview that I am conducting human experimentation on them? Or is the only difference in power and scale—I am just one person, but Facebook can A/B test on millions of people at once?
> In principle this is no different from A/B testing an interview process, using real live humans no less.
> So do I personally have an ethical obligation to disclose to everyone I interview that I am conducting human experimentation on them? Or is the only difference in power and scale—I am just one person, but Facebook can A/B test on millions of people at once?
Generally, when interviewing, we ask the same questions of each applicant. We adjust the questions from A to A' as positions are hired, and pools are assembled, but for a specific job, each candidate gets the same questions.
It would have to be different for open recruitment not tied to a specific job, but I haven't had to do that.
Four years ago, having talked to some of the same lawyers about the same topic, none of us had any thought that it was a grey area. An a priori interpretation of the law was pretty clear: a more liberal position was (and is) perfectly legal. But the most anxious minds tend to prevail in these matters.
That's a terrific idea.
Of course, which is why the conversation continues. If it was settled at the beginning without nuance, it would be defined in black and white.
I'm not sure how your reply relates, though, since I was merely imploring GP to demonstrate any awareness of the state of research rather than jumping in with a lazy question-comment.
Elsewhere this is expressed by the slogan, "I'm 12 years old and what is this?"
FB - A little negative = meh
FB - More negative = major downer
FB - Totally negative = woah, look at the sorry state they are in now.
Cake - A little laxative = mmm this cake is special somehow
Cake - More laxative = nice cake, special, where is the roll of extra TP?
Cake - Dump it in = people home for days, the shits.
In both cases, not telling them is the ethics problem.
Basically the public trust boils down to people expecting others not to harm them. Depression can become chronic. The shits could damage someone requiring medical help.
Both are clear risks people would very likely avoid, if they knew.
FB - We want to run a depression test. Plz volunteer your feed and see if you get depressed.
Cake - We have a laxative that tastes great, but you might get the shits, plz have some cake.
See the problem?
E.g.: "Starting next week, we'll try to affect your mood as part of an experiment". Or "the new version of our product purposefully tries to depress you a bit" followed by "we didn't like the results of it so we've changed it back".
And, where did the Nazis publish, again?
We certainly need people to responsibly interpret peer-reviewed literature for lay audiences. Responsibly.
Your citations were published ~50 years after the Tuskegee exeripments. A proper analogy would be to compare your citations to the ethical condemntations of Facebook made 50 years from now.
>And, where did the Nazis publish, again?
The Nazis published in all of the front-and-center, mainstream publications after they were brought to the United States under Operation Paperclip (among other operations).
When the findings are published has no bearing on the ethics of the experiments. Ironically, the half century lead time does not impinge on the impact, as much as the chronology strengthens the impact.
I can't answer that as it is generally agreed that this data should not be readily available, however Nazi experimentation was cited for decades, and much has been written over the ethics of this: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-ethics-of-using-medi...
Since it is likely unavoidable that referring to Nazis will lead to accusations of Godwining, I have edited my above post to hopefully make this distinction extremely clear.
If you refuse to even discuss the nazis and what they did, especially in directly applicable cases like this, how the hell can we ever hope to not repeat their mistakes.
One does not grasp the true harm caused by unethical experiments by reading only the documented (published or non-published) scientific results. Two extreme examples which I am by no means comparing to that of Facebook, but rather as canonical examples of unethical science, include the Tuskegee experiments and Nazi experimentation. Reading only the published results of these experiments does not convey the horrific harm that actually occurred. The same principle applies to referring towards Facebook's scientific data as an argument that these experiements were not unethical. The scientific results only serve to shroud and conceal the actual activity which occurred in the production of these results.
(edited for clarity)